{"id":274,"date":"2025-04-09T10:56:56","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T10:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/tdby\/?p=274"},"modified":"2025-04-09T10:56:56","modified_gmt":"2025-04-09T10:56:56","slug":"george-curtis-coventrys-favourite-footballer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/tdby\/2025\/04\/09\/george-curtis-coventrys-favourite-footballer\/","title":{"rendered":"George Curtis – Coventry’s favourite footballer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In mid-April a shared statue is to be unveiled outside the CBS Arena in Coventry, home of the city’s Championship football team, the Sky Blues.\u00a0 The statue will be of John Sillett and George Curtis,\u00a0 the duo of ex-CCFC defenders who were joint managers and masterminds of Coventry’s 1987 FA Cup triumph.\u00a0 John Sillett died relatively recently, but George Curtis passed away nearly five years ago.\u00a0 What follows is a longer version of a piece I wrote at the time of Curtis’s death for When Saturday Comes<\/em>\u00a0…<\/p>\n

Which recently deceased footballer led his club from the Third to the First Division before masterminding its unexpected triumph in one of the great FA Cup finals \u2013 and in between ran a fish and chip shop?\u00a0 For the people of Coventry George Curtis was a giant, in every sense of the word.\u00a0 In another life he would have worked on the Kent coal field, marshalling the pit side and manning the picket line.\u00a0 Instead, he moved to the Midlands in the mid-fifties to play lower league football.\u00a0 At first Curtis appeared a journeyman centre-half, with work at the colliery merely on hold.\u00a0 Instead, he matured as a player, readily adapting to a succession of fresh challenges.\u00a0 Across the \u2019sixties Coventry City progressed to a place in the equivalent of today\u2019s Premiership, with Curtis\u2019s reliability and leadership key factors in the club\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

In 1961, when Jimmy Hill arrived at Coventry to initiate the \u2018Sky Blue Revolution\u2019, few saw George Curtis surviving long.\u00a0 Instead he became Hill\u2019s company sergeant major, embracing the tyro manager\u2019s revolutionary approach as to how football should be played \u2013 and how it should be enjoyed, both on and off the pitch.\u00a0 Hill changed the face of professional football in England, transforming Coventry as a club, and marketing football as a family-friendly sport watched in new or updated stadia.\u00a0 Hill\u2019s showmanship disguised his tactical nous.\u00a0 As a revealing Path\u00e9 film from 1962 confirms, Curtis welcomed Hill\u2019s new ideas, encouraging his team-mates to follow suit.\u00a0 An exception was veteran Scottish international Stewart Imlach: the newsreel cameraman catches the winger\u2019s undisguised contempt for his bearded new boss.\u00a0 Imlach was soon gone as Jimmy Hill built a succession of teams around local talent and shrewd purchases; but always with Curtis at the heart of his back four.<\/p>\n

Then suddenly, at the moment of triumph \u2013 a demolition of Derek Dougan\u2019s Wolves having secured the 1967 Second Division Championship in front of more than fifty thousand fans \u2013 Hill was gone.\u00a0 The master of invented tradition, having single-handedly created a Sky Blue mythology, Jimmy Hill quit to join London Weekend.\u00a0 Hill now had a national audience, and an agenda for the further modernisation of professional football.\u00a0 Curtis was left with the job of raising team morale, his task not helped by breaking a leg during Coventry\u2019s second match in the top tier.\u00a0 He returned a year later, but with a place in the team no longer guaranteed.\u00a0 In due course he was transferred to Aston Villa, helping transform a moribund side into Division Three champions.<\/p>\n

Curtis retired in 1972, and in due course a commercial post was found for him back at Coventry\u2019s former stadium, Highfield Road.\u00a0 What\u2019s not included in his biography, and now his obituaries, is that he bought a fish and chip shop on the main road to Leicester.\u00a0 My parents\u2019 house was no distance from the chippie, and when visiting them I felt a mixture of awe and astonishment that the mighty George Curtis was serving me two fish and a treble portion of chips (\u2018No salt or vinegar please, Mr Curtis\u2019).\u00a0 Tradition has it that footballers of that generation became pub landlords, but in his masterly My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes<\/em> Gary Imlach \u2013 son of Stewart \u2013 signals a variety of occupations for ex-pros of that era, few of whom made serious money after the abolition of the maximum wage in 1961 (Hill\u2019s first great achievement, as chairman of the Professional Footballers Association).<\/p>\n

In due course Mr Curtis hang up his apron and took a backroom role at Highfield Road.\u00a0 Perennial under-achievers, in due course Coventry appointed Curtis co-manager with former team-mate John Sillett.\u00a0 Against all the odds, in May 1987 the two men took their team to Wembley, and an epic confrontation with hot favourites Tottenham Hotspur.\u00a0 The Sky Blues, courtesy of Keith Houchen, scored a stunning goal in a stunning victory.\u00a0 For a further seven years Curtis was managing director.\u00a0 Thus, the man who narrowly escaped a life at the coalface, and who had no hesitation in swapping top flight football for serving fish and chips six days \u2013 and six nights \u2013 a week, played a quiet part in establishing the world\u2019s most lucrative football league.<\/p>\n

George Curtis helped create the Premiership, managed a cup-winning side, and skippered a total of three championship-winning teams.\u00a0 As the 2021 City of Culture, Coventry\u2019s focus is rightly on the future, with scarcely a look backwards other than to acknowledge the legacy of Two Tone.\u00a0 Yet, amid the celebration and excitement, I hope that everyone in Coventry, not just football fans, can pause and mark the passing of an extraordinarily humble man.\u00a0 Someone who throughout the \u2019sixties, and then again twenty years later, brought enormous joy to the city \u2013 and yet still found time to run a really good chippie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In mid-April a shared statue is to be unveiled outside the CBS Arena in Coventry, home of the city’s Championship football team, the Sky Blues.\u00a0 The statue will be of John Sillett and George Curtis,\u00a0 the duo of ex-CCFC defenders who were joint managers and masterminds of Coventry’s 1987 FA Cup triumph.\u00a0 John Sillett died … <\/p>\n

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