What a mixed week for the Sky Blues. Saturday’s 1-2 defeat to Preston was a travesty after all the pressure exerted on the visitors’ goal but then on Tuesday night Doncaster went home rightly aggrieved that they had not won a game they dominated for long periods.
Donny’s boss Sean O’Driscoll has built an excellent side capable of playing lovely passing football and in John Oster he had the man of the match. Oster covered every blade of grass, made Billy Sharp’s goal with a delicious through-ball and showed why back in the 1990s he was a £1.5 million player. In the last 10 years John has played for nine different clubs and rarely spent more than one season in the same club.
Gary McSheffrey scored City’s winning goal with a superb diving header – the first of his second spell at the club. This was the 54th senior goal for the club and he is now 15th in the all-time leading scorers chart, with only Mick Ferguson (58), George Lowrie (59), Ian Wallace (60), Cyrille Regis (62), Jock Lauderdale (65) standing in the way of his entry to the all-time top ten.
Championship pacemakers QPR’s first goalless game (a 0-0 draw with Millwall) means that City are the only side in the division to score in every league game this season. This is City’s best start to a season in this respect since 1954-55 when Jack Fairbrother’s team scored in every one of its first eleven games. The club record was set in 1932-33 when with Clarrie Bourton in his pomp the Bantams netted in the first 16 games with Bourton netting 13 of the team’s 37 goals.
Coventry City have long had a reputation for having good cricketers on their books with a number being good enough to play county cricket including Don Bennett (Middlesex), Freddie Gardner (Warwickshire), Charlie Elliott (Derbyshire), John Mitten and Jack Lee (Leicestershire), Patsy Hendren (Middlesex & England) not to mention legendary manager Harry Storer who played cricket for Derbyshire. I didn’t realise till this week that there is a new entrant in this exclusive club. In August former City goalkeeper Gary Montgomery made his county cricket debut for Lancashire, a year following a switch in codes after being released by Grimsby Town. In all he appeared in three Clydesdale 40 games for Lancashire.
Gary made his debut for the Sky Blues against Chelsea in a League Cup tie in 2001 and played a further eight league games the following season but was never on the winning side for the club and joined Rotherham in 2003. Leamington-born Gary, who is still only 28 years old, was the first boy from my old school, Warwick, to play for City and the first for many years to play county cricket.
Plans for the 40th anniversary of City’s 1970 European campaign on 23 October at the Barnsley home game are well advanced and after last week’s revelation that former Coventry MP, the late Bill Wilson, was on that first trip to Bulgaria, two of his fellow travellers have been in touch with me. Rod Dean and Steve Pittam were among the 37 fans who travelled out to Bulgaria for the first leg of the first round European Fairs Cup tie with Trakia Plovdiv. The Former Players Association would welcome any of that select band who are still around to join the celebrations in the Casino after the game on the 23 October and meet City’s players from 1970 and Plovdiv legend Dinko Dermendjiev. If you were on that long trip to Plovdiv please contact me.
Showing posts with label Trakia Plovdiv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trakia Plovdiv. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Monday, 27 September 2010
JIM'S COLUMN 25.9.10
Last Saturday’s 2-1 win at Ashton Gate was a welcome result after three games without a victory and, as has been widely reported, was City’s first league victory at Ashton Gate since 1963. Having said that, City have only played nine league games there in the intervening period, and have drawn four of those nine. In addition there have been three cup ties at Ashton Gate resulting in two draws and one win - a Mick Ferguson goal in 1976 gave the Sky Blues a victory in a League Cup tie.
Back in 1963 it was a solitary Ken Hale goal that earned the points in an evening game and took City four points clear at the top of Division Three. Ken’s goal, after only four minutes, was a shot that deflected of a defender’s leg and flew over Mike Gibson the Bristol keeper. Gibson had a much busier night than his opposite number Bob Wesson, who had little to do on his 23rd birthday.
I have said before that if City are going to be serious challengers for a top six place then a number of their bogey grounds will have to be more productive. City have failed at Millwall and Swansea but the win at Ashton Gate gives City fans some hope that other bogeys, such as Leicester, Cardiff and Preston may be exorcised.
This month is the 40th anniversary of City’s first ever European cup tie. In September 1970 City travelled to deepest Bulgaria to face Trakia Plovdiv in the first leg of their first round European Fairs Cup tie with Trakia Plovdiv. City won the away leg 4-1 with a hat-trick from John O’Rourke and a Neil Martin goal and then beat the Bulgarians 2-0 in the second leg with goals from Brian Joicey and Jeff Blockley.
The Former Players Association are planning a reunion of the 1970 City squad at the home game with Barnsley at the end of October and have organised for Trakia’s star player of 1970, Dinko Dermendjiev, to travel to Coventry for the reunion. With the sponsorship of Jason Dickens of The Jade Studio, the graphic designers, Dinko and an interpreter will be flying in from Bulgaria to attend the match and meet City’s players from 1970.
40 years ago a small band of around 50 City supporters travelled out with the team to Bulgaria and one of them, Rod Dean, informs me that another of the group was Bill Wilson, MP for Coventry South at the time. Rod also told me that Bill had passed away last month aged 97, a fact that had passed me by. Bill was not only an avid City supporter having been born and bred in the city, but also an outspoken shareholder whose objectivity would have been useful in the club’s boardroom at some periods over the last 50 years. Unlike other MPs who have jumped on the football bandwagon since the game attracted large amounts of money in the Premier League era, Bill had followed City’s fortunes since the 1920s and could wax lyrically about the golden era of the 1930s.
Back in 1963 it was a solitary Ken Hale goal that earned the points in an evening game and took City four points clear at the top of Division Three. Ken’s goal, after only four minutes, was a shot that deflected of a defender’s leg and flew over Mike Gibson the Bristol keeper. Gibson had a much busier night than his opposite number Bob Wesson, who had little to do on his 23rd birthday.
I have said before that if City are going to be serious challengers for a top six place then a number of their bogey grounds will have to be more productive. City have failed at Millwall and Swansea but the win at Ashton Gate gives City fans some hope that other bogeys, such as Leicester, Cardiff and Preston may be exorcised.
This month is the 40th anniversary of City’s first ever European cup tie. In September 1970 City travelled to deepest Bulgaria to face Trakia Plovdiv in the first leg of their first round European Fairs Cup tie with Trakia Plovdiv. City won the away leg 4-1 with a hat-trick from John O’Rourke and a Neil Martin goal and then beat the Bulgarians 2-0 in the second leg with goals from Brian Joicey and Jeff Blockley.
The Former Players Association are planning a reunion of the 1970 City squad at the home game with Barnsley at the end of October and have organised for Trakia’s star player of 1970, Dinko Dermendjiev, to travel to Coventry for the reunion. With the sponsorship of Jason Dickens of The Jade Studio, the graphic designers, Dinko and an interpreter will be flying in from Bulgaria to attend the match and meet City’s players from 1970.
40 years ago a small band of around 50 City supporters travelled out with the team to Bulgaria and one of them, Rod Dean, informs me that another of the group was Bill Wilson, MP for Coventry South at the time. Rod also told me that Bill had passed away last month aged 97, a fact that had passed me by. Bill was not only an avid City supporter having been born and bred in the city, but also an outspoken shareholder whose objectivity would have been useful in the club’s boardroom at some periods over the last 50 years. Unlike other MPs who have jumped on the football bandwagon since the game attracted large amounts of money in the Premier League era, Bill had followed City’s fortunes since the 1920s and could wax lyrically about the golden era of the 1930s.
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