Jim's column 13.8.22

Coventry City's start to the season has been thrown into chaos by the pitch debacle at the CBS Arena following the Commonwealth Games Rugby Sevens tournament. Last Sunday's opening home game against Rotherham was called off at short notice and ever since we have had a undignified and unhelpful war of words between the parties. Somehow the club managed to organise for the Carabao (League) Cup game with Bristol City to take place at Burton Albion's Pirelli Stadium on Wednesday evening.

This was only the second match ever called off at the Arena since it opened in 2005, and the first because of the state of the pitch. Bristol City became the first team to play away games against City at five different locations as they have previously played at both Sixfields and St Andrews.

Meanwhile Mark Robins's team will be playing catch up with the rest of the division until they can rearrange the Rotherham game and we have to hope that the next two home games can go ahead or that catch up will be increased. The situation is not dissimilar to the 1968-69 season when the club's new Main Stand wasn't ready for the start of the campaign and the club had to call off the first two home games and then start with two away games, both which were lost. So after every other club had played four games City had played just two and were bottom of the table. The club struggled to get out of the relegation zone all season and only avoided relegation because Leicester City had a massive fixture backlog as a result of weather and an FA Cup run. Let's hope that the Arena pitch is fit to play on soon and that the team can deal with what sounds like it will be an inferior playing surface.

The League Cup game went ahead in Burton but turned into a nightmare with a pumped up Bristol team thumping a City team, largely made up of fringe players, for an easy passage to the second round. The first half performance was abysmal and although things improved after half-time the final scoreline of 4-1 didn't flatter Bristol. It was the club's worst home defeat in the competition since 1964 when Leicester City thumped Jimmy Hill's side 8-1. There were some mitigating circumstances that night – captain George Curtis had to leave the field injured before half-time and there were no substitutes in those days plus the fact that Leicester were a top six First Division side and had their best team in their pre-2016 history.

The club's fans travelled in good numbers and good humour to Burton on a beautiful evening and the crowd, with just a few hundred away fans, was 2,680. The club have had lower home crowds in the competition at Sixfields and St Andrews but the receipts will probably be a quarter of what they could have expected at the CBS and the hire of Burton's facilities will make it a loss-making event. With valuable income lost with the Rotherham postponement one has to worry that one of the club's top players will have to be sold before the transfer window closes to fill the inevitable shortfall of cash.

The competition has been extremely unproductive for City in recent years – it was the seventh time in the last ten seasons that they have exited the competition. It is now 15 years since the club last progressed beyond the third round – the year they won at Old Trafford and only once since then have they reached the third round! The Sky Blues are not alone – 19 Championship clubs played in the competition this week and all but four were eliminated, the majority to clubs from the lower divisions. This suggests that Championship clubs are so focused on the league campaign and gaining promotion to the Premier League that they have little or no interest in the competition even though there is the lure of big pay days if they draw one of the big clubs later in the competition. Sadly it seems the League Cup is on its last legs and that will mean that smaller clubs will lose their opportunity of financial windfalls and exciting giant-killing exploits and all because of the greed of the bigger clubs.

Jim's column 10.3.2018

It was a major disappointment last Saturday with the postponement of the Sky Blues home game with Lincoln causing Legends Day to be called off. Many former players were already in the city or well on their way when the game was called off at 10 am. Thankfully Legends Day has be re-arranged for Saturday 5th May, at the home game versus Morecambe, a game which may have a lot at stake for City.

Postponements had become relatively a thing of the past since the club moved to the Ricoh Arena in 2005 and the Lincoln game was the first postponement there since then (although a game v Walsall at Sixfields in 2014 was called off). The last City home game postponed was in 2002 when two home games in the space of five days at Highfield Road were called off. On New Years Day the home game with Rotherham fell foul to an icebound pitch, and the pitch was not fit for play four days later for the FA Cup third round tie with Tottenham. The re-arranged cup-tie went ahead on the 16th January with Spurs winning 2-0 in front of almost 21,000.

Older fans will remember the bad winter of 1976-77 when the Highfield Road pitch suffered serious drainage problems and the team had to play eight consecutive away games between 22 January and 2 April. That season was the worst season in the club's history for postponed games with five call-offs with the Bristol City game postponed twice, on 1st January and 1st March. That season even eclipsed 1947 & 1963, the UK's worst winters of the twentieth century, for home games called off. In 1947 City had three home games called off & because of government restrictions on midweek games they didn't complete their fixtures until the last week in May and the First Division title wasn't decided until June.

