I lived in Warwickshire during the late noughties in a place called Leamington Spa. You may have been there and it is a nice place. Sitting on the town’s green by the River Leamington with an ice cream or cold beer is not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

There is not much going on football-wise, but this town is desperately popular with Birmingham and London-bound commuters and students at the nearby University of Warwick.

There is not much of a Spa left now, but the town is pleasant enough to spend a day walking around especially on one of these baking July days that we are enjoying at this present time.

It seems ages ago now but for someone like me, who did not have a car, and not too much money, it was totally impractical to get to Portman Road to watch many home games, so I became a Midlands watcher of Town.

Travel West Midlands got a small fortune out of me, and I spent a lot of time on buses to get to a random football game, but when the fixtures came out every June, I took a close interest when Coventry played Town. A trip to the Ricoh Arena was the local trip that could not be missed, so I could watch Ipswich play. This trip had to begin but from memory, these Saturdays had a shockingly large amount of expectation, and promise but not much in terms of end product.

Coventry’s Ricoh Arena would be similar to Ipswich playing their games near to the Copdock Tesco. An unwelcome obstacle to get out of the city, that was the inspiration for The Specials' Ghost Town in 1981, but everything seemed to be one big hassle about the Ricoh.

You could see what the planners were thinking when they thought that this Arena would be the ultimate sporting destination where fans could come on a range of buses and trains to see their beloved Sky Blues play. It did not quite work out like that. The promised railway station has still not been built. Buses are not especially direct taking a circular trip around some north Coventry housing estates, and if you are unlucky, you spend a lot of time admiring the A444 tarmac as you queue out of the stadium.

On every occasion when I went to a Town game at the Ricoh, it was never remotely a sell-out. I would spend most of the 90 minutes freezing, because Coventry v Ipswich games seemed to take place exclusively on cold Saturday afternoons in the pre-Christmas shopping season, and apologising to the hapless friend that I had dragged out of their Soccer Saturday comfort sofa zone with the promise of hysterically exciting Championship football.

On virtually all of those occasions, we were watching rubbish. In fact, it was total rubbish, and a dreadful advert for second tier football. I would head home on the Travel West Midlands utterly depressed about the state of Town at that present time and that I had wasted a whole Saturday afternoon, which I could never retrieve for the future. The friend would vow to have his phone off the hook whenever I suggested another trip to a Town game. To be honest, I could not really blame him.

However, I honestly believed that there were similarities between Coventry and Town in terms of club and the fans. I worked with a number of Coventry fans who would wax lyrical about City’s FA Cup triumph in 1987, whilst I gave my second hand lecture about the 1978 FA Cup final.

Both clubs have a county-wide fanbase. Ipswich is the team for Suffolk and Coventry is the team for Warwickshire, with aspirations to return to the Premiership, and both clubs are not in the fashionable bracket of support (such as those fans who profess their undying love for Manchester United which has existed for them since 2006).

Off the field troubles were a regular feature of Coventry’s seasons around five years ago. I would regularly come in to work on a Monday morning, with Coventry fans wondering whether their club was going to the dogs, and pondering whether they should tear up their season tickets.

Town were going through the Magilton and early Keane years. I was becoming thankful for small mercies, but Sky Blue managers seem to change at a whim. The days of Dave Bennett, Cyrille Regis, or even Micky Ginn were becoming uncomfortably distant memories. Time was marching on for me too, but I still keep an eye on the Coventry scores, wondering how my Cov friends are feeling at this present time.

And as this hot summer continues, I am pretty sure that these friends are feeling pretty low. Now, at the time of writing, it appears that Coventry City games will be played at Northampton’s Sixfields Stadium next season.

You may think that this has nothing of any relevance to a Town fan, but imagine if there was a similar row surrounding Portman Road and Town were forced to play their games at Colchester United or Southend United’s Roots Hall. There would be an outcry. Groundshare has happened before across the UK but surely nothing quite like what is happening between the West Midlands and East Midlands at this present time.

Head around the Internet, and you can follow the twisted and sad story of Coventry City Football Club, which is still a great club in 2013. Various club figures are pleading in the papers that the club’s temporary move down the A45 is the only way to ensure the future of Coventry City Football Club. Local MPs are spitting fury and writing to Ministers. The fans are in uproar, with loose threats flying around the local media from a whole range of interested bodies.

It is a dreadful mess, and as always in these situations, it is the fans that ultimately suffer from all this fire and brimstone. Peaceful protests are being planned around the various towns but the threats are starting to fire about. You can’t help but wonder what sort of club will be in place by the time of the season start on 3rd August. I do not want to worry my Cov friends but the 2013/14 seems fairly bleak.

