The Dean of Coventry Cathedral, the Very Reverend John Witcombe, played a crucial role in the talks that led to Coventry City returning to the Ricoh Arena. This was consistent with Coventry Cathedrals’s tradition of activism in reconciliation which started with work with Germany after the Second World War.
The Dean of Coventry Cathedral, the Very Reverend John Witcombe, played a crucial role in the talks that led to Coventry City returning to the Ricoh Arena. This was consistent with Coventry Cathedrals’s tradition of activism in reconciliation which started with work with Germany after the Second World War.
However, the Dean may now be able to offer the club another service by blessing the stadium and helping to lift a curse put on it by a fan of another club. It is claimed that a Leicester City fan working on its construction buried a Foxes shirt underneath its foundations to help in derby matches, not that there have been any of those recently.
Curses have beset a number of football clubs. Southampton brought in a pagan priestess to St. Mary’s Stadium to deal with what has often been described as a gypsy curse, but may have been related to spirits that were disturbed when the stadium was built on a Saxon burial ground.
Oxford United invoked more conventional religious help when the Bishop of Oxford was brought in to bless the centre circle of new Kassam Stadium in an effort to lift a curse which is said to have beset the Manor Ground.
Most famously of all, Barry Fry, when he was manager of Birmingham City, urinated in all four corners of St. Andrews to try and lift a curse on the stadium. Given the rather mixed performances of the Blues, it may not have worked.