                                                 A snowbound Highfield Road in the 1950s

In 1963 football was decimated again by snow and ice and City didn't play a game for two months but although there were 21 postponed away games (including a British record 16 FA Cup ties at Lincoln) there were only two home games called off. That FA Cup game at Lincoln was due to be played on Saturday 5th January but the snow and ice gripped the whole country that week and only three of the 32 ties were played (at Plymouth, Preston & Tranmere). A further twelve ties managed to be completed by the end of January but with no real thaw emerging until the end of February, March commenced with nine of the 32 ties still to be played. The first week of March saw the outstanding games played with City winning 5-1 at Lincoln on Wednesday 6th March (60 days after the original date). Before the kick-off both teams knew their prospective opponents in Round 4 (Portsmouth or Scunthorpe) and Round 5 (Sunderland were already through). The last of the 32 third round ties took place at Bradford City the following evening with Newcastle winning 6-1.

If that delay wasn't bad enough the Sky Blues took three games to dispose of Portsmouth in round 4, needing a second replay victory at White Hart Lane to progress to a bumper home tie with Sunderland in round 5. City's famous victory over the Division Two leaders earned a sixth round tie with Manchester United and the glorious run came to an end with a 3-1 defeat. In 24 days City had played six FA Cup ties!

The weather and subsequent postponements as well as the protracted FA Cup run hit City's Third Division promotion challenge that winter. When the heavy snow first fell on the last Saturday of 1962 Jimmy Hill's team were in fourth place, four points behind leaders Peterborough but with two games in hand. When the Cup run finally ended with the defeat to Manchester United on the last Saturday in March the club were left with nine league games in April and a further seven in May. Despite being still fourth and only five points behind the leaders they failed to take advantage of their four games in hand and won only five of the 16 games to end up fourth, five points behind the promoted clubs, Northampton and Swindon.

Jim's column 15.2.14

As I write this the weather forecast for the next few days is not good. More rain is expected before today's home game with Bradford City and there must be some doubts whether the game will go ahead. It is a month since the last home game at Sixfields after the postponement of the Walsall game two weeks ago and as a result the Sky Blues have now played five successive away games. Several readers have pointed this out and asked when the club last had such a run. Older fans will remember the bad winter of 1976-77 when the Highfield Road pitch suffered serious drainage problems and the team played eight consecutive away games between 22 January and 2 April. Only one win (at Leeds) and one draw resulted from the eight matches and City spiralled from a comfortable mid-table position into a relegation battle which went to the wire and only resolved in that dramatic 2-2 draw with Bristol City on a Thursday night in May.

The 1976-77 season was the worst season in the club's history for postponed games with five call-offs with the famous Bristol game postponed twice, on 1 January and 1 March. That season even eclipsed 1947 & 1963, the UK's worst winters since World War 2, for home games called off. In 1947 City had three home games called off & because of government restrictions on midweek games they didn't complete their fixtures until the last week in May and the First Division title wasn't decided until June. In 1963 football was decimated again by snow and ice and City didn't play a game for two months but although there were 21 postponed away games (including 16 FA Cup ties at Lincoln) there were only two home games called off.

The Walsall postponement was the first Coventry City home game to be called off because of weather since January 2002 when the New Years Day fixture with Rotherham and the FA Cup tie with Tottenham four days later were postponed because of snow on the Highfield Road pitch. 

Ed Blackaby e-mailed me recently about Lee Hurst, a Coventry-born youngster who broke into the first team in 1991 and played 55 first team games before suffering a career-ending injury at a pre-season training camp in 1993. Lee, an all-round midfield player, had had an outstanding season in 1992-93 and looked to be a first-team regular for years to come before his unfortunate accident. He still lives in the area & runs a successful painting & decorating business & has attended several Legends Days. Ed's question was regarding another City player from the same period called Lee Hirst who he thought came from Scarborough.

Ed is correct. Lee Hirst was a central defender who scored the 93rd minute winning goal for Scarborough against City in a two legged League Cup tie in 1992-93. Bobby Gould signed Hirst for the Sky Blues the following summer and although he was given a squad number and played in one pre-season friendly he could not break into the first team & after a season in the reserves was released. One of his contemporaries at City told me that Hirst had a blinder for Scarborough but never repeated that form at City. Hirst had tough competition at Highfield Road; Gould had successfully converted Phil Babb to a central defender & he and Peter Atherton had excellent seasons plus there was also a young Dave Busst as back-up.

Today the Sky Blues entertain the Bantams (Bradford City). Over the years I have been asked hundreds of times 'Why were Coventry City nicknamed the Bantams before Jimmy Hill turned them into the Sky Blues?'

According to David Brassington's 'Singers to Sky Blues' excellent history of the club published in 1985, the Bantams nickname was first used in 1908 after Nemo in the Midland Daily Telegraph pointed out that City, who had recently admitted to the Southern League, were one of the only clubs not to have a nickname. He asked for suggestions and being the lightweights of the league the Bantams nickname was adopted & soon afterwards the small fowl was used to depict the club in newspaper cartoons. However I recently came across a letter from a Mr Kennell to the Coventry Telegraph from 1967. He recalled asking his father 40 years earlier why they were the Bantams & his father had explained that the were named after the bantam weathercocks on the spires of the three main churches of the city. I wonder if anyone has any other theories for the nickname?