by Jonathan Strange
They think it’s all over. It isn’t yet.
Tens of thousands have perished. There is no vaccine, little is known about immunity. The cobra is still poised.
The time may have come for football to settle its tab, but what if there is a second wave?
We shout for a penalty when the ball strikes an opponent’s arm; when it strikes our own, of course, it is accidental. Calling off a season, though, is beyond accidental.
The EFL has been in a cleft stick dodging lurking refs incourtroom wigs. To scorn its indecision is glib.
Hopefully, the ball has burst the net. Our beloved Sky Blues are Champions.
We are wading into the depths of summer, not a cricket ball in sight, without even a casual embrace. Only now can we contemplate new rivals, new journeys, in the Championship.
The decision cannot suit everybody. Sunderland’s persecution complex has been bubbling, adorning tales of the dastardly late kick-offs of 1978 and 1997.
The best eleven in the division, beaten just three times, are where they deserve. Matty Godden’s goal, celebrated with a flick of the elbow, left Portman Road shuddering. Nobody imagined that it could be the last goal of the season. Five points clear with a game in hand, the Sky Blue Army gorged at the prospects.
Resilience, so telling in the second-half at St Andrew’s in December, and evident already in the astonishing comebacks against Portsmouth and Blackpool, became the byword of the season.
A Wembley cup win and two promotions in the space of thirty-eight months signify the most concentrated sequence of triumphs in the entire history of Coventry City Football Club.
From the snowy Cup run of 1963, Third Division champions a year later, to First Division debutants in 1967, Jimmy Hill built the foundations on which Coventry City competed in the top flight for thirty-four years, such continuity emulated by only Arsenal, Everton and Liverpool.
One of the few compensations of this sunny and hideous spring was being reminded of 1987, of an extraordinary afternoon and the balm it brought to our national sport and thecommunity stirred and inspired by it.
These are the preeminent achievements. Winning the FATrophy and recovery in the League are rungs in a revival.
Winning consistently settles the pulse of a club and its followers. Ask Liverpool, ask the luckless South Shields.Over thirty-four seasons, Coventry City boasted one of the top fifteen teams in the country but 2018 was its first top-six finish since 1970. At last, we are beginning to expect our team to dig out a late equaliser, a last-minute winner. Have we got more than a cathedral to spare?
Mark Robins envisaged crucial wing roles in his team for Jobello and Kastaneer. Circumstances dictated differently. Heastutely switched to wing-backs, the precocious McCallum and the furious pace of Dabo threading deeper corridors.
Robins was richly rewarded by Liam Walsh and Callum O’Hare, Walsh’s coruscating run against Rochdale supreme.Kelly was an influential leader, the sewing machine withShipley, Allen and the emerging Westbrooke key partners. Rose, McFadzean and Hyam became a dominant threesome at the back, with Marosi a footballer as well as a ’keeper behind them. Up front, new signing Godden grew in impact as the season progressed, with the revived Maxime and the fitfully effective Baka chipping in.
Will the squad need strengthening? Of course it will, both to stock the larder and to decorate the cake. The intensity in the Championship is more focused, the tactical shuffling less predictable. Mark Robins, however, is a master baker.
This is a time for sober reflection. Most Championship clubs have been speculating more than their entire income on player wages. Some will be brought to heel. The horrors will breed a new financial realism.
On promotion in 1964, the Sky Blues won their first five games – and lost the next five. The club will have earned the support of everyone when the roller coaster cranks up again, empty seats or not. The months ahead present a big challenge, to the club, to football, to our pockets and to our health.
Let’s all sing together: Congratulations Coventry City and all who sail in you!
Jonathan Strange
Jonathan Strange is a lifelong Sky Blues supporter and an experienced former supporters’ representative. He is the author of A Tenner and a Box of Kippers: The Story of Keith Houchen.
