Coventry
City's home game with Sunderland saw a bumper 16,407 crowd at the
Ricoh Arena, boosted by an excellent 4,900 following from Wearside.
Apart from last season's vastly inflated crowd for the Accrington
game it was the biggest regular season league crowd at the stadium
since Burton Albion's visit in January 2016 when the attendance was
17,140. Obviously the mass of Sunderland fans boosted it but the
atmosphere generated by the larger than usual crowd was reminiscent
of the days in the Championship. The number of away fans was the
largest since 2011-12 when Birmingham City brought 5,755 for the game
in March. City were in desperate trouble at the foot of the table and
took the lead in the 70th minute through Gary McSheffrey only for
their old boy Marlon King to equalise less than two minutes later.
Since
the Ricoh opened in 2005 and accurate records began to be kept for
the number of away fans there have been 15 instances of 5,000 or
more visiting supporters, all of them in the Championship days. The
biggest was in 2010-11 when Leeds brought 6,366 to see a thriller.
Leeds led 2-0 at half-time before Lukas Jutkiewicz pulled one back.
Then Max Gradel made it 3-1 with a penalty and Ben Turner made it 3-2
to set up a hectic finish with Leeds hanging on for a 3-2 victory.
The total crowd that day was 28,184 – the biggest crowd to watch a
City home league game since 1980.
SkyBlueLewy
asked me a question on Twitter last week. He wanted to know about a
friendly that the Sky Blues played at Hastings in the early 1990s
that his boss had attended. The game took place on 26th July 1989
and was a testimonial for long-serving Hastings player Wayne Peacock
and City's first pre-season friendly. Hastings were managed by John
Sillett's brother, Peter, at the time and John took a strong City
squad to the South Coast. City ran out 6-2 winners with goals from
Brian Kilcline (pen), Dougie McGuire, David Speedie, Micky Gynn,
Keith Thompson and Steve Livingstone. Peacock had his moment of glory
when he equalised Kilcline's penalty with a penalty of his own
spot-kick and Stuart Dunbar scored a second equaliser before City
upped the tempo in the second half. Peter Sillett had an earlier
spell as Hastings manager and in December 1980 City (for whom brother
John was coach) opened the club's new floodlights in a friendly game,
winning 2-1.
Last
week it was the 30th anniversary of Middlesbrough's 4-3 win at
Highfield Road, a game that saw hat-tricks from both David Speedie
and Boro's Bernie Slaven. I was asked how many City players have
scored hat-tricks and ended on the losing side. There have been two
other occasions: in 1962 Terry Bly scored three in a 4-3 home defeat
to Southend and in 1995 Dion Dublin scored three in a 4-3 defeat at
Sheffield Wednesday.
That
prompted a further question: how many times have players from both
sides scored hat-tricks in City games? In addition to Speedie/Slaven
there are five others :–
1931-32
City 5 Fulham 5 (Billy Lake (Coventry) 3/ Frank Newton (Fulham) 3)
1933-34
Gillingham 3 City 7 (Arthur Bacon (Coventry) 5/ Arthur Mills
(Gillingham) 3)
1937-38
Fulham 3 City 4 (Magnus McPhee (Coventry) 3/ Jim Hammond (Fulham) 3)
1962-63
City 3 Southend 4 (Terry Bly (Coventry) 3/ Mike Beesley (Southend) 3)
1990-91
City 5 Nottm. Forest 4 (Kevin Gallacher (Coventry) 3/ Nigel Clough
(Forest) 3)
Finally
a question from regular reader Ed Blackaby. Ed wanted to know the
details of a game the Sky Blues played at Lockheed Leamington in
February 1967. It was a charity game in aid of the Ken Shelton-Rayner
Appeal Fund. The programme, dated 8th January when the game was
originally planned for, explains that Ken, from Alderminster, needed
a life-saving kidney machine which would cost £7,000. The proceeds
of the match would go towards the appeal.
The
Sky Blues, who had won 1-0 at Bury the previous day, put out a strong
team but were overwhelmed by the Brakes who ran out 5-3 winners.
City's goals were scored by Brian Lewis, Bobby Gould and Ronnie Rees
and a crowd of around 2,500 watched the game.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment