As I'm still gutted after today's horror performance, I need answers. Fortunately, the ever-reliable "Jaron Dictionary of Football" is the place to find them. This is what it says about Coventry City ...
** Begin Entry ************
COVENTRY CITY Football Club
Founded: 1883, reformed 1898
Home Ground: Highfield Road
Nickname: Sky Blues
Honours History: FA Cup Winners 1987 and er, um,
er, um ...
Coventry City are, at time of writing at least, an English Premier League Football Team. Although the quality of the team's players is questionable, the club's annual escapes from relegation over the past 30 years have since achieved legendary status, ( qv. "1991-2 Season : Finale").
Aside from making relegation contests more interesting, Coventry City are the football equivalent of the appendix, no-one is quite certain of the reason behind their existence. However a recent study by football researchers has revealed that Coventry do in fact serve a useful purpose - namely to thwart the title aspirations of teams who are unworthy of winning the League Championship.
For example, in the fixture with Liverpool at Anfield in April 1997, an abjectly rubbish Coventry side beat the technically superior home team 2-1. This result called into question the claim that Liverpool were the best team in England, especially as Coventry had been steam-rollered at Old Trafford the month before.
Coventry's long serving lady-killer goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic also provides an excellent example of a player who returns to haunt his old club, ( qv. "The Ex-Club Snub Irony Principle" ).
** End Entry ************
Suddenly everything makes sense ...
P.S. Thanks go to the IRC commentary folks, I would have thanked you after the game, but when Dublin scored I accidently hit the Control-Alt-Delete keys several times.
--
Dr Jaron Collis, Dept. of Computer Science, Queen's University
of Belfast
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EMail : j.collis@qub.ac.uk
URL : http://www.cs.qub.ac.uk/~J.Collis/