TRIALS OF A SKY BLUES FAN

One Saturday in May 2004 I took my great nephew Elliott, and his friend James, who live in Balsall Common, for their first trip to Highfield Road. City didn’t win, but they had a great time and their names were read out over the tannoy at half time. We sat comfortably in the Sky Blue stand, on a lovely sunny day and ate ice cream. As far removed from that cold and misty December day in 1951 as you could get.  I only hope the boys will remember their first visit and the memory of it will stay with them over the years, the way mine has.

Number two is by Competitions Manager, Robin Ogleby

Robin Ogleby - Sky Blue since 1966

My first season following the Sky Blues was 1996-67, England had won the World Cup and the City won the 2nd Division Championship, gaining entry to the top division in England for the first time.

 
ROBIN & GEORGE OGLEBY - THE NEXT SKY BLUES MANAGER ?

My dad took me to my first game on January 3rd 1967 and I saw the Sky Blues take on the mighty Newcastle United in the 3rd round of the FA Cup. The atmosphere at Highfield Road that day was more than an eight year old could take in. There was a crowd of over 35,000 and boys had to take wooden boxes to stand on if they wanted  to see anything of the pitch at all, rather than the back of old men’s ears. Fortunately my dad seemed to know one of the stewards in the Sky Blue Stand (which these days is segregated for the away fans) and he kindly let us in to stand in one of the aisles.

A number of years later I took my own son to his first game at Highfield Road. The match was a 0-0 bore draw against Bradford, the atmosphere had evaporated, and the City were finally relegated. I was thoroughly depressed, but George thought the game was great. I remember looking at his face when he entered the ground for the first time and he saw the enormity of it all and the greenness of the pitch. I wondered if his expression was the same as mine was all those years ago against Newcastle.

He absolutely loved the game even though it was obvious to everyone else that each player on pitch couldn’t wait for it all to be over and for their summer holidays to start. George was hooked. Although my lad was born and raised in Croydon he is a Sky Blue through and through – and is contemptuous of the all those ‘glory hunter’ boys in his class at school who support Arsenal one week and United the next. 

That first game against Newcastle was special. Seven goals and we only just lost. I can still recall one player in blue lying on the ground (Ian Gibson I think) all alone clutching his head after having missed a clear chance to put us ahead, all the energy draining out of him. We had battled hard but, good as we were, we were not quite good enough. This theme was to recur time and again throughout the years. We always fought well against the big guys but never quite came out on top (although twenty years later for one glorious and unbelievable moment, this pattern would be reversed in extra time at Wembley when the final goal in a five goal thriller would be scored by us).

In my first Latin lesson at Bablake the teacher said that if we never remembered a single thing he was going to teach us we would always remember how to decline the verb ‘porto’. And although my mind is blank in terms of many of those games and teams I have seen over the years, I still somehow manage to decline the names of the eleven players who lost to Newcastle but then went on to win the league in 1967 – Glazier; Bruck; Kearns; Farmer; Curtis; Clements; Key; Machin; Gould; Gibson and Rees. Probably not a particularly tall one amongst them but as they looked out of the poster on my bedroom wall, they were all giants. I wrote a letter and sent it to Highfield Road asking for each player’s autograph and details of where they lived. A few weeks later I received a single page through the post with all the signatures printed on – and it was difficult to make out which was which. But I was happy. 

I became a goalkeeper at school and quickly learned to march nervously back and forth between the goal line and penalty spot just like Bill Glazier. And I never wore any gloves. My dad said he used to be schoolmates at Mosely Road juniors with Reg Matthews, another goalkeeper in the old black and white days when we were in one of the Third Divisions. Matthews also played for England though. Glazier would have done, but he broke his leg instead. 

The next Christmas my brother and I got Sky Blue football kits for presents and we wore them every day during the holidays. We later had subbuteo sets and while other kids started to collect ‘second’ teams like Arsenal and Liverpool, I painstakingly sat down and painted thin black and green stripes on my second set – this being the colour of the City’s best ever away kit. Some of my mates discovered that all the City players lived in Allesley Park and so we all marched off to get some autographs one Sunday afternoon. The only one we got belonged to George Curtis. I remember being the only one with the courage to knock on his door and ask his wife ‘is George in?’ Later on, coincidentally, my family would move house to the same road as the Iron Man and we would get Christmas cards every year from his wife. The next time I actually spoke to him though was many years later at a CCLSC function in a pub in London after he had become the manager of the team that won the FA Cup. I don’t think he remembered that I had woken him from his Sunday afternoon nap to ask for his autograph twenty years previously.   

My first inclination that football can be bad as well as good came later in 1967 that year when my dad took me to see Fulham in the First Division. We lost 3-0 on a cold November afternoon and I remember thinking that as long as I would live I would always consider this as being the worst game I have ever seen. I was a grumpy old man at the age of nine. Afterwards I waited outside the players’ entrance for an eternity, determined to get an autograph and turn the day into a success. I eventually got debutante and keeper of our dreams Ernie Hannigan to sign my match day programme. On the way back though, I noticed that the autograph was a bit faint and so I wrote over it to make it look better. But it just turned out a mess. Fortunately we found out that Hannigan had moved in at the back of the fields we played football in and worked out that if we were to tease his daughter long enough she would run home to get her dad to sort us out. But I don’t think he ever came. Years later I read in the Sun that Hannigan had become a window cleaner in Australia.   

