After each matchday programme, we will be publishing the 'From the Boardroom' article on our website. For Saturday's opening day match against Scunthorpe United, Coventry City Chief Executive Dave Boddy wrote the column and his article is published below:
"Welcome back to the Ricoh Arena for the start of our 18-19 League One campaign and I am sure if you are anything like me, you will be looking forward to it with excitement and optimism.
Today we welcome our visitors, and everybody connected with Scunthorpe United FC and hope you have an enjoyable day with us. It’s ironic that our last game in League One prior to relegation in 2016-17 was also against “The Irons”.
Today we celebrate the life of Ernie Hunt, who sadly passed away during the summer. He was a true Sky Blues legend, and we’re pleased to welcome his family and former teammates here as our guests today.
It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since that fantastic and memorable day at Wembley back on May Bank Holiday Monday, when we secured promotion back to League One at the first attempt. On the back of that, the abiding memory that I will treasure were the scenes on the Open Top bus parade throughout the streets of Coventry and to St. Mary’s Guildhall in the City Centre, for the Civic Reception that His Worship the Mayor, Cllr John Blundell bestowed us. To see of over 50,000 people lining the streets to celebrate with us, and to see what our success meant to the people of Coventry was amazing. To me this underlines the value of the football club at the heart of the community and how important both are for each other.
The summer has been a busy one in terms of player movement both in and out, which are documented elsewhere in the programme. One of the busiest people has been our new Head of Recruitment, Chris Badlan who joined us in early May, replacing Tommy Widdrington who left to take up a similar post at Bristol Rovers. Chris, who has previously held Recruitment posts at Wolves and Norwich City, brings to us a wealth of knowledge and contacts in areas of the player recruitment that we were not previously utilising.
Supporters have backed our success at Wembley by buying Season Tickets in great numbers and as I wrote these notes on Wednesday, the number stood at 6,550. This is the largest number of Season Ticket sales in recent seasons. Equally the business community is backing the Club with an upturn in commercial income, including the sale of over 20 Seasonal boxes. Your support is vital to the Club and to Mark Robins and the players, to enable us to continually develop the exciting squad of players that we have at the Club and see where this exciting journey takes us…
PUSB
Dave
