Former Coventry City striker Cyrille Regis was the guest speaker at the third lunch of the year of the Coventry City Diamond Club.
The lunch attended by members and guests who packed out the Legends Lounge at the Ricoh Arena, first held a minute's silence to mark the sad loss of Committee Member Derrick Barnett. A number of the Diamond Club Committee attended his funeral and on behalf of the Diamond Club, a cheque has been given towards a charity of Derrick's family's choosing.
Happier news was the awarding of a Coventry Good Citizen award to Joe Elliott, who has done so much for the Diamond Club, as well as Coventry City and all the charities he is involved with.
Among the guests who enjoyed a splendid lunch in a Legends Lounge packed full of members and guests, were Cyrille Regis, Diamond Club President John Sillett, Associate Director Mark Georgevic, Tony & Jackie Clarke, Ron Farmer, Lol Harvey, Brian Nicholas and Ian Wallace. Another former player in Eddie Brown was too ill to attend and best wishes for a speedy recovery were sent to him.
Tony & Jackie Clarke were the first guest speakers. They are the parents of Jordan Clarke, who again has been called up for England U19's. 
Quite rightly they are very proud of their son stepping up into the City first team squad a year early. Jordan started at City in the Under 8's and is also an accomplished cricketer.
Tony paid tribute to Chris Coleman and Steve Harrison who had given him the chance of first team football as well as Steve Ogrizovic, Greg Rioch and Richard Stevens for the job they have done in helping Jordan and the other players to progress to the first team.
Coventry Music Historian Pete Chambers spoke briefly about the More Than Two Tone exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery and his new book about Coventry Market which will be released in November, before Mark Georgevic was introduced.
Mark, is a massive City supporter with a unquenchable thirst for knowledge about what his going on with his beloved Sky Blues, whom he first saw in 1970. He is an Associate Director at the club, a London Supporters Club member and runs Scrivens Opticians as well as a highly accomplished table tennis player.
Next up was John Sillett. The President of the club for Coventry City supporters with 50 more years service of watching the Sky Blues, spoke about his visit to see Jimmy Hill, who sadly is not in the best of health and spoke about Cyrille Regis being the best centre forward he ever worked with.
Ian Wallace making his second visit to the Diamond Club and said that he had four years at City and four at Nottingham Forest but had not been back to Nottingham whilst he comes down to Coventry seven or eight times a season and will be at the game against Middlesbrough on Saturday.
Coventry City is in Wallace's heart and he said that he had yet to see the City lose at the Ricoh.
Then came the main speaker. Many Diamond Club members had wanted Cyrille Regis as a guest speaker and today he was able to attend the lunch. A qualified electrician and now an agent, Cyrille played non-league for Mossley and Hayes before being signed to West Brom for £5,000 in 1977. He spoke about the team spirit under John Sillett, the social spirit and camaraderie, which helped City win the FA Cup in 1987.
Back then, most of the City players lived not far from each other and were always round one another's houses but today many players spend two hours travelling to training and shoot off afterwards so any team spirit has to be brought in the manager in the form of race days and golf days.
He felt that managers nowadays are under pressure to get results with many Championship managers only in a job for around eighteen months. This meant that they were often reluctant to bring in young players and like many on the room, he advocated City having a reserve team once again so the young players could have experience playing against older players.
What he called for was a reserve league with a large financial prize which meant that managers would place emphasis on reserve teams.
Cyrille received a big cheer and good applause from the City supporters and a highly enjoyable lunch ended with a raffle and bingo.