My friends and I also later realised that all the City players really lived in Finham (which was two long bus rides away from where we lived). We eventually tracked down Ernie Hunt’s house and dragged him to his front door wearing just a bath robe. He seemed happy enough to sign our autograph books – but we had less luck at the nearby homes of Noel Cantwell and Neil Martin. Why were so many footballers in those days called ‘Ernie’?  To complete the set, I caught up with Ernie Machin in the run up to a big cup game against Liverpool walking up King Richard Street on his way to the dressing rooms – presumably he had just got off the bus? I didn’t have any money to get into the game myself but chatting to Machin on that street corner helped me soak up some of the atmosphere. I now wonder, many years on, however, what I would say if my own 10 year old lad turned round and told me that he had spent the afternoon lurking round street corners many miles from home? 

My father’s family had (before he was born) moved down from Sunderland in the 1920s looking for work. He therefore used City’s promotion to the big time as an opportunity to trace his roots and track down some great aunts. I used the long trip up to the north east to try out the rattle I had eventually finished making in woodwork lessons at school. It certainly did the trick – the rattle created a hugely annoying noise and sometimes managed to clock rival Sunderland fans on the head accidentally (as we all stood together on the terraces in those far off seat-free windswept happy days). The collision of wood to head also gave me the opportunity to remind one home fan standing next to me that we had just taken their top striker (Neil Martin) off their hands and so we must have been the bigger club. Fortunately Martin’s Finham neighbour Ernie Hunt spared my blushes by scoring a last gasp equaliser.     

Back at Highfield Road, Hunt continued to excite and entertain us. My dad had discovered that there was a little slither of a terrace along the front of the posh Main Stand where youngsters could get a full view of the pitch and get up very close to the action. We would be on the corner with the Spion Kop and marvel at how Ernie would always manage to take the ball to the corner flag and shield it with his back to the action, standing there for ages until some oaf of a defender would get so annoyed and hack the ball out for a corner. Ernie would then turn round and wink at us kids. Job done. I’m sure I later spotted a close-up picture of us all in a match day programme standing there marveling. And I also certainly recall, before we turned all posh and started standing in front of the Main Stand, an absolutely terrific picture on the cover of the Spurs programe in 1969 of tiny Ian Gibson saluting the massed Spion Kop crowd after scoring a stunner against Newcastle two weeks before. There we are for all to see for eternity, my dad, my brother and me, cheering ecstatically as another little City star had turned over one of the big boys. Fortunately, over the years brief moments like this seem to stand out more clearly than the many disappointments. 

I think though that the player whose performances gave me the most consistent pleasure at Highfield Road was Tommy Hutchison. He patrolled his wing tirelessly,  was never afraid to take on anyone, and was the ideal City player because he always seemed happier to fight for lost causes than to give up. His work rate and dedication was tremendous but later I was to discover that his commitment to the well being of the team didn’t stop with the final whistle. By this stage I had become a careworn twenty-something with a bigger interest in lager than football. I discovered with some amusement that all the City players no longer lived in either Allesley Park or Finham – but my local pub, the Toll Gate. Every Saturday night, towards the end of his time at Highfield Road, ‘Hutch’ would bring his team mates (Gary Gillespie and Ray Gooding seemed to be regulars) to sit quietly in the corner of the room and take abuse from the locals after each defeat. On one occasion he seemed particularly keen to introduce City’s brand new continental signing to the traditions of the English post-match warm down. Roger van Gool was delighted to be able to demonstrate just how keen he was to fit in to this new culture. Before long he was walking through the crowded pub balancing a pint of beer on his head, wearing a huge smile which seemed to hide the fact that he hadn’t realised he had been set up by his new colleagues. For an encore he drank the beer down in one and then spent some time standing on his head in the middle of the room with everyone looking on in amazement. Spurs might have bought Ossie Ardiles rather than Van Gool – but in seven years time at Wembley we would all know which side had the better team. 

Regardless of results and lack of success over the years (other than 1967 and 1987) City have generally managed to unearth characters with the wit and grit to take on the big boys – from Ian Gibson through to Willie Carr, Ernie Hunt, Tommy Hutchison, Ian Wallace, Steve Hunt, Danny Thomas, Dave Bennett, Lloyd McGrath, David Speedie, Kevin Gallacher, Peter Ndlovu and Dion Dublin. The club is now easily at its lowest point since I started supporting them but I look at my lad George’s face when we travel to and from the matches and it looks as if the magic of excitement and expectation is still there somewhere. He is already building up a list of his own heroes, David Thompson, Gary McAllister, Mo Konjic and Gary McSheffrey. He has also come face to face with Dave Bennett (down the Earlsdon Cottage after the Bradford game) and Micky Gynn, has been taken aback that at 8 years of age he was almost the same size as David Thompson, and has been patted on the head by Big Mo’s plaster cast. On another occasion I was pleased to be able to persuade Mo to ring George at home on my mobile to ask him what position he played in the school team (centre back, just like his hero). This Christmas we went to Gillingham and saw what must have been one of the worst City performances of all time – but on the way back rather than turn round and say ‘Dad, I think it’s about time that I got myself a new club before it’s too late – after all I have never lived anywhere apart from Croydon’, he sat on the train thinking about that amazing goal Richard Shaw had scored at the previous game in Gillingham seven months earlier.

