Coventry 'banner man' ready to end 24-year wait
Coventry City were relegated from the Premier League in the 2000-01 season and have yet to return to the top flight
- Published
Coventry City supporter John Mullaney, also known as the "banner man", has revisited the day 24 years ago that his team were relegated from the Premier League and he entered club folklore.
The Sky Blues relinquished a two-goal lead at Aston Villa on 5 May 2001 in a 3-2 defeat which ended their 34-year run as a top-flight club.
Mullaney's banner, which read "We'll be back", was shown on Match of the Day and his picture was published in many local and national newspapers the following day.
Since that relegation in 2001, Coventry have yet to return to the Premier League, but they have the chance to change that in the Championship play-offs, beginning with the first leg of their semi-final at home against Sunderland on Friday.
On his decision to create the banner, Mullaney told BBC Radio CWR: "[It was] completely impromptu, my friend Rod was 15 minutes late picking us up to go out of the train station and I was sitting and hanging around nervously.
"Then, something created a little brainwave in my head that I thought it would be a good idea to write 'We'll be back' on something."
He added: "I was working in Birmingham for an insurance company so a lot of my sales team were Aston Villa fans and there had been winding up all week. I knew the kind of stick we were going to get at Villa.
"People said Coventry never go down - the Titanic sort of thing - but when you work in insurance you realise anything can happen.
"It was just as a last-minute thing - not a lot of thought went into it.
"If there was, I wouldn't have used Anaglypta wallpaper."
Paul Merson (right) scored the winning goal for Aston Villa to help seal Coventry's fate at Villa Park
Mullaney, who now lives in Brisbane, said he is undecided on whether to return to England if Coventry make it to the play-off final at Wembley on 24 May.
"My son, who is also a massive Coventry fan, has been asking me about it. He could be my 'We'll be back' two," he added.
"If we go back into the Premier League, I would happily be back for the first game of next season - that would be a better way to do it.
"Then I would no longer be newsworthy, I would be chip paper by then, or wood chip paper if you pardon the pun."