F.A.Cup Memories: Nick Pickering praises Sillett team talk

Last week the Oserver’s sports reporter Steve Carpenter caught up with winger Nick Pickering who described his short time with the Sky Blues as his best years of his career. Like many players in the Coventry side, Pickering was fully aware Spurs were favourites to lift the cup that year. But he pointed to an inspirational talk by manager (and CCFPA member) John Sillett before extra-time which helped the Sky Blues lift the cup what seemed against all the odds.

“I’ll always remember Sillett’s brilliant team talk at the end of the 90 minutes when we were drawing 2-2 and we were starting to feel a bit tired,” said Pickering, who lived in Allesley during his time with the Sky Blues.  It felt as if it was 80 degrees inside the stadium on a boiling hot day and we were all sitting around together as a team.  But Sillett looked around at us and said ‘get on your feet, look how tired they are. This is your chance’. We all looked over at the Spurs players and they looked shattered. It had been a long season for them finishing third in the league and doing well in the League Cup too”.

“Sillett went on, ‘this could be your last chance, you could get injured next season or move on elsewhere’. Those words inspired all of us to go on and we battered them in extra time. I was only 23 at the time and you don’t actually realise what you’ve achieved until you look back 25 years on. You just get a great sense of achievement because winning the FA Cup back then meant so much to the players, the fans and of course the club.  The national papers all backed Spurs to win so it was a tremendous achievement for the club and I doubt it will happen again to Coventry.”

Pickering signed for the Sky Blues from Sunderland at the beginning of the FA Cup winning season and although he admitted to having doubts about the move, he was adamant the gamble paid off in the end, “My contract was up at Sunderland at the end of the 1985/86 season and I got called into the manager’s office who told me I needed to leave. The club were in need of money so I got a call from Coventry, went down to take a look at the place and made the move.  My knowledge of Coventry was that they were a club who always seemed to be battling relegation and it’s nice to see not much has changed there!”

“Sillett and George Curtis had bought a few players in including the likes of Dave Phillips who was a full Wales international.  I knew it was a gamble signing for Coventry, but it was a gamble that paid off and I enjoyed the best football of my career at Highfield Road and of course winning the FA Cup was something special.  Sillett changed the way we played that season and everything just seemed to click for us.  We had an underrated team with the likes of Keith Houchen, Dave Bennett and Lloyd McGrath, who was an unsung hero for us.  I was only 22 when I signed and I just wanted to do well for my new club which is what happened that season. 

I roomed with Brian Burrows and he was cracking player who was close to getting an England call-up himself. He tragically missed the final after picking up a daft injury during a league match against Southampton at Highfield Road just a week before the final. When we left Coventry for Wembley we saw Burrows in hospital being interviewed on TV, wishing us all the best and we were all cut up. So winning the final for him was definitely at the back of our minds.”

Pickering also looks back on that famous cup run with fond memories, “We were playing well in the league and the cup run started with a fairly comfortable win at home to Bolton who were two leagues below us.  Then we went away to Bournemouth before the fourth round tie against Manchester United at Old Trafford and once we’d won there I started believing we could go on a good run.  We then brought around 10,000 fans to Stoke who were flying in Division Two and we got battered in the first half.  But I helped set up the winning goal for Micky Gynn to put us through and then we started thinking about who we might get next. We then took 15,000 to Hillsborough when we played Sheffield Wednesday and that was some atmosphere that afternoon.  We just seemed to pick up more and more momentum along the way and for a club like Coventry to win the FA Cup is a wonderful achievement.”

Nick Pickering celebrates a Coventry win at the final whistle. (S) Photo courtesy of PA Images