A Day To Remember
In September 1970, my Dad took me to see my first Coventry City game. I was a young lad with cause for optimism in the club I’d just started supporting. The season before we had finished 6th in the
old Division One, qualifying for Europe. Little did I know, it would be nearly half a century before the Sky Blues achieved another top six finish. One of the most unwanted statistics in football
ended on May 5th 2018 when City now languishing in the fourth tier finished sixth, making the play-offs. Though pleased the nightmare was over, it still harboured a degree of sadness for me, as my
Dad passed away three weeks before the season ended and never got to see that his beloved Sky Blues had ended the infamous barren run.
So the tense two legged affair with Notts County carried particular importance for me. The 4-1 away win that clinched our play off final place tasted sweet after the most bitter saddest period of
my life. To sit on the coach and then view the Wembley fan park, seeing the Dad’s and Mum’s with their kids full of wonder in their eyes was both poignant and special. New kits mingled with old
retro styles, the history of a proud a club that had fallen from grace, documented before your eyes. You could sense the renewed belief, and nothing in football, maybe in life too, is more
powerful than belief.
Songs old and new rank out. Thirty seven thousand supporters for a deciding game in the fourth division iis unprecedented. The pubs and surrounds of Wembley were a sea of Sky Blue. There was a
sense of destiny in the air. A fambase that had saw its club plunge into decline and civil war now sang as one, the club is ours, it belongs to us and in our hearts.
I won’t do a match report. We’ve all watched the highlights numerous times, have memories to cherish. My most powerful is of a young boy, watching with wonder, holding his father’s hand as the
triumph unfolded. It took me back to my younger self, with my own Dad at Highfield Road for the first time. That for me is where I’m now at with football. The power of friends and family above
politics. As our day to remember at Wembley proved, it’s truly a wonderful thing. X