The Opponent: Coventry City
In cultural terms, Coventry could be described as the Dresden of the West Midlands. The city’s landscape remains scarred by the mass bombings of WWII, carried out in revenge for the allied firebombing of the similarly medieval German city (as recorded in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five). Coventry was decimated by the attacks and much of its heritage was wiped out in a single night. Consequently, much of it had to be rebuilt in 70s-style modernist concrete, turning much of it into a Ballardian horrorshow, complete with criss-cross inner ring-road where cars take a daily death race and subway underpasses connect isolated grass roundabouts, some of the only green inner-city space, floating within the orbiting traffic belt.
There are many reasons to dislike Coventry: it has a regular listing in Crap Towns, an annual compendium of the worst places to live in the UK; the people are depressed in every sense because career opportunities are declining day-by-day to the extent that a nervy Midlands Today presenter could quite easily sigh deeply into their chest, fold up their papers and blow their brains out on live TV, rather than have to report another downturn in the local economy. The city also has one of the highest uptakes of food parcels from the Trussell Trust because people cannot get by on their benefits alone which threatens to further increase the number of homeless people living in the subways and under the notorious/iconic ring road. So severe is the uptake of food parcels in Coventry that the city was the subject of report by the BBC and a lengthy article by the Orwell Prize-winning Guardian journalist, Amelia Gentleman. There is also the high crime rate, ranging from the serious to the ridiculous, such as the lady who famously put a cat into a wheelie-bin.
Where the opposition gather – http://www.skybluestalk.co.uk/threads/44286-TomorrowLast 6 – LWLLDL (15th in League 1 on 49 points)
They have served us both – Dave Bamber, Trevor Benjamin, Leon Clarke, Terry Gibson, Paul Heald, Lukas Jutkiewicz, Brian Kilcline, Kevin MacDonald, Jamie McMaster, Lee Middleton, Graham Oakey, Ted Peers, Abdul Said, Arthur Beadsworth, John Stephens, Paul Trollope, Dave Bennett, Jake Findlay, Ady Williams, Ben Woolhouse, Derek Hall, Richard Key, Ernie Hunt, Kyle Lightbourne, Tyrell Bedford, Brian Borrows, Tim Flowers, Gary Marshall, Ken McPherson, Alan Moore, Fred Hawley, Johnnie Jackson, Ken Keyworth, Dennis Wise, Danny Ward, Tope Obadeyi, Frank Peters, John Smith, Miles Storey, Adam Willis, Roy Wegerle, David Thompson, Jack Starsmore, Albert Powell, Lilian Nalis, Barry Lowes, Terry Merriman.
The Odds – Coventry 6/4 Draw 12/5 Swindon 19/10 If he starts, get on Troy at 33/1 to open the scoring for Town, I can feel it in my water.
The Son Says – A simple and easy 2-1 victory. I expected no less.
The Prediction – We will make the nearly 2/1 odds look silly and crush the homeless club 1-0, TAH with a towering header in the last minute, Mark Cooper runs across the pitch with a jubilant Louis Thompson in hot pursuit. 4’444 in attendance with 999 from Swindon.
And Finally – Coventry is well known for the legendary 11th century exploits of Lady Godiva who, according to legend, rode through the city naked on horseback in protest at high taxes being levied on the city folk by her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia. According to the legend the residents of the city were commanded to look away as she rode, but one man did not and was allegedly struck blind. He became known as Peeping Tom thus originating a new idiom, or metonym, in English.
