The Coventry City years: 1980-1982

I’m breaking with tradition and moving away from individual heroes to remember past seasons from when I began watching the Sky Blues. ITV4’s ‘Big Match Revisited’ currently serves up a Saturday and Sunday dose of classic action in the days when football on TV was the exception and not the rule. The club we follow up and down the country doesn’t even feature on the ‘Sky Text’ index pages any more, we’re a miniature column in The Times’ ‘Game’ supplement every Monday morning and there’s a half hour wait on Sky Sports News for a five second clip of our goal action...but it never used to be like this.

 

It all started so well – for me anyway – 1980/81. Paul Dyson’s header past Ray Clemence in front of 31,000 at Highfield Road took the two points against champions Liverpool.  A crushing 3-1 win over Arsenal in August 1980 with a majestic body swerve past Pat Jennings and finish from Gary Gillespie was followed a few weeks later by Everton winning 5-0 at City. Surely that wasn’t meant to happen, I didn’t think teams lost by that score at home – I was only six at the time.

 

Tommy English scored my first live hat-trick in a 4-1 defeat of Leicester City, I’d see many more until the turn of the millennium until they began to dry up, we must have saved a fortune in match balls. At this point the image of Wembley reared its head with a terrific League Cup run which ended at West Ham in the cruellest of fashions – the last minute winner. A 1-1 draw with Cambridge in round four had seen my first night game sat in the front row of the West Stand. I missed the 5-0 thumping of Watford in the quarter-final and the semi-final epic against the Hammers but, never mind, I thought, we’ll get another opportunity next year.

 

Three points for a win arrived in 1981/82 along with our all-seater stadium as City beat Manchester United on the opening day. Two weeks later and Leeds ripped out the Sky Blue Stand seats as a once great force in English football struggled to cope with their decline – we’ve never ripped out the seats although we’ve felt like it many times. We knocked Swansea off top spot with a 3-1 win in October 1981 while it took us until December to win an away game, 2-1 at Spurs. A week later and I viewed the orange ball for the first time at Highfield Road - Manchester City with Ray Ranson, Bobby McDonald and Tommy Hutchison in their side conquered the frozen conditions with a 1-0 win in the only game I’ve ever left early – well I had forgotten my gloves.

 

There was no League Cup glory this time around, Everton's Mick Ferguson saw to that as his towering header in front of his once adoring West Terrace sent us heading for the exits in shock. The immutable law of the ex I’d come across for the first time, how could he do it to us? After Christmas Notts County thrashed us 5-1 on a school night as the brilliant Mercia Sound sport team reported the bad news – and they had three disallowed.

Martin Singleton, fresh out of the youth team, scored on his debut past Everton’s Neville Southall before we turned on the style to wallop Sunderland 6-1, inspired by Gerry Francis in midfield. Then came two hat-tricks in four days through Mark Hateley in the 5-5 epic draw at Southampton before Steve ‘The Cannonball Kid’ Whitton smashed in a treble at Maine Road.

We had a quarter-final run in the FA Cup until Big Cyrille sent us packing 2-0 on a sodden day at the Hawthorns after we’d thrashed Roy Barry’s Oxford United 4-0 in the previous round.

West Brom 2 City 0 FA Cup quarter-final March 1982

January 1982's 'Goal of the Month' was Peter Bodak’s solo effort at Maine Road in the fourth round, definitely worthy of another watch, he had so much ability it was frightening, what a shame he fell out with Gordon Milne.

'Bodak's the name, scoring's my game'

A semi-final and a quarter-final, these cup runs were becoming the norm, I’d surely look forward to many more in seasons to come....

Next week...1982/83 and 1983/84

English lesson as City turn on the style

Roxy Music’s ‘Jealous Guy’ topped the UK music charts in March 1981. The following Saturday envious glances were cast from Leicester as Coventry’s Tommy English netted the Sky Blues’ only top flight hat-trick against the Filbert Street side. In a resounding 4-1 victory, the City team, with the exception of Gerry Daly and Gary Gillespie, all graduated through the club’s youth system. Les Sealey, Danny Thomas, Brian Roberts, Andy Blair, Paul Dyson, Peter Bodak, Garry Thompson, English, Gary Bannister and substitute Steve Whitton joined the club from school. Waiting in the wings were Steve Jacobs, David Barnes and Ray Gooding, all part of the same youth squad.

English, at just 17, scored on his home debut against Bristol City in August 1979. A graduate of the youth team with Mark Hateley and Garry Thompson, many of his 22 goals were scored against the leading sides away from home. The City Ground, Baseball Ground, White Hart Lane, Portman Road, Hawthorns and Old Trafford all displayed the front man on their revolutionary electronic scoreboards. At the start of the eighties Forest were European Cup winners, Ipswich UEFA Cup winners and Spurs FA Cup holders. With our current struggles away from home how we could benefit from his eye for goal.

The emergence of Steve Whitton and arrival of Dave Sexton as manager signalled the end of his Sky Blues’ career after 76 first-team appearances. England Under-21 coach Sexton preferred Hateley and Thompson as his strikers, both of whom he had selected for the national side. After three years alongside Gary Lineker and Alan Smith at Leicester he moved on to Plymouth, Rochdale and Colchester. By the time of our FA Cup triumph Hateley lined up for Arsene Wenger’s Monaco, Thompson had just been relegated with Villa and English had moved into non-league football at the age of 26.

Three points for a win was introduced at the beginning of season 1981/82. Topping the charts when he left City were ‘Musical Youth’ with their ‘Pass the Dutchie’ classic. By the summer of 1983 only Steve Jacobs and Brian Roberts remained from the ‘City Youth’ who took to the field on that March day in 1981. Tommy English had done all his work at Highfield Road prior to his 21^st birthday.  His final goal for Coventry sealed his hat-trick as it flashed past Leicester ‘keeper Mark Wallington. After witnessing that performance City supporters and the man himself would have expected many more.