EAGER HYAM AIMS TO GO HIGHER AND HIGHER...
DOM Hyam is struggling to keep his eyes off the star-studded line-up of names at the top of the League One table.
The Coventry centre-back has anchored a Sky Blues defence all the way to the cusp of a Championship return, with Mark Robins’ side sitting joint-top of the League One table ahead of the weekend’s trip to Rochdale.
Next up for the sleeping giants is a clash against the team they had shared the summit with, as they prepare to welcome Rotherham to St Andrew’s on Tuesday night.
And even though the 24-year-old believes that his side should be concentrating only on what is in front of them, he can’t help but revel in the calibre of a title race that is shaping up. “Rotherham have come out of nowhere,” said Hyam before the weekend fixtures. “They were floating around tenth and now they’re top.
“It keeps on changing. Wycombe had such a strong start to the season and now it looks like they’re coming off it a tiny bit, but they’ve still got enough points to fall back on.
“There are some really big teams up there – Portsmouth, Sunderland. They’re sort of similar in that they’ve played at a higher level and they’ve got aspirations to be in the Championship and above.
“It just makes for a good competition because we all want to be higher than this level. No disrespect, but the clubs are bigger than that.
“It makes it a bit more interesting when the big clubs are right up there. You can’t help thinking about it but we try and focus on ourselves.”
And while they had put together a ten-game unbeaten run in the league ahead of the weekend, the Sky Blues’ results against their fellow promotion rivals have somewhat let them down so far this campaign.
“That’s one thing we took out of the first part of the season - we drew too many games,” continued Hyam.
“It’s good to get a point when you’re not playing well, but there were plenty of opportunities – especially away from home – in the first part of the season where we were unlucky or a bit naïve. “Last-minute goals and equalisers. Sunderland, Peterborough and Oxford all equalised in the last minute against us and there’s six points in itself. It’s just about changing those draws into wins.”
Coventry made history in 2018 when they broke their 51-year wait for promotion, beating Exeter 3-1 in the League Two play-off final at Wembley.
But Hyam, who started at the heart of City’s back four that day, believes that was only the beginning of the Sky Blues revival. “It’s at least a Championship club,” he added. “If you look at the fanbase, we’re selling out most, if not all, allocations we’re getting away from home.
“We took 6,000 or 7,000 fans to MK Dons earlier in the year. It just shows you the size of the club and at Wembley we took about 44,000.
“It’s never been a League Two club, I don’t think it’s even a League One club. It’s only a matter of time before the club is back in the Championship at least. “That support is great, especially toward the last five minutes. If the game’s tight, we’ve always got the fans who are a sort of 12th man.”