For the second time in five days, we’ve got an away day. Football fans are often on about how great football over Christmas is, and rightly so, I would argue it’s one of the best things we’ve got in English football. But what we don’t say enough, is that Easter football is just as good. No doubt about it.
So after last Thursday’s trip to the Priestfield Stadium to see Gillingham take on MK Dons in League One, I’m heading a little bit further north to see Coventry City host Yeovil Town. Obviously, as a Yeovil fan, I see them quite a bit, and they’ve made up a large proportion of the Away Days articles that I’ve written in the last two and a half years. The last time I saw them was for the 1-0 win over Colchester a fortnight ago, the first time I’d seen them win in almost two years.
Incredibly, this was Yeovil’s first game since that win. The Good Friday game with Forest Green was postponed because of a waterlogged pitch, while last Saturday’s match with Accrington Stanley was off because of international call-ups. Yes, you read that right. International call-ups postponed a match between Accrington Stanley and Yeovil. All of them were for Yeovil.
Shaun Donnellan and Corey Whelan both appeared for the Republic of Ireland U21s, with Donnellan actually scoring a 96th minute winner against Azerbaijan. Rhys Browne appeared, and scored, for Antigua and Barbuda, while Bevis Mugabi made his first two appearances for Uganda. You didn’t really need to know that, I and doubt you wanted to. But there you are.
This isn’t my first trip to the Ricoh Arena, but I haven’t gone there recently. My last trip was in 2012 for some of the Olympics football, and before that it was to see them take on Chelsea in the FA Cup quarter-final in 2009. Didier Drogba score that day. How Chelsea could do with that Didier Drogba now. Probably Frank Lampard and John Terry from then as well, and while we’re at it, maybe Michael Ballack and Ashley Cole too. Ricardo Quaresma set up Alex for the second goal, but I doubt he’s a player they’d have back.
Anyway, back to the here and now. The ticket cost me £15 as a student. I know this is getting boring, but I’m about to have another rant about ticket prices, so you might want to skip this paragraph. I paid £7 to get into Gillingham on Thursday and that was League One football, so why is it twice as much for League Two? Coventry is a big place, there are a lot of young people who live there. Why can’t you drop prices and get more through the turnstiles? It’s just ridiculous. Right, that’ll do for now.
As for refreshments, I picked up a diet coke and Chicken Balti pie for £5.50, with by football ground standards, isn’t too bad. It was certainly worth it as well, as the pie was excellent, and one of the better ones I have had so far this season. As for the music, it was quite good, and actually got a little bit better as the day went on, and I’ll go into that later. If I’ve got one criticism though, you can’t just start Sweet Caroline at the chorus, you’ve got to have the whole song.
Bizarrely, a bit before kick off, we were joined in the away end by a Plymouth Argyle fan. This seemed a little odd, but soon made sense when we found out their match away at Scunthorpe United had been called off due to a waterlogged pitch. Fair play to the lad. We needed more people through the doors as well, as despite nearly 9,000 people being in attendance, with the Ricoh Arena being such a big ground, it looked so empty. We were in the South Stand behind one goal, and at the other end, the North Stand was totally empty.
https://talkthesports.wordpress.com/2018/04/03/away-days-coventry-city-v-yeovil-town/