Friendlies: Season 7 - the one with the Burger Boys...

You can't always get what you want, yeah

You can't always get what you want, ooh yeah, child

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes you just might find

You just might find

You get what you need, ah yeah

Ah, baby, woah

You Can't Always Get What You Want - The Rolling Stones

So, yet another opening pre-season game which fails to live up to the anticipation and expectation that have built up over the weeks leading up to it.

No fault of the club at all, I hasten to add. No, the problem lies with me and me alone. But every year it's the same; I never seem to learn. My expectation, my anticipation. No one else's.

After the third place last season, the excitement had inevitably built up over the close season. Whilst Alex Rae and his players I'm sure will remain calm about it all, that's not quite so easy for many supporters who witnessed success on a level not seen at the club for a good 40 years or more.

Against opposition a league below us and with stunning performances against Ealing, Jersey, Doncaster amongst others still fresh in the memory, in my head I'd got us down for a comfortable win - in truth a try-fest in which Cov illustrated just how wide the gap is between a fully professional club, the 13th best club side in the country, and one that was just three months ago playing National League Two (West).

It's not something I'm proud to admit to; but it is as it is. It's something akin to what many football supporters feel when their side is drawn against a team from a lower league in the FA Cup ( I can well recall Woking's defeat of West Brom in 1991!).

It was always likely to be a tough game, just the sort of test that Cov needed early on in its preparations for what is likely to be an even more competitive Championship this season. Leicester Lions finished 18 points ahead of the second placed team in National Two (west) last season and having then strengthened the squad over the summer, it was a sensible choice of opposition for a Coventry squad that had yet to play a competitive game, unlike the Lions who had played their pre-season opener two weeks ago.

The Lions are definitely going to make an impact on National One. Coventry struggled to show any real fluency other than in short passages of play, a lot of that being down to an absence of match practice, but also in part the result of the Lions' forwards, in particular, who just didn't allow Cov to settle into any early rhythm. Credit must go to the visitors who certainly weren't fazed by Cov's big name players, the club's reputation or the sizeable home support. I'll look forward to following their progress in the weeks and months ahead. They'll surprise a few teams for sure.

They did to us exactly what we'd done in pre-season to clubs like Jersey, Ealing and Doncaster when we were in National One back in Rowland Winter's first couple of seasons with us. We gave a number of clubs from higher leagues a real test back then, so it should have come as no surprise that the Lions would push us as hard as they did. None at all.

And yet I still arrived at the BPA yesterday hoping for Cov to make a strong statement in their opener. Naïve and perhaps a tad patronising, but as supporters it's kind of what you do. Well, it's what I do anyway.

The final score, 33-21, was probably a fair reflection of the 'game' - although with Coventry playing what was virtually a completely different starting XV for the second half, it was always going to lack a little continuity. As a squad this was the first time they'd come together against opponents other than from amongst their own, so it was hardly surprising that at times players looked a little rusty, both individually and collectively.

I'm sure it would have been just the kind of work out the coaches were looking for - to quote Mick Jagger, 'You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need'.

---

The new board - pixel perfect

Whilst there appeared to be no major changes to the ground building wise, it was good to see that the old electronic scoreboard had been updated - no faulty pixels. Not one.

Although the clock wasn't functioning, it looks the part and hopefully there will be someone within the club who'll be able to maximise its potential, enabling supporters to get far more information/entertainment from it than had been the case with the previous one. Big 'hats off' to the club on that front.

More good news, too - the boards in the clubhouse, listing both previous club captains and players who have represented their country whilst at Cov, have both been updated. I understand the Supporters' Club has been the driving force behind this, another great example of how involved they are behind the scenes. I'd long thought that for a club looking to be the best it can on the field, out of date boards off it was never a good look. The recent additions to the halls of fame suggest a pride in what the club has achieved not just in the distant past but also more recently. I hope that when the developments planned for the ground are finally completed (!), the boards take centre stage in the main bar area, rather than in a corridor almost adjacent to the toilets where they currently are.

I was pleasantly surprised by the size of the crowd, 1371. It felt quite busy as kick off approached and sitting in the middle of the main stand, it certainly seemed like there were a good few there, although choosing to watch from the other side of the ground part way through the first half, it was evident just how many empty seats there actually were.

Despite a crowd of nearly 1400, the main stand was sparsely populated

It might be that the lure of the beer festival had attracted an extra few through the turnstiles, although in fairness the beer tent didn't seem busy at any point before kick off. Hopefully, it proved a success during and after the game though. Initiatives like this deserve to do well - I'm sure they create a shed load of additional work and admin for the business/commercial team(s) and if they do well, then they also inject some welcome revenue into the club. Unfortunately, I'm not the kind of fan on whom the club can rely to support it in such enterprises really. I'm not a drinker particularly, certainly not when driving anyway, and I never stay on after the game. Whilst I'm at the ground for perhaps 4 plus hours or more on a match day, visits to the clubhouse are mostly for the loos or to check in with the Supporters' Club if traveling to an away game.

