[03 JAN 02] THE STUART LINNELL COLUMN

Memories Are Made Of This

The Midlands club, with the reputation for setting all the PR trends in its amazing and meteoric rise to the top level of English football under Jimmy Hill and Derrick Robbins, was about to soar to unprecedented heights. It was about to win the greatest knock-out competition in football – the FA Challenge Cup.

This weekend – weather and playing conditions permitting – the fates and the draw have conspired to pair the Sky Blues once again with the team they beat in that greatest of all Cup Finals – Tottenham Hotspur.

This time, they’ll meet in the 3rd Round at Highfield Road, Spurs coming to Coventry as Premiership big boys, City receiving them with inconsistent form putting doubts in many minds about the club’s prospects for swift promotion from Division One.

Among the spectators in what will surely be a capacity crowd, will be eleven names from that historic cup run fifteen years ago.

Steve Ogrizovic, Brian Borrows, Greg Downs, Brian Kilcline, Trevor Peake, Dave Bennett, Michael Gynn, Lloyd McGrath, Nick Pickering, Keith Houchen and Cyrille Regis are all scheduled to be there and if you want to give them the hero’s welcome they deserve, don’t be in your seat later than 2.45pm.

COVENTRY CITY FA CUP WINNING TEAM 1987

It was my privilege to lead the Mercia Sound commentary team through that famous Cup run and at the Final itself. Some cwn readers may remember that Mike Liggins - now a BBC TV reporter in East Anglia - was Mercia’s Sports Editor then and the main commentator at Wembley, Ian Woods - now Sports Editor at Sky News - was a pitch-side reporter, assisted by a young soccer enthusiast who was still in the infancy of his broadcasting career - Rob Gurney.

I was Mike Liggins’ co-commentator at Wembley, as I had been in the earlier rounds, and as Managing Director and Programme Controller of the radio station, I was as proud of my team that day as we all were of the Sky Blues.

Many people still pay us all the great compliment of playing the commemorative cassette recording of both the Final and the Semi-Final (which some say was an even better match) and our commentary of the Final can be heard here on cwn for those that want to wallow in the memory one more time.

Of the eleven that will be reunited again this time, Oggy and Trevor Peake are on the club’s current coaching staff, of course, and Benno, Brian Borrows and Michael Gynn are regular visitors to the ground, but this will be the first time in quite a while that we will have had the opportunity to salute them en mass.

Apart from the five just mentioned, I see Lloyd McGrath most days as he is a near neighbour of mine, and I was in Killer’s company of course a few weeks ago when I MC’d a sportsman’s night at the club when he and Neil Ruddock were the guest speakers.

I have crossed paths with Cyrille a few times in recent months - he is now an agent for one or two players and I have interviewed him for various stories featured on Sky Sports News.

Nick Pickering is someone I see from time to time, too, on the media circuit. When the City are not playing at home, I often report on Premiership matches for the Irish national commercial radio station Today FM, and Nick reports for a local radio station in his native North-East.

Among the notable names missing from the guest list, however, are the two guiding lights of that famous squad - George Curtis and John Sillett. I like to think of both Snoz and George as good personal friends and I think it’s a shame that we won’t see them take a bow too.

Why they are not there, I do not know. It may be that they were invited but had other commitments. Snoz, of course, is now one of Sven Goran Eriksson’s team of scouts, assessing players for possible England selection as well as checking on the form of our future international opponents.

Like Lloyd, George Curtis lives in my neck of the woods and I bumped into him for a chat only the other day.

I say I bumped into him – as I was walking my dog, George waved as he drove passed on the way to buying his morning newspaper, and then decided to turn back and pull in for a chat. The dog sat patiently with his legs crossed, while we chewed the fat over the state of the world, football and Coventry City FC.

For the record, George is firmly of the opinion that a dozen or so big clubs, led by Manchester United, will form a European League sooner rather than later, and that it will be a miracle if a good many clubs manage to avoid bankruptcy in the money-mad cycle that the game is locked into.

Hale and hearty in his retirement, George is still the larger than life character that became a legend in Sky Blues history and his only complaint was that the ground was too hard because of the frost for him to get out and play golf (he says, by the way, with a huge laugh, that he now plays off  “about 9” - so some things never change!).

David Phillips, Graham Rodger and Steve Sedgley are among others who will be missing from the parade of Cup hero’s, but they all have current commitments with other clubs.

It would be a fitting tribute to them all if Roland Nilsson’s class of 2002 provided the 3rd Round with one of the upsets of the day and turned over Glenn Hoddle’s Tottenham. The Spurs manager, however, will need no reminder of that ‘87 Final and he will look to the current form and League status of the two present day sides to deliver the predictable result.

Mind you, once he realises that Lloyd McGrath is around to stalk him through the afternoon once again … who knows?