Norwich City Vs Coventry City

Matchday 40 started off with a very early morning (0100) check of the trains to ensure all was ok. To unfortunately find out one of our trains was cancelled coming home, I could not take the chance of being stick in Norwich should other trains get cancelled or struggle to get on due to the volume of away fans heading in the same direction. So I took the decision to drive the mammoth 3.5 hours to Norwich.

We was away in our caravan but by driving, this meant we actually could leave later and arrive home earlier, than if we were travelling by train. The difference for my was the financial fuel bill, setting me back approx £70 in fuel.

Always with big Saturday road trips, we had to fuel our bellies with a Tim Hortons breakfast. This will I decided to drive 30 minutes towards Wolverhampton for the pleasure.

Once our bellies were full, we began the remaining 3 hour drive to Norwich. Despite the time it took, the drive along the majority of A roads wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Having checked Norwich’s website  beforehand regarding Parking.  I decided to park up and pay £5 for charity just off Martineau Lane. This was ab industrial site with a 15 minute walk to the ground.

Having spoken to the lovely stewards there, they assured me no cars would be blocked in, something I was concerned following our recent trip to Leeds.

No Google maps required to find Carrow Road as it was clear, even though we were about 2 hours early for the game there were alot of fans heading to the ground, so we just followed everyone else.

As we approached the stadium, we purchased our customary matchday program (£4.00) and scarf (£10.00).

Unfortunately there was an issue with Liam’s ticket not dropping into the Norwich app so i needed assistance from the ticket office.

As this wasn’t signposted or clear to where it was, I asked 2 members of staff guarding turnstiles for directions who didn’t know where this was – something I was to smacked about. Luckily a 3^rd person managed to direct me to the right direction.

Once inside the ticket office, an extremely helpful and friendly female staff member kindly printed off the 2 tickets and after taking a number of photos, we decided to head into the ground once we heard the turnstiles were opening.

Once inside we headed for the toilets before looking for our seats. Unfortunately during the booking process, I could not book 2 seats together. However, I managed to book 2 seats either side of an already booked seat, with the hope that whoever had this seat booked would swap places. Which happened thanks to a kind gentleman who could see me and Liam were together.

We sat with a good hour before the game taking photos, soaking up the build up and just enjoying our incredible view.

The ground filled up nicely however I was extremely disappointed with the home fans lack of atmosphere with Coventry fans providing the only real noise especially in the first half.

The game was 0-0 at half time with Norwich having the better possession but were very poor in the final 3^rd.

I predicted a Norwich 2-1 and at half time I didn’t seen them scoring 1 goal let alone 2. The 2bd half was much better and the atmosphere in the last 30 minutes was brilliant. With 3 goals, 2 for Norwich and 1 for Coventry meant I predicted the scoreline perfect, much to the annoyance of Liam. This was helped by our first straight red card or the challenge that saw Coventry down to 10 men and no doubt had an impact to the scoreline. With a 3.5 hour drive home, I wanted to leave just after the 85^th minute without being kept behind with 1000s of fans. Our walk was joined by a number of other fans clearly thinking the same. We arrived back to our car to find the stewards were right and our car was not blocked in. With a BP petrol station nearby, we fuelled up and headed straight home. We drove non stop with no major issues, arriving back to the caravan in 3 hours 20 minutes.  

Matchday 41 takes us back most of the way to Cambridge, who will be home to Bolton Wanderers.