Fortunately, for the club's sake, there are many supporters for whom this is not the norm. That said, the club shop and the burger stall usually do quite well out of me (as do the children and grandchildren!). I was gutted yesterday to find there was no coffee van - hopefully this is just a one-off and normal services will be resumed at the next home game. A decent cup of freshly made coffee is much appreciated, especially as it starts to get colder in the coming weeks. As for the game itself, well it really was a game of two halves. In all honesty, the first half was pretty mediocre as a spectacle. From a Coventry perspective, we seemed very sluggish and it looked what it was - a chance for the players to get some match time in against an opposition that more than held its own. Set pieces were inconsistent at best, with Cov penalised at the scrums and struggling to fine consistency in the lineouts. Handling errors and some erratic passing at times didn't help either. Playing under the new tackle rules for National One and below meant we fell foul of the referee's whistle on numerous occasions and it was clearly frustrating the players at times, even to the extent of being taken a further 10m back on one occasion. Cov will need to show more discipline once the campaign proper gets under way. I thought Dan Lewis controlled the game well for the Lions, kicking judiciously and trying to get his backline into the game as much as he could. However, outside of him there wasn't enough pace or individual flair to cause our three quarters any real worries - any threat on their part came principally from their forwards who looked like they could be a very potent force in National One this coming season. Cov went in at half time knowing that a 7-7 score line reflected what had been a bit of a lacklustre opening 40 minutes for the home side, particularly from the forwards who included new signings Kvesic, Chilvers, Anstey and Bartlett. They will have wanted to impress on their club debuts in front of a home crowd for sure. For me, Bartlett was the most prominent of the four - he looks a strong, powerful runner (a young Ryan Burrows maybe?) and he'll cause some damage with ball in hand. Whatever words were spoken during the break, they had an immediate impact. Cov scored almost straight away, showing more fluency in the first couple of minutes than in pretty much the whole of the opening 40. Cov's backs looked a serious threat and it was no surprise when Rigg followed Hutler's try with a classic Rigg finish.

Leicester Lions is sponsored by Burger King

But the Lions refused to lie down though. Sponsored by Burger King, they duly delivered a Double Whopper themselves, scoring two tries to level the scores, only for Cov to then score another brace of their own to eventually secure a fairly comfortable win in the end. One without much relish though, to be fair.

Yesterday was all about giving the whole squad a run out against a competitive, well-drilled side that proved to be the perfect opposition. Alex Rae was able to look at individual players and try out new combinations without having to worry about the result. He can't have been happy with the first half performance at times but there were plenty of positives to come out of the game as a whole, as well as a few areas that will need focusing on before Friday's game against Moseley. What was most evident for me was the fact there are a number of key areas on the pitch where there will be plenty of competition this season. Most intriguing of all is who will get the 2 shirt against Jersey. Poole appears to be in pole position as club captain and a player with Premiership pedigree, but Ma'asi would be hard to leave out given his work rate around the park. He seems to be the go-to ball carrier on the crash and invariably makes the odd metre or two. Whilst I don't know anything about their respective technical abilities in terms of scrums and lineouts, it's worth remembering that when TRP announced Eoghan Clarke as hooker in the 2022/23 Dream Team, they also added that he 'was pushed so close by Coventry's Suva Ma'asi who received plaudits for his set piece and work rate'. I thought Louis James looked very comfortable at 15 when he came on for the second half - again Tobi Wilson might be most people's favourite for the full back position but James certainly did himself a power of good yesterday and having played out wide too, he might well get the nod as a utility back on the bench. Mannion looked good at 10. Mitchell has earned the right to start the season as Pellegrini's understudy, but the youngster can't be too far behind and is only going to grow in confidence with more games under his belt. Hutler and Martin look shoe-ins out wide, but again I imagine James and Opoku will get their chances over the course of the season. And on it goes...in the forwards, I think it's more open, especially in the back row where other than Kvesic who has to start really, the back row is a movable feast. Ryan, Bartlett, Stone, Ball, Nayalo and Owen will all be in contention over the next few weeks - a case of almost being able to perm any three from six. With 3 specialist 4/5s in Anstey, Smith and NKwocha (who looks a big, big unit but is still four weeks off a start) Tyas isn't a certainty, yet he's such an intelligent leader on the pitch and was selected in TRP's Dream Team last season. He'd be difficult to leave out as well. As for the props....? Well, I look forward to seeing how that pans out.

Although Will Chudley wasn't playing yesterday, I enjoyed watching him on the sidelines in the second half. He could be seen and heard encouraging players and looked to be very much a part of the coaching set up on the day. His experience will be invaluable this coming season and the prospect of him combining with Pellegrini again and working behind the likes of Kvesic, Bartlett, Nayalo and Ryan is a mouthwatering one. Even though the game didn't prove quite as entertaining as I'd hoped, it probably went some way to provide Alex Rae with answers to a few of the questions being asked of him and the coaches. It will be particularly interesting to see the team(s) selected to play Moseley on Friday - will the coaches look to change the combinations again, or stick with those from Saturday to see if there's further improvement after another week's training?

---