Sideways Sammy

My abiding memory of this season will be the period following the equaliser in the first leg. A balmy May Friday evening in a packed out CBS Arena, the place a cacophony of noise and a sea of sky blue, amid it all a woman a few rows in front of me, who must have been in her eighties, on her feet, swaying to the Ephron Mason-Clark song. Go to football regularly for long enough and you’ll know that it these moments, where you can utterly lose yourself in the joy of an atmosphere, are what matter more than the results themselves.

Perhaps because it’s still doesn’t feel very far removed from the days where Coventry City’s decline looked to be playing out in ever-decreasing circles – the Sixfields, League Two, and Forest Green defeats of it all – or that this play-off campaign had seemed so likely just a few short months ago, but I find it hard to be truly devastated at this defeat over two legs. To have been in a position to be the matter of a few decisive moments away from a fifth Wembley trip in eight years should be as much a source of pride as it is gutting to have suffered such a gut-wrenching blow in the final minute of extra-time.

In contrast to the last play-off campaign, there is a sense that this team still has room to grow. Winning promotion wasn’t anywhere near as important as it was two years ago, when it would have gone a long way to keeping hold of some of our best players and maybe having had a half-decent shot of surviving in the top-flight. While one or two may leave for better things over the summer, it looks to be a case of adding from a position of strength, rather than the complete rebuild that followed that penalty defeat to Luton Town.

Moreover, this season feels like it has been yet another big step forward for this football club. Sell-outs of the CBS Arena are now common-place, the atmosphere is regularly incredible, and the wider match-going experience has been made more convenient and enjoyable thanks to a series of quality of life improvements the club has made – maybe sort out the wi-fi, though. There was a prolonged spell where it was hard to tell whether Coventry had a football club, moving through the city last Friday, it was impossible to ignore.

This, right now, is the dream Coventry City fans had during that interminable decline. There were rare glimmers of what it might look and feel like – from that Johnstone’s Paint Trophy misfire against Crewe Alexandra, the Ricoh return game against Gillingham, to beating Oxford United in front of 45,000 Sky Blues fans at Wembley in that first taste of success – but it didn’t really feel attainable, and especially not in the sustained manner the last three seasons have shown.

While the bones can be picked out of the two play-off matches, as well as the months beforehand where Coventry City, in retrospect, could probably have got themselves into fourth-place and benefitted from a home second-leg, the feeling, even a matter of hours after a last-minute defeat, is that there is far more to look forward to than to regret. It may be true that a team cannot pick its moment to make the Premier League or else it will slip away from them, there are some compelling reasons to believe Coventry get themselves in a similar, or better, position next year, where those tight margins may just fall in their favour.

There is a line to be drawn between knowing that there is always another season and taking opportunities that come your way, but it is apparent that Coventry City have been doing things over the past few years that have strengthened their position to garner further chances to reach the top-flight. From the increasing demand for tickets, the improved commercial relationships, to having built a squad without a single loan player or anyone important heading out of contract that has just made the top six, the least that can be said about this football club is that it is in rude health.

Even if this proves to be the high water mark, what cannot be taken away are moments like last Friday, where there was that real buzz around the place from well before kick-off and right up until the final whistle, or the utter heart-pounding two hours of the away leg where this team did all it could to defy what felt a sense of gravity pulling them away from their goal.

This is what keeps you going to football games, the glory is one thing, actually feeling that can make you delirious, a nervous wreck, on fire with anger, and proud all at the same time, that is something you don’t get in any normal walk of life. Personally, I wouldn’t trade a place in Premier League to have felt what I felt during the course of those two legs.