The Copa Ibiza
On this day (12th July) in 2005 the Sky Blues were on a Spanish island kicking off their pre-season preparations by entering the annual ‘Copa Ibiza‘, this year being fought between three English teams and one local, San Antoni. This was to be the club’s inaugural season at the Ricoh – and building delays meant they did not play their first fixture there until the 20th August.
Gary McSheffrey in Action
The Sky Blues took on Huddersfield Town in their semi-final on this day and, thanks to a goal from Gary McSheffrey (now a CCFPA member) two minutes before the break they got themselves into a Final!
Seemingly, the 1-0 win over the Terriers was pretty humdrum and didn’t give much to go on to predict how City would fare in the Championship that season.
The Tournament Programme
City’s ‘gaffer’, former Sky Blue player (and CCFPA member) Micky Adams who had taken over in January 2005 did a pretty good job as the club finished eighth at the end of 2005-06!
Two trialist goalkeepers featured (Chris Day and Mark Paston), one in each half, but neither had much to do to impress and the other trialist Paul Watson did OK at full back. None of them were taken on and Micky relied on Stephen Bywater (and later Hungarian Márton Fülöp– who became a CCFPA member before his untimely death in 2015) to fill the No.1 jersey.
Ticket for the game
There were around 300 members of the Sky Blue Army amongst the crowd of 700 and they gave a loud cheer to the 43rd minute goal from ‘Sheffers’, the ‘Cov.Kid’.
The Sky Blues put out the following players for the semi-final (Substitutes in brackets and CCFPA members underlined):-
Sky Blue Manager Micky
Chris Day (Mark Paston), Paul Watson, Marcus Hall (Richard Duffy), Richard Shaw, Robert Page (Andrew Whing), Stephen Hughes(Neil Wood), James Scowcroft (Liam Davis), Michael Doyle (Kevin Thornton), ‘Dele Adebola (Graham Barratt), Gary McSheffrey (Isaac Osbourne) and Claus Bech Jorgensen (Stuart Webb)
BBC CWR’s Clive Eakin, who was in Ibiza for the station, reported that the Sky Blue fans were already troubled by the intimidatory behaviour in the town’s bar area of the much larger number of ‘supporters’ of Queen’s Park Rangers, one of the rival teams in the tournament. Click here for Clive’s brief observations on the game)
CCFC 2005-06
The worry was not misplaced as City met the London Rangers in the final and there was trouble in the stands between fans (which delayed the game at one point). Q.P.R., sadly, won the Final game 3-2. The Sky Blues got their revenge on the Hoops by beating them in that first ever game at the Ricoh by 3-0 (and also doing the double by getting a 1-0 win in London)! City only won one of their remaining five pre-season games, two games in Ireland and fixtures at Rushden & Diamonds, Walsall and Port Vale.
Thanks to CCFPA’s Mike Young for sourcing the images.
Share Post