AN OPEN LETTER TO
Nicholas Carter, Arena Coventry Limited
Tim Fisher, Coventry City Football Club
Peter Knatchbull-Hugessen, Alan Edward Higgs Charity
Councillor Ann Lucas, Coventry City Council
Joy Seppala, Sisu Capital
Coventry City London Supporters’ Club has always fostered a beneficial relationship with Coventry City Football Club. It has provided financial support whenever practicable through social events, match-ball sponsorships and contributions to Save the Academy. It has members throughout the United Kingdom and, under its Sky Blues International wing, in forty-two other countries.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As long-distance supporters, we are particularly conscious of the implications of the football club potential move to relocate to Northampton for three years, in doing so abandoning its stage in Coventry. And we are increasingly aware of the growing ridicule being aimed at a city in which two major community assets continue to be at loggerheads.
With fewer than four weeks until the first home game, it is scandalous that there is no sign of any satisfactory resolution to this dispute. Wherever they may live, it is outrageous that members of the public - who contribute so much towards the football club and towards the Ricoh Arena - have been kept so ill-informed.
We maintain that the football club must continue to play, even as a temporary measure, within the city of Coventry – effectively at the Ricoh Arena. The five of you - along with your colleagues - must redouble your efforts to negotiate a compromise to ensure that this can happen. Therefore, the recent AGM of our organisation resolved as follows:
1) to publish an open letter via the Coventry Telegraph calling on CCFC to ensure that all home matches in the 2013/14 season take place in Coventry;
2) CCLSC calls upon its members not to buy season tickets if the club plays “home matches” outside Coventry;
3) CCLSC will maintain no joint activity with CCFC (such as match ball sponsorship, player of the year award, etc), as we have in the past, whilst the club is based outside Coventry. Essentially, this equates to a suspension of the practical relationship between CCFC and CCLSC if the club leaves Coventry;
4) CCLSC also encourages members to boycott club merchandise whilst the club is playing “home” games outside Coventry;
5) CCLSC will not be offering our travel arrangement service for “home matches”, as we have in the past, if these are to be staged outside Coventry ; and
6) CCLSC will be writing to our membership to communicate the above.
We will continue to call on our members to support the football team on the pitch, and are explicitly taking no opinion on the question of the club’s ownership situation. Support for this position was unanimous at the AGM.
Make no mistake. Failure to achieve such a compromise could prove a calamity - and well beyond the local community.
Colin Henderson, Deputy Chairman
Ian Davidson, Secretary to Sky Blues International
9th July 2013