Wednesday marked the 20th anniversary of the Sky Blues first home game at the Coventry Building Society Arena (then known as the Ricoh, of course). We won 3-0 against QPR who, coincidentally, are the opposition at the CBS this Saturday.
That anniversary gives us the chance to celebrate our home. The CBS is a 29,109-seater stadium as well as the other facilities which include a 6,000 square metres (65,000 sq ft) exhibition hall, hotel and casino. The site is also home to Arena Park Shopping Centre, which has the dubious privilege of containing of the country's largest Tesco Extra hypermarkets.
Confusingly, the official capacity is closer to 33,000 but this figure includes the additional seats that are not usually included in these figures, such as the toilet seats in the changing rooms. However, the record attendance was 32,128 for England vs Italy in the Arnold Clark Cup back in February 2023 (presumably because fans didn't need segregating). The highest attendance for a City game was 31,452 earlier this year when we beat Middlesbrough 2-0. In contrast our record attendance at our spiritual home Highfield Road was 51,455 when we played Wolves who we were battling for the Division 2 Championship in April 1967. Somewhere, I still have a "Goodbye Highfield Road" DVD of the final game when we beat Derby 6-2. Who else remembers happy days standing on the Spion Kop?
The arena was built on the site of the Foleshill gasworks and is, of course, on Jimmy Hill Way, celebrating the man who put City on the footballing map and took us into the First Division before taking up the reins at Match of the Day.
Of course, while it might have been the Sky Blues' home for 20 years, we have only actually played there for 17 seasons because of our hateful exoduses to Northampton and Birmingham.
At the time of its opening, its main claim to fame was that it was the first cashless stadium in the UK, with customers using a prepay smartcard system in the ground's bars and shops.
Something I didn't remember was that the Council originally put in a bid to be the replacement for the old Wembley with a new 90,000 all seater stadium. Not only did that (obviously) never happen but the original plans were for a 45,000 seater stadium to be ready in August 2001.
The original design for the arena was for a state-of-the-art stadium with a retractable roof and a pitch that could slide out to reveal a hard floor for concerts. After our relegation from the Premiership in May 2001, a number of contractor/financier withdrawals, and England's bid to host the 2006 World Cup ending in failure, the plans were significantly downsized to reflect new realities. By the summer of 2002 there were plans for a more basic 32,500-seat stadium in its place.
More importantly, let's hope we can celebrate the Arena's birthday by thumping QPR this Saturday afternoon.
