The autumn Coventry City Diamond Club lunch was held today at The Ricoh Arena.
The occasion celebrated the 50th anniversary of Coventry City’s promotion to the old Division 1 and their first game in the top flight.
To mark the occasion the special guests for the day were four players of the side that won the old Division 2 championship under the management of Jimmy Hill, Dietmar Bruck, Ron Farmer, Bobby Gould and Mick Kearns.
Club historian and author Jim Brown was interviewed by Joe Elliott about his new book documenting the 1966/7 promotion-winning season. The book is due out in October.
After lunch, Joe spoke to Ron Farmer, who was voted by readers of the Coventry Telegraph as the all-time favourite City player and Mick Kearns.
Ron is one of four players who played for the club in all four divisions over a 10-year period. Mick Kearns is another player who played in all four leagues for Coventry City.
The Diamond Club members were pleased to hear that the £5000 target to buy and train a puppy as a guide dog for the blind has been reached. The puppy is to be named Jimmy Hill in honour of the former manager and chairman of the club. The puppy will be introduced to the fans on Saturday at the home game against Exeter.
During the lunch, clips from several games of the 1966/7 season were shown on the big screen and afterwards Joe spoke to former City stars Bobby Gould and Dietmar Bruck.
Dietmar admitted to having a lump in his throat while watching the clips during which the team had a run of 25 games unbeaten.
Bobby Gould spoke fondly of his time as a player at the club saying they were a team both on and off the pitch and it was the closeness that helped the side to achieve promotion.
Bobby recalled the game at Ipswich, played with snow all around the pitch. Before leaving the dressing room at Portman Road, Jimmy Hill said to Bobby, “you will score a hat trick today”. Bobby recalled looking up at the scoreboard after around 28 minutes to see the score line 0-3 with 9,9,9 the goal scorers shirt number, which of course was Bobby’s.
Booby said he was given his debut by Jimmy Hill after the prolific goal scorer George Hudson was injured and had to miss the game against Shrewsbury.
After the interviews, the raffle was drawn and fund raising round of bingo was played.
Date for your diary. The Christmas Diamond Club lunch will be on Thursday 7th December so keep an eye out for your invitation.