HOMES UNDER THE HAMMER
Robins: Brighton’s stadium saga is like ours.. but they can be our inspiration
MARK ROBINS will draw inspiration from Brighton’s shiny Amex Stadium as proof that potless Coventry can escape from Skid Row.
When the Sky Blues descend on Sussex-by-the-sea today, they will be visiting an empire 14 years in the making after the good guys had the last laugh over shysters.
Once upon a begging bowl, the Seagulls were homeless, penniless and forced to ground-share in another county, miles beyond their constituency, after being royally shafted.
Albion have taken in the view from all four divisions over the last 20 years – and now it’s Coventry’s turn to wear the T-shirt and send postcards from the wilderness.
But when the teams meet in the FA Cup fifth round today, Robins hopes Brighton’s rebirth will serve as a model of blue-sky thinking.
Coventry, whose squad is bursting with youthful promise amid the muck and nettles of League Two, have already knocked out Premier League Stoke in the third round.
And manager Robins can see the gulf between Brighton’s current affluence and the parallel universe in which they were turfed out of the Goldstone Ground, with nowhere to go, in 1997 – because his club endured a year of vagrancy at Northampton.
He said: “Their story is set against different circumstances to ours but they have shown what is possible. They spent 10 years looking for a stadium – they were at the Withdean for a long time, and they had a nomadic existence before that groundsharing with Gillingham, so there was a lot of travel involved for the supporters.
“But the club survived, then thrived. Now they are in the Premier League and it’s really an inspirational story for those who aspire to follow them.”
Robins won the Cup in 1990 with Manchester United after famously scoring the third-round winner at Nottingham Forest which allegedly saved Sir Alex Ferguson’s job (below). He prefers to consider the nostalgic value of a Cup run in the year Cyrille Regis, part of the Sky Blues side that won at Wembley in 1987, died suddenly.
“That goal I scored is such a long time ago that it’s vague in my memory – only joking – but most of my players here weren’t even born then,” said Robins.
“They know that I won the Cup as a player because I tell them quite often. But for us to have a good run this year is important for many reasons, not least because of what happened to Big Cyrille. If our results so far can be construed as a tribute to him, count me in.
“We won a trophy at Wembley last year (the Checkatrade Trophy), which put a respectable gloss on a difficult season, but those two events were 30 years apart and our successes have been few and far between.
“But hopefully, we’ll soon be in a position to help the club to change that.”