I will be keeping a watchful eye on this mess and maybe send the odd supportive text to the relevant friends. I guess that everything is relative in football and Town are not in a comparative state as Coventry, but it does shake you up when you start to hear of clubs of a similar status to Town, hitting football's buffers at some speed.

When I hear about current complaints that we are not signing as much as needed this summer, I feel that as a Town fan, I am pretty lucky at this present time.

Tractorog added 00:13 - Jul 14 Good blog. I lived in Northamptonshire in the late 90s and have many friends who are Cov fans who are spitting feathers over the demise of their club. Before they were relegated weren't they the longest serving Championship side...? And now it is us. The main problem stemmed from over ambition in believing the Ricoh would ever be filled. Be thankful that our hubris only extended to the North and South stands and Matteo Serini.... Truth be told though, if we spend much longer in the doldrums of the Championship how will our average gates support the level of spend needed to stay in the division? We need a decent season and soon please.

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Len_Brennan added 00:17 - Jul 14 Good blog Tim, point well made & well written. Most football fans don't want to consider the financial realities facing their club & certainly don't want to see CEOs, Directors & Managers acting with prudence. There are quite a few clubs playing with fire at the moment & are Portsmouths or Coventrys waiting to happen. Seeing recently promoted clubs like Swansea & Southampton, both spending £12m or thereabouts on a single player, who must be on good contracts with high wages, has to be a huge risk. Blackburn & QPR are recent casualities, who's owners don't inspire confidence of being in it for the longterm regardless of success - what happens then? We may not have made the type of signings that make us promotion favourites this season: but we have a smart manager and a shrewd owner who are (now) making sensible decisions to keep our club moving in the right direction.

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BillBlue added 11:09 - Jul 14 A good blog Tim and appropriately written at this time. Well done and thanks.
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NoCanariesAllowed added 21:28 - Jul 15 Nice blog, Tim, and as a Warwickshire-based Town fan myself, I can share much of your experience! It was quite sad to lose that nearby trip to Coventry, but at least that last one (the 95th minute 3-2 win) was a damn good one. Frankly I think the situation at that club is absolutely ludicrous and this groundshare is pretty much a no-win for every party involved - the Cov fans lose out because their club moves, the club loses out because even fewer fans will pay to turn up, ACL lose out on having Coventry as tenants of the Ricoh, Northampton lose out from having their pitch played on twice as much as most clubs and are now facing a possible lawsuit from ACL... The thing I understand least is why Coventry's owners are shunning the short-term security of the rent-free year at the Ricoh and are talking about building a new ground. It's utterly logic-defying to overcome your inability to afford playing at one stadium by shelling out to build another one!!

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DurhamTownFan added 11:48 - Jul 16 Very poingnant and well-written. I fear the Coventry example might be seen more and more as the general economic downturn bites. It seems you just can't make money from a football club these days, with most of the successful clubs only hanging in there on huge budgets. Look at Arsenal just clinging on to fourth place each year, despite their large turnover. Coventry's situation mirrors almost exactly, that seen at Darlington. Darlo built a 20,000 seater stadium (yes, TWENTY) despite being in league two, and now are struggling in the conference. They don't own their stadium either. These days it really can happen to anyone and we've got to thank Marcus Evans for keeping us competitive, even if he may have lost interest in making huge investments recently (judging by Chopra, Priskin and Bullard, who can blame him?)

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murraybrunning added 13:11 - Jul 16 Coventry are a warning to many clubs, they have gone from being one of the longest serving clubs in the top tier, to the longest serving clubs in the Championship, to eventual demotion to the 3rd tier and I can see them continue to struggle in the future. I think we have the right manager in place at the moment to make a challenge next season and a good spine to our team as well. I hope I am right because I've had about as much mediocrity as I can take over the last 6 or 7 years!

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AlwaysBlue added 22:27 - Jul 19 Excellent blog. My family has links to the Leamington area so your points on there brought back many childhood memories. There are many comparisons to make between Coventry and Ipswich although I hope our current board are shrewd enough to not enter such a poor business deal as Coventry did when they moved to the Ricoh. Its a sad demise for the great footballing city of Coventry, and a ground share with Northampton is poor solution to their problems. I hope for the sake of their fans the ultimate outcome is good.

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ManningtreeBlue99 added 21:36 - Jul 20 Frankly, I am not bothered whether I am going to watch Ipswich vs Manchester United or Ipswich vs Accrington Stanley. So long as there is a club called Ipswich Town, I will support them. No matter what league or financial difficulty.
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