Coventry 4 Gillingham 1

I chose the coldest day of the year to go up to Coventry to watch the Sky Blues. First playing second, the big game of the day in League One. Beautiful crisp day, but boy it was cold.

I first wandered around the City a bit between rail and bust stations.

 The Cathedral precinct looked particularly good (if you could photograph the right angles to avoid the renovation work). They have reduced the price of entrance for the new cathedral so that instead of C an exorbitant entry fee which no-one was paying to enter, now there is a more modest fee which no-one is paying. So at least they have cut down on wear and tear so there is a constantly empty building in the hearty of the city.

 

So onto the match. Bu great good fortune while I was queuing for a ticket a bloke came up saying he had one spare if anyone only wanted one seat. ME! So for half price I got in. And had a nice group of people to chat with. Really nice. But boy it was cold.

But the amazing thing was that second placed City won. And were four up at half-time thanks to a Murphy hat-trick. And looked well worth the win too. Once we scored one they were totally outclassed, just by the pace of our strike force. It was terrific stuff. But so cold.

Murphy taking the congratulations

So a brilliant day out. Only blot was half-time. Because of this being our biggest crowd of the season, and the policy of not opening the stands behind the goals to improve the atmosphere, the two stands open were crammed. And at half-time the crush for the loos was immense. No chance of getting both a drink and a pee.

All I had to do was to get the bus back from the out of town stadium to the bus station. There is a train station at the the ground. But its closed on match days. Obviously. 15,000 crowd and a one carriage train carrying 60 passengers. But that's fine because of the shuttle buses. And the shuttle buses were... non-existent. Just one single decker bus every 20 minutes. First two were full. So an hour waiting in the bitter cold (did I mention how cold it was?) to get back to civilization.

Coventry are great to watch, but will think twice before going again. However good the football team, still one of the country's shittest councils.