You’re right, people down south couldn’t really judge the effects of Sixfields – except by watching the unrelenting fury and resistance of our fans, which would have left them in no doubt. Equally, the best way I could judge the effects of their move to Coventry was through their reaction, which was barely visible and hardly seemed to last 5 minutes.
The 43,000 at Wembley was a brilliant day, and everyone was 100% behind the Sky Blues, but we all know we don’t have 43,000 committed fans. I’d say we have a hard core of less than 10,000 now, with probably another 25,000 who could be called Coventry City supporters to some degree or other. With 20,000 signing the Telegraph petition, there must be a lot of inflation through getting friends & family to sign etc., so let’s halve it for the sake of argument. All guesswork of course, but my conclusion is that only a small proportion of CCFC supporters bothered to sign the petition for SISU to sell up, which is no real surprise given the pointlessness of it. Whatever way you look at it, it’s not an impossible 270% of them, as your method would suggest.
It’s all so bloody tiresome. At the end of the day, you are morally outraged by the Wasps move, which you are entitled to be. I’m only a fraction as angry because of the pitiful lack of protest, and I can’t really knock people watching top-class sport in the city. I also place most of the blame in a different quarter. Either way, nothing we say makes a blind bit of difference.