Robin Ogleby joined CCLSC in 1986 and lives in Croydon.
 

Peter Reynolds - Sky Blue since 1982

My first ever game was City v Wolves in the third round of the F.A. Cup. I was 12 at the time. I can’t remember who scored for City that day, but Wayne Clark popped one in from close range for Wolves; at the heart of the West end where I sat that day.

The following season my Grandmother handed me £30 on my birthday (quite handy for the start of the season, being August 4^th), and I cycled up to Highfield Road to the old ticket office in the main stand,  which resembled the inside of a stuffy old bank. Having chosen my seat in the then Sky Blue Stand (block A, now an away supporters area), I waited in anticipation for my season ticket.

As an enthusiastic young teenager I cycled to each home game from Nuneaton. I filled a scrapbook with stats on every game, and a rating for each player. I even wrote a letter to then Manager,  Bobby Gould,  to tell him about it. Imagine my delight when he took the trouble to write back, including a team poster signed by all the players together with an invitation to watch training and meet the City heroes !

A friend gave me a lift to the Sky Blue Connexion that day. We we’re told that Mr Gould ‘was not here’ and to go to Highfield Road instead. We were taken up the tunnel to watch training from the sidelines. No Bobby, and few players were interested in signing autographs. Training that day was led by then assistant manager Don Mackay.  Imagine my disappointment when I returned home to find that Bobby had been sacked that morning ! City lost the following day 2-1 at home to West Ham.

I bought a season ticket the following year, but that was the last one for few years. I’d turned 16, the price had doubled, and I had no way to pay with school out, and college in.

A year later an advert for turnstile operators appeared in the Evening Telegraph. I duly applied, and attended an interview in the old oak panelled board room. My first game was on the away turnstile on the Old Kop for the season opener against Arsenal. There was a hurricane blowing around the UK that night, and perhaps that added something to rejuvenated Cyrille’s scorcher which set up a 2-1 win in what was to become ‘the year that was’

As a club employee I had no trouble getting  a £6 stand ticket for Wembley. And what a day that was. The staff were all housed in block G, and the famous Houchen header was followed by the scorer himself running over towards us to celebrate his goal.

Cup final day didn’t get off to the best of starts. Dad was to take me from Nuneaton down to Wembley, and sit outside with my brother and listen to the game on the radio. We made it no further than Rugby before the car broke down – low oil pressure. Dad had to be towed back down and I flagged a lift there and back.

I continued as a turnstile operator the following season; though it wasn’t to last. I enjoyed the game too much and took advantage of my free pass to watch and attended fewer and fewer matches for work duty. No surprise when no pass arrived the following season !

The intervening years saw some highs and lows. Perhaps the game I remember most was the 5-4 Littlewoods Cup win over Forest. Quite a nerve jangler – going 4-0 up, 4-4 at the break, and the winner in the second half. Kevin Gallacher had a superb game – my favourite ever Sky Blue along with Brian Borrows.

After the pain of relegation my fledging computer business indulged in a spot of sponsorship. Our choice of players to sponsor seemed to be as effective as our choice of left backs – first of all Marcus Hall then Dean Gordon. We sponsored the league cup match against Rushden with 50 guests to dinner, and a great moment when I went to meet the captains in the centre circle just before kick off (and City won 8-0 too !). We also later sponsored the Wimbledon and Gillingham fixtures.

The Wimbledon game is particularly memorable as I proposed to the now Mrs Reynolds on one knee just outside the boardroom door. We announced our engagement to the assembled guests and Directors much to the delight of everyone in the room. Mike McGinnity proposed a toast, and later gave us use of his Bentley for a trip to the Hilton !

We married in June of 2003 with a small service back in the boardroom. The club were superb and made our day really special. 

Last season we stretched to an executive box; one of those on stilts with a balcony between the main stand and West end, an unsettling experience on a windy day, ‘what wobbles doesn’t fall over’. The business has closed now though so it’s back to the terraces.

At the time of writing, all is not well at Highfield Road. The football is generally uninspiring, debts are high, the Chairman appears to be at war with his own fans. Our big hope is the new stadium. It’s only half built, but already looks special. Let’s hope it inspires the Sky Blues on to better things and allows me to fill in a few more chapters of my “Trial of a Sky Blues fan.”

Highfield Road, however, will always hold a special place in my heart for the many reasons I have described. 

Peter Reynolds edits the CCLSC website and lives in Telford