Plus, on and off I’m making a few comparisons with a ‘big’ club and Coventry seemed a decent choice… little club versus big club, impoverished club versus club with huge commercial potential, old ground, brand new ground, little squad, big squad, bottle of house white at Turf Moor £10, bottle of house white at the Ricoh £15. You get my drift. I didn’t dare look at the price for a bottle of Lanson.
If I wrote about Coventry Football Club, what would it be called I wonder… From Rags to Ricoh maybe? At Burnley Russians Don’t Land Here is my favourite at the moment. For a bit of appeal I’m hoping for either top six or a battle against relegation. So far so good for a top six, until Coventry and THAT penalty.
The rags to Ricoh angle is not without some foundation either. Since the move, gates have gone up the little gang of Coventry folk told me. Commercial interest has multiplied. But the picture they painted was one of an off-the-field management team led by Paul Fletcher that has galvanised the place and is truly inspirational. “Don’t you poach Fletch from us,” said one of them. Do please correct me if I’m wrong but there is a story that won’t go away that not that many years ago Fletch was available to come to Burnley. The words of Bob Lord to Steve Kindon nearly thirty years ago come to mind: “Come back to Burnley where we love you.”
Anyway, I’d asked to meet a “selection of diehards, fruitcakes and nutters.”
“Hello Dave,” a voice said and in walked Alastair Campbell by coincidence. And did you know that the surname Nutter has strong Blackburn links. The Royal Geographical Society recently did a survey of the origins of surnames and most Nutters come from Blackburn. Honest, you couldn’t make it up.
The group that met me were members of the Supporters Consultative Group. They don’t demand or even expect top two this season, top six maybe but not really expected. Burnley has an SCG but do we ever hear anything about it, who they are, what they contribute, any decisions they help make? This one at Coventry had a page in the programme for the Burnley game, with a group photograph and a summary of their achievements and I’ve seen stuff on the Coventry websites about them. People actually seem to know who they are. At the Turf it seems to run on MI5 principles.
Customer Services Manager Mark Davies organised things for us. (Ee by gum lad we didn’t ‘ave labels like this in the muddy 60s) “We can meet in the Bistro just inside the Atrium.”
Bloody hell, a bistro, that’s what we make gravy with in our house. “What’s an atrium?” I asked Mrs T. A gin and tonic for her, and a half a lager and lime for me, sat sitting on the soft upholstery, was over £6. Wheeltapper’s and Shunter’s Club, this ain’t. I would have had a brandy to get over the shock, but didn’t fancy taking out another bank loan. But that cash I guess goes to the stadium owners not the football club. Life is financially complicated these days in these new clinical state-of-the-art stadiums. Once inside though they still haven’t solved the problem of the bitter wind going straight up yer trouser leg. Freezing… I’d have had a brandy but didn’t fancy taking out a loan… ah, done that gag before haven’t I?
However, the game: I interviewed director Ray Griffiths a few weeks back for the book. We talked about top two, top six, and the luck of a penalty that can mean the difference between success and failure. How ironic it is that two penalties have since taken points away from us in the last two games. The penalty at Ipswich was from a corner that never was. And the penalty at Coventry was quite simply the most unwarranted, scandalous decision I’ve witnessed since the-ball-hit-Alex-Elder’s-arm occasion in 1960.
Mrs T and me sat next to Steve from the Coventry SCG on one side of us, and two scouts, one from Hull and one from Derby on the other. The latter two were busy making notes and drawing pictures and little plans to beat Burnley. Steve picked out Jones as our threat in the first half. Both scouts saw the penalty decision and muttered, “never, I don’t believe it.” My chin hit the floor; I sat and muttered words like outrageous, appalling, bloody ridiculous… and worse. Adebola went down like one of those chimneys Fred Dibnah used to demolish in slow motion on the telly, but a penalty – never in a million years. McGreal took the ball at about waist high; ball and McGreal’s foot behind it hit Adebola in the chest. It was momentum and nothing more. Then on MOTD on telly on Saturday night you see Ferdinand nearly decapitate Micah Richards with a face high tackle in the penalty area while he has a clear run on goal, and nothing given.
In a half that Burnley dominated and impressed the Coventry crowd, (we talked to them at half time), suddenly it’s 0 – 1 down. And within ten minutes Gifton is denied a pen at the other end when he is blatantly held back. You know this is not going to end well.
So we lost 0 – 1 and when one goal decides the result, and that goal is based on a decision so rank bad that it defies any description of bad on a scale of really, really bad, you come home just angry and resentful. Not for a minute will I say we would have won this game. It had ‘draw’ written all over it. But a referee’s decision immediately took us out of the top six and if the slide takes us into mid table mediocrity or bottom half obscurity, then I will look at this day, this game; this penalty moment and say this is where it began. And it began because of a referee. The scapegoat M. Thorpe is hereon in, hereby, thereupon, officially shamed.
I suppose you have, in fairness, to add to that, that if we’d played all day we’d never have scored in spite of 12 shots on target and 17 in all.
In the supporter’s area upstairs afterwards we waited to see Adebola arrive for his MOTM presentation. The MC began by talking about “the rather dubious penalty award” to much mirth and laughter and hmmmms and yehs. Adebola kind of smiled and shifted his feet in an embarrassed knowing kind of way, but made the right noise by saying he had the bruise to show that it was. They all knew they had been gifted the win. All of them were impressed by Burnley in the first half, but what’s the good of being impressive if you don’t take chances and put the ball away. We don’t have a poacher do we, a classic instinctive poacher who has that instinct, that speed of thought, in fact doesn’t need to think most of the time, a poacher who is just there at the right time at the right moment. In the 50s a Peter McKay, in the 60s a Willie Irvine, not long ago an Andy Payton. Somebody you’d bet the ranch would get you 20+ goals a season on a regular basis.
We came out for the second half a different team, just not at the races, creating little, substitutions being made with not much more than ten minutes for any of them to make an impact. Manager Adams stands impassively on the touchline, Cotterill forever shouts, hurls instructions, makes notes, cajoles, points, waves, beckons… but all the yelling in the world can’t compete with a penalty decision so awful it will irritate me for the rest of the season, especially if we miss the playoffs by just one point. And that won’t be the first time, will it?
