Big week of downs and ups for Max
MAX Biamou had an interesting week. Despite receiving a red card on Saturday for a bad challenge against Accrington on Saturday he was able to play in the EFL Trophy game against Southampton Under-21s on Tuesday evening at St Andrew’s.
The three-game suspension for the red card was temporarily forgotten as the French striker scored a hat-trick to virtually guarantee the Sky Blues’ place in the knockout stages of the competition. Let’s hope those stages generate bigger crowds for a competition that is really struggling to attract the fans.
The crowd at St Andrew’s on a bitterly cold Tuesday was only 375, the smallest for a competitive ‘home’ game since 1900, although I did find a crowd of 306 at Highfield Road in November 1940 for a War League game which was, strictly speaking, not a competitive game.
Max is the first Coventry City player to score a hat-trick in a cup competition since Gary McSheffrey netted three in a 8-0 home victory over Rushden & Diamonds in the League Cup in 2002-03.
OLDER City fans may remember Robert (Bob) Dobbing, a full-back who was a regular in the reserve team between 1967-69 but never quite made the first team. Sunderland-born Dobbing joined City straight from school and played in the same youth team as Willie Carr, Jeff Blockley and Trevor Gould.
He emigrated to Australia in the 1970s and lives in Melbourne. He still has family in the North East and they have been in touch with the bad news that Robert has prostate cancer. He had an operation this week and everybody is hoping that he has a successful outcome.
Coventry City Former Players Association have sourced a 1960s-style City shirt for him and that is winging its way to him.