Sent to Coventry Written by TimS on Saturday, 13th Jul 2013 22:37 I lived in Warwickshire during the late noughties in a place called Leamington Spa. You may have been there and it is a nice place. Sitting on the town’s green by the River Leamington with an ice cream or cold beer is not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. There is not much going on football-wise, but this town is desperately popular with Birmingham and London-bound commuters and students at the nearby University of Warwick. There is not much of a Spa left now, but the town is pleasant enough to spend a day walking around especially on one of these baking July days that we are enjoying at this present time. It seems ages ago now but for someone like me, who did not have a car, and not too much money, it was totally impractical to get to Portman Road to watch many home games, so I became a Midlands watcher of Town. Travel West Midlands got a small fortune out of me, and I spent a lot of time on buses to get to a random football game, but when the fixtures came out every June, I took a close interest when Coventry played Town. A trip to the Ricoh Arena was the local trip that could not be missed, so I could watch Ipswich play. This trip had to begin but from memory, these Saturdays had a shockingly large amount of expectation, and promise but not much in terms of end product. Coventry’s Ricoh Arena would be similar to Ipswich playing their games near to the Copdock Tesco. An unwelcome obstacle to get out of the city, that was the inspiration for The Specials' Ghost Town in 1981, but everything seemed to be one big hassle about the Ricoh. You could see what the planners were thinking when they thought that this Arena would be the ultimate sporting destination where fans could come on a range of buses and trains to see their beloved Sky Blues play. It did not quite work out like that. The promised railway station has still not been built. Buses are not especially direct taking a circular trip around some north Coventry housing estates, and if you are unlucky, you spend a lot of time admiring the A444 tarmac as you queue out of the stadium. On every occasion when I went to a Town game at the Ricoh, it was never remotely a sell-out. I would spend most of the 90 minutes freezing, because Coventry v Ipswich games seemed to take place exclusively on cold Saturday afternoons in the pre-Christmas shopping season, and apologising to the hapless friend that I had dragged out of their Soccer Saturday comfort sofa zone with the promise of hysterically exciting Championship football. On virtually all of those occasions, we were watching rubbish. In fact, it was total rubbish, and a dreadful advert for second tier football. I would head home on the Travel West Midlands utterly depressed about the state of Town at that present time and that I had wasted a whole Saturday afternoon, which I could never retrieve for the future. The friend would vow to have his phone off the hook whenever I suggested another trip to a Town game. To be honest, I could not really blame him. However, I honestly believed that there were similarities between Coventry and Town in terms of club and the fans. I worked with a number of Coventry fans who would wax lyrical about City’s FA Cup triumph in 1987, whilst I gave my second hand lecture about the 1978 FA Cup final. Both clubs have a county-wide fanbase. Ipswich is the team for Suffolk and Coventry is the team for Warwickshire, with aspirations to return to the Premiership, and both clubs are not in the fashionable bracket of support (such as those fans who profess their undying love for Manchester United which has existed for them since 2006). Off the field troubles were a regular feature of Coventry’s seasons around five years ago. I would regularly come in to work on a Monday morning, with Coventry fans wondering whether their club was going to the dogs, and pondering whether they should tear up their season tickets. Town were going through the Magilton and early Keane years. I was becoming thankful for small mercies, but Sky Blue managers seem to change at a whim. The days of Dave Bennett, Cyrille Regis, or even Micky Ginn were becoming uncomfortably distant memories. Time was marching on for me too, but I still keep an eye on the Coventry scores, wondering how my Cov friends are feeling at this present time. And as this hot summer continues, I am pretty sure that these friends are feeling pretty low. Now, at the time of writing, it appears that Coventry City games will be played at Northampton’s Sixfields Stadium next season. You may think that this has nothing of any relevance to a Town fan, but imagine if there was a similar row surrounding Portman Road and Town were forced to play their games at Colchester United or Southend United’s Roots Hall. There would be an outcry. Groundshare has happened before across the UK but surely nothing quite like what is happening between the West Midlands and East Midlands at this present time. Head around the Internet, and you can follow the twisted and sad story of Coventry City Football Club, which is still a great club in 2013. Various club figures are pleading in the papers that the club’s temporary move down the A45 is the only way to ensure the future of Coventry City Football Club. Local MPs are spitting fury and writing to Ministers. The fans are in uproar, with loose threats flying around the local media from a whole range of interested bodies. It is a dreadful mess, and as always in these situations, it is the fans that ultimately suffer from all this fire and brimstone. Peaceful protests are being planned around the various towns but the threats are starting to fire about. You can’t help but wonder what sort of club will be in place by the time of the season start on 3rd August. I do not want to worry my Cov friends but the 2013/14 seems fairly bleak. I will be keeping a watchful eye on this mess and maybe send the odd supportive text to the relevant friends. I guess that everything is relative in football and Town are not in a comparative state as Coventry, but it does shake you up when you start to hear of clubs of a similar status to Town, hitting football's buffers at some speed. When I hear about current complaints that we are not signing as much as needed this summer, I feel that as a Town fan, I am pretty lucky at this present time. 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