The following article appeared in the programme for Racing Club Warwick v Barwell on 29th October 2005.
The afternoon of Bank Holiday Monday August 29th and while many of you will have enjoyed the delights of Racing Club’s away victory at Studley I was enjoying a family day out at the zoo! Families eh? Don’t you just love ‘em? Trouble is that they have to come first sometimes don’t they and, having had a little bit of trouble with a previous marriage due to my football devotion, I know where my priorities lie…well most of the time! We arrived back from a day of gawping at sleeping lions and baboons’ arses just in time for me to cash in on some of my new found brownie points. I had negotiated myself a trip to see Coventry City v. Southampton at the Sky Blue’s new home at the Ricoh Arena.
Regular readers of this column will recall that I have previously questioned the sanity of the Board of the Sky Blues in feeling the need to spend millions on a new stadium when Highfield Road seemed to be more than adequate for their needs. Perhaps I am simply not visionary enough. Anyway, the Ricoh Arena cuts a dash on the skyline just off of the M6 and is a fine addition to the football grounds of England. It holds 32,000 albeit that Coventry are apparently not permitted to sell all the seats for a few more weeks until the majority of visitors have started to become acquainted with their new surroundings and know where their seat is. Either that or the rumours of subsidence at one end are true! One other feature of the stadium on my visit was that it appeared to be a long way away from being actually finished. Pitch side everything looks rosy (although there is a noticeable absence of a big screen or a clock or anything to tell you which club’s stadium you are actually at) but outside there are still compounds containing portakabins and heavy machinery. I reckoned that it would be another month or two before it would be properly complete.
I have a consistent gripe about all new football grounds. When they are proposed, the proponents wax lyrical about the advantages of an out of town set up with good links to the motorway. Then when they are built you discover that you can’t actually drive to the new super stadium because there is only extremely limited parking. I have seen this feature before at Derby County and Leicester City. Now the Ricoh Arena joins the ranks of the difficult-to-get-to! You are encouraged to visit Coventry’s new ground via use of a park and ride scheme! Do they honestly believe that the average casual supporter (or away fan for that matter) is going to accept this? The official attendance on the night was 23,000 (exactly!) although I suspected that it was somewhat less than this. Outside with half an hour to kick-off, the queues at the turnstiles were ridiculous with most entrances being badly labelled and long-standing Sky Blue supporters grumbling about piss-ups and breweries. Inside the stadium looks neat and tidy but a bit soulless and clinical for my liking – very similar to Leicester City and Derby County – almost as if somebody had decided to market a build-your-own identikit stadium.
The match itself was something of a non event. Shown live on Sky, Coventry were ahead after six minutes through James Scowcroft only to throw their lead away on twelve minutes when Robert Page allowed Ricardo Fuller a free run on goal from a tight angle. His equalising goal was the best thing on the night. With a final score of one-apiece, it might just be a long hard season for the Sky Blues and, come to that, Southampton didn’t look much better. However it does make something of a nice change this season that none of the three sides relegated from the Premiership are in the top six after a dozen games.
Saturday September 3rd and, desperate for another sight of Coventry’s Robert Page and Richard Duffy (do you sense the irony here?), I head for the Millenium Stadium, Cardiff for the Wales v. England encounter. I’m fortunate to get a ticket for this World Cup Qualifier because I had failed to get one via the FA’s englandfans ballot. Thank goodness that one of my Welsh mates comes up trumps for me. The downside is that I find myself sitting in with the Wales supporters and “enjoy” first-hand the local brand of humour. As kick off time approaches I find that I cannot hear the English National Anthem (I must say that I always thought that it was the British National Anthem) due to a cacophony of shrieking and whistling. This is followed by the Welsh Anthem sung with great gusto and seems to go something like “Wales! Wales! Bloody great Wales! Bloody great fish in the sea!” (or something similar) as the massed ranks of England supporters amuse themselves by throwing dozens of inflatable sheep into the air (I can’t think why!).
There’s probably already been enough said and written about England’s tactics and formation on the day. Wales certainly made a match of it without really creating much bar John Hartson’s goal-bound header acrobatically saved by Paul Robinson. England scored early in the second half courtesy of a Joe Cole header and the remainder of the match became a tense affair as England defended stoutly if none too prettily. With half an hour to go, the priority had to be to win the match, a fact that the media at large seem to overlook. Win the match we did. England did not look like one of best sides in the world and certainly did not look like candidates for winning the World Cup next summer. Never mind! Every side is allowed “a bad day at the office” aren’t they? Normal service was sure to be resumed in Belfast against Northern Ireland…
Keep the faith!
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