Cod Almighty | Article

by Alistair Wilkinson

8 April 2025

Nab it, stab it, tap it, grab it, stop that shot heading for the top corner now! 

Danny Coyne played for Town from 1999 to 2003. On a personal level, his time with us was a success. In nearly 200 appearances he built and maintained a reputation as one of the best stoppers in the second tier. This success was recognised with two player-of-the-year awards and call ups for Wales while with Town, plus several moves to other well-known clubs later in his career.

Unfortunately, he was also the ever-present at the beginning of our decline, especially 2001 – 2003, when