Steve Berry’s finest hour was surely that between 3.45pm and 4.45pm on this damp January afternoon in 1990.
The attacking midfielder, who a week before this enthralling FA Cup third round tie had gone 30 matches without finding the net, netted he decider after 42 minutes to sink top-flight neighbours Coventry City.
A banner at the damp and dreary County Ground, for the benefit of the Sky Blues fans, read “remember Sutton?” a reference to the non-league club who had knocked Coventry out of the Cup the previous season.
Graham Carr’s Cobblers perpetuated the nightmare and there was to be no hiding place for his opposite number John Sillett
For the Cobblers fans squeezed into the ground, there can never have been a more nerve-wracking time than those painful final ten minutes as the tie hung in the balance The whistles on the Hotel End were ear-splitting …
Wrote the Chronicle & Echo ’s Mark Beesley: · “Jubilant Cobblers boss Graham Carr showered praise on his battling Cup heroes after they lifted the club into the fourth round of the FA Cup.
“Carr placed his achievement in beating First Division Coventry on a par with winning the Fourth Division in his hour of triumph . And as a single game he put it head and shoulders above anything which had gone before .”
But there was to be no honeymoon for Carr whose team lost 3-0 at Rochdale in the fourth round. In May, his side relegated to Division Four. he left the County Ground by mutual consent .
And Berry? He was appointed player-manager of Kettering Town in the 1996/7 season ….
Teams
Northampton: Gleasure; Chard, Gernon, Thomas, Wilcox, McPherson, Berry, Ouow, Collins, Barnes, Brown. Subs: Wilson and Donald.
Coventry: Ogrizovic; Borrows, Downs, MacDonald, Billing, Peake, Drinke, Speedie, McGrath, Gynn, Smith. Subs: Regis and Clark.
Attendance: I I ,648
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