What’s it like to support a club like Coventry. « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager

By Tony Attwood

A while ago I did a piece about Mark McCammon, who had claimed that Gillingham FC had refused to treat an injury, docked his wages, and fined him for not turning up for training during heavy snow – basically because he was black.

A tribunal looked into the matter and found that the chairman had failed to hold a proper inquiry into the allegation and ruled that football club Gillingham ‘racially victimised’ former player Mark McCammon .   Mr McCammon’s lawyer, said, “Mr McCammon raised a legitimate complaint of race discrimination, which the tribunal found that [Gillingham chairman] Mr Scally had discounted from the start as being without merit…Mr Scally did not bother to investigate the complaint and ultimately dismissed him because of it. ”

So Mr Scally lost the case and the story told us all a lot about what it was like to support Gillingham.  Some of the commentaries that we got in relation to that report were… well, extraordinary.

But that’s old news; but in the discussion thereafter the point was raised that as a supporter of Arsenal I would know little of the case.  I pointed out that I was also a supporter of Torquay United, to which one correspondent replied “you can’t support two clubs”.  No discussion, no debate, no nothing.  Just a statement of an opinion as fact.

If you have never supported a lower league club you can’t imagine what it is like to support a team whose first aim is to get into the play offs to rise up to League One and then somehow hold onto that status.

But even I, going through the agonies of being a Torquay supporter find it hard to imagine what it is like to be an older generation Coventry supporter.  Torquay has never been up there at the top.  Coventry have, and now they are sinking fast.

For years they were one of the longest-serving members of division one.  A long way behind Arsenal of course who were elected to division 1 in 1919, but still – long serving compared to clubs like Tottenham and Man U who had been relegated in the later parts of the 20th century.

Coventry sank in 2001 and are now second bottom in the third division.  One more relegation and they will play Torquay next season, and as long as Arsenal are not at home on the same day, I will be there, at the away end to cheer on my second team.

Last time I looked, Coventry have not won a league game in six months, their finances are, as I pointed out in the last article, a horrible mess, and this has been their worst start to a season in almost a century. But 25 years ago oh how we loved them.  They won the FA Cup beating, oh, who was it, some team or other, err, oh yes, Tottenham in the Cup Final.  It was their one major honour.

The Ricoh Arena is an ok ground.  A good ground.  Before that Roger and I always used to go and watch the away game at Coventry since we lived in the Midlands. Now, the ground is two thirds empty. Last week they changed managers.

Now Coventry is a big fish in a little league but it is a league that is hard to get out of.

Nico Yennaris looks like he will be playing, judging by Arsenal.com comments.  So I have to change my team selected earlier this week which was

Martinez

Santos, Djourou,  Squillaci, Miquel

Coquelin, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Eisfeld

Chamakh, Watt, Arshavin

Coventry is just another team on the slide – a team that had it all and then lost it all – just like Portsmouth (who I also once saw play at Torquay’s ground when they were in the fourth division).

In football nothing can be taken for granted.