Members News: Hats Off To ‘Cov.Kid’ Cyrus Christie!
Cyrus in the Sky Blue
Top flight footballers on massive wages, sometimes with massive egos often get a bad press for losing track of their roots. We can confidently say that CCFPA member and popular former Sky Blue attacking full back Cyrus Christie, born and bred in Coventry, is made of different stuff.
The evidence is in a recent Facebook post from Marcus and Helena Billing about the tremendous kindness and concern shown by Cyrus recently about recent tribulations faced by another family close to them. The words of Marcus and accompanying photo say it all! We are in no way surprised and take our hats off to our ‘Cov Kid’ FP member.
Cyrus with the excited youngsters
“I must highlight a true act of kindness from one of our Coventry born footballers. A few months back one of Copsewood U12s girls footballers Alyshia lost her mum tragically to cancer. She had also unfortunately already lost her dad some years before her and her 22 year sister also faced uncertainty about where they were gonna live. Cyrus Christie, ex Coventry City and now a Fulham footballer heard about Alyshias plight and heard she was a massive Man Utd. fan.
Today [i.e.Last Saturday] he took Alyshia, my daughter and my wife to watch Fulham v Man utd at Craven Cottage, giving them all VIP treatment, getting them to meet Manchester Utd players and then arranging a lift home from London. They’ve had the best day and Alyshia has not stopped smiling! Premiership Footballers sometimes get bad press but this lad deserves huge credit for what he’s done. I have total respect to Cyrus Christie and I thank him so much“.
Thanks to the Billings to drawing our attention to Cyrus’ good works (though we are sure he wuld be embarassed by the publicity)!
We look forward to Cyrus coming back to see us at his home-town club whenever his playing commitments allow.
Cyrus in Sky Blue action
Cyrus began his career as a Sky Blue trainee in 2010 and quickly made his name in the Sky Blues first team squad as an attack minded full back. By the time he left the Ricoh at the end of the 2013-14 season for Derby County he had clocked up 119 appearances in the CCFC shirt in all competitions and scored three goals. Coincidentally that is the exact same number of appearances he made for the Rams (but two goals)!! Cyrus was the East Midland club’s ‘young player of the year’ in 2015-16 and quickly established himself as a key first-team member. In July 2017 Cyrus completed his transfer from Derby to north-eastern outfit Middlesbrough for a fee believed to be £2.5m with a 15% sell-on clause! He scored his first goal for the Tees-siders in a 1-1 draw with Fulham on 23 September 2017) and before moving to that very club in January 2018 having clocked up 26 appearances and one goal for the ‘Boro.
Cyrus Christie in RoI green
Since joining Fulham for an undisclosed fee Cyrus helped their successful promotion push last season and, at the time of writing, Cyrus has made 29 first team appearances for Fulham scoring once (though the Cottagers are struggling currently in the top flight).
Cyrus’ international career (he qualifies for Ireland through his Dublin-born grandmother) took off after moving to Derby. He won his first Ireland call-up for the UEFA Euro 2016 qualifier against Scotland and the friendly against the USA in November 2014 and currently holds 22 caps (2 goals).