Matchday Memories: On This Day 2017 – See Sky Blue George’s Goal Get The Gas Gone
On this day (March 25th) in 2017 the ‘second coming’ to CCFC of current Sky Blue ‘gaffer’ Mark Robins at the beginning this same month appeared to be starting to turn things round. Tony Mowbray was in the Ricoh hot seat at the start of the 2016-17 Laegue One season but stood down at the end of September. Technical Director Mark Venus stood in as caretaker until Russell Slade was appointed just before Xmas. Under his tenure things went from bad to worse and by the time he was sacked City had won only one and lost eight of their last thirteen league games and were rooted at the bottom end of the table!
After three defeats in his first three games in charge Mark had got his first Sky Blue win in midweek at the Ricoh with the Sky Blues beating Port Vale 2-1 with goals from Kyel Reid (37 mins) and Kwame Thomas (40), enough to get all three points. Today’s opponents at the Ricoh were Bristol Rovers and, again, a one goal margin would do the trick. City’s 1-0 win over the Gas in front of 11,946 fans (including a large contingent of over 4,000 from Bristol), was thanks to a strike from young Welsh centre-forward George Thomas just ten minutes from the final whistle. The win set us up nicely for the upcoming Checkatrade Trophy Final at Wembley in a week’s time.
The win sadly didn’t lift the Sky Blues out of bottom place but gave the team a modicum more of self respect and paved the way for the wonderful 2-1 Wembley win over Oxford United the following week in the EFL (Checkatrade) Trophy in front of nearly 75,000 fans (43,269 from Coventry). George and Gael scored the Sky Blues goals.