The Coventry City Former Players Association’s ‘special guest’ for CCFC’s vital home game against Barnsley next Saturday will be Tom English.
Tom will be at the Sky Blues clash with ‘the Tykes’ at the Ricoh on February 25th and this is his first visit as a member of the Association.
He will be visiting all the corporate lounges at the Arena before the game, be introduced to the crowd at half-time, and pay a visit to the G-Casino under the stadium after the game for a chat with CCFPA’s Billy Bell on the stage of Lady Gs .
Tom will be remembered by older Sky Blues’ fans as a young apprentice, an England Youth international, who burst onto the scene in 1979 as an 18 year old forward and in three seasons in the first team forged a reputation as a stylish and effective foil to first Mick Ferguson, Tommy Hutchison and Barry Powell and later to the likes of Steve Hunt, Gerry Daly and Garry Thompson. Tom and his younger brother Tony came to Coventry as trainees but it was Tom who made the biggest mark debuting in the first game of the 1979-80 Division One season and eventually making 76 appearances scoring a very respectable 22 goals. Tom was less effective under Dave Sexton in 1981-82 as he had been under previous manager Gordon Milne and only managing 8 first team appearances (without scoring) in his last season and was effectively swapped for Leicester City’s Jim Melrose in September 1982.
Tom stayed a while with the Filbert Street outfit (scoring four times in his 50 first team appearances) and then became a bit of a wandering star, assisting Rochdale, Plymouth Argyle and Colchester United in 1984 and spending time in Australia playing for Canberra the following year. Returning to Colchester for a last hurrah at the top level Tom managed 22 goals in 60 appearances for the Layer Road team (in two spells) before dropping into non-League action with (amongst others) Wealdstone, Bishop Stortford, Crawley Town, Wivenhoe Town, Sudbury Town andHarwich & Parkestone (and a spell in Hong Kong playing for Happy Valley).
We welcome Tom to the Association and to the Ricoh!