Jim's column 20-2-2021

Three weeks ago I wrote about Coventry City's nursery club in 1940s, Modern Machine Tools and how many of the teenagers who played for that team progressed to playing league football with City. I had an email from John Green.

Thanks for a great article on Modern Machine Tools team last Saturday. In the early days they played in the Coventry Minor League and their home games were played at Spencer Park. I was a goalkeeper and played on a couple of occasions as a stand-in for the injured Reg Matthews. Names I recall from those occasions, Albert Sneddon, John Quinney, Billy Gray, Jimmy and Peter Hill. I had signed for the club on a Sunday evening when Charlie Elliot, who was the chief scout, visited my home following a trial that morning at Highfield Road. A successful Cheylesmore Youth Club team who played in the Youth Club League were invited to play against the Modern Machine team and as goalkeeper I was monitored and coached through the game by Billy Morgan, who had been first team keeper before the war. I went on to play in the City 'A' Team but my father wanted me to finish my apprenticeship and so ended my time at Coventry City.

The 'A' team was City's third XI and in the late 1940s they played in the Birmingham Combination alongside some strong Midland non-league sides such as Nuneaton Borough, Atherstone, Bedworth as well as the 'A' teams from Wolves, West Brom and Birmingham City. I found a programme from January 1948 with John in goal for them for a game at Stafford Rangers. Also in the City team were three players who had played first team games, Bob Ward, Jack Evans and Freddie Gardner. Coventry-born Gardner was more famous as a cricketer, playing over 300 games for Warwickshire between 1947-61.

Loan signing Matty James became Coventry City's seventh captain of the season when he led the team out in the home game with Watford two weeks ago. He follows Liam Kelly, Kyle McFadzean, Michael Rose, Matty Godden, Dom Hyam and Fankaty Dabo. Initially I believed this to equal the club record set in 2016-17 (the League 1 relegation season) when seven different players took the armband. Subsequently I discovered that in 2010-11 eight different players skippered the team.

In 2010-11 Lee Carsley was club captain and led the team in every league game until just before Christmas when he was injured and Michael Doyle took over on four occasions. James McPake skippered the team in a League Cup tie at Morecambe. In January Doyle went on loan to Sheffield United and Keiren Westwood took the armband. In early March in a disastrous home game with Bristol City the club used three different captains – Westwood started but was injured and Marlon King took over but then received a red card for striking Bristol's Damian Stewart and Aron Gunnarsson ended the game with the armband. Richard Wood became the seventh captain for four games before Sammy Clingan made it eight captains when he took over for the final eight games of the season.

A while back Marshall Stewart told me a story about former City secretary Bernard Hitchener. Bernard served the club for over forty years, first as assistant secretary before the war and after the war as secretary until 1963 when he became ticket office manager. Marshall takes up the story.

One of Bernard's tasks at reserve games on Saturday afternoons when City's first team were away from home was to answer the telephone at Highfield Road whenever it rang from the away ground with the latest score. He then passed the news - often bad in the darkest days of the fifties - to the chairman in the directors' box. The chairman's expression communicated the bad news to nearby supporters and it gradually rippled around the ground. Otherwise, when City were losing, the fans had to wait until half time until a member of the ground staff trudged around the pitch to display the latest scores on the pitch-side scoreboard.  

                Bernard Hitchener in the CCFC Ticket Office

What a difference from these days when every game is shown on ifollow, social media reports every incident and goal from every game and the days of a hand operated scoreboard are long gone.

Jim's column 30.1.2021

This week I will try and catch up with some of the email correspondence I have received in recent months.

Coventry City's success in producing home-grown talent is well-known in the modern era. Callum Wilson and James Maddison are the stand out products who have both gone on to win international recognition after coming through the club's academy. Others playing league football include Lee Burge, Jordan Willis, Ryan Haynes and Jonson Clarke-Harris. Go back twenty years and we had Gary McSheffrey, Calum Davenport and Chris Kirkland, and in the Jimmy Hill era we saw Willie Carr, Jeff Blockley and Dennis Mortimer leading an array of youngsters developed 'in-house' that went on to have long and successful careers in the game.

It's not that well-known however that the club had a dazzling array of youthful talent in the late 1940s and early 1950s which produced many outstanding players who graced the Coventry City shirt. Back then they played together under the name of Modern Machine Tools and regular reader David Walker wrote to me some time ago to give me some background to that name.

Modern Machine Tools had two factories in Coventry, the original one in Gosford Street, opposite what was then the old Hotchkiss/Morris works (my father and grandfather both worked there) and the purpose-built, newer factory in Maudslay Road, Chapelfields, which later became the Massey-Ferguson design office, both now long gone.

Modern Machine Tools was owned by Harry Weston, former Coventry City Councillor and Mayor, a lovely man, who I met a few times. He had made his fortune from the machine tool business, but then became renowned as a benefactor for all sorts of worthy causes, which presumably included supporting Coventry City. I believe that he died almost penniless, having given most of his fortune away.

                                              Modern Machine Tools photo-call circa 1948

So Harry Weston was an early sponsor of the City Juniors team and his company name appeared in the local football results every Saturday night in the Pink. The teams, I believe they ran several different age group teams, were very successful in local junior leagues winning numerous league titles. Amongst the youngsters who started their Coventry City careers in Modern Machine Tools were Reg Matthews, who went on to play for England, Lol Harvey, Frank Austin, Peter Hill and Gordon Nutt.

I receive some unusual questions about the club but a recent email from Andrew Phillips is the strangest. Andrew is researching a book about 1960s pop band, the Applejacks and wanted to know if the group had ever played a 'gig' at Highfield Road before a City match. The Applejacks were a Solihull-based band who had had three top thirty hits in 1964, including the top ten hit, Tell Me When, and were very popular in the Midlands for a couple of years. In November 1964 the football club engaged them to do a 20-minute slot before the England under 23 international at Highfield Road against Rumania. I wasn't at the game but would love to hear from anyone who remembers the performance. Over 27,000 fans attended the game, the biggest audience the group ever had, which saw City's Bill Glazier make his debut for the under 23s in a 5-0 victory for England. The Applejacks, who were fairly unique in having a female bass player, Megan Davies, disappeared into obscurity soon afterwards but did re-form for a charity concert in 2010.

Staying in the 1964-65 season, a friend who is a Villa fan recently sent me a match report of City's FA Cup Third round tie at Villa Park in January 1965. The report is written by famous cricket correspondent John Arlott for the Guardian newspaper and makes fascinating reading. First Division Villa were in the bottom two at the time and City were a mid-table Second Division side who, with their fans, really fancied their chances. Around 20,000 fans travelled to Villa Park - almost half the 47,000 attendance - and easily out-sung the home fans on a miserably wet day. Jimmy Hill picked a negative side with Brian Hill, as an extra defender, in place of striker Ken Hale, and it backfired as Villa ran out 3-0 victors. Tony Hateley was the Villa hero, scoring twice with his feet, something which surprised Arlott who rightly points out that 'Big Tone's' strength was in the air. Some years later Coventry fans saw first hand how 'ill at ease' Hateley was with the ball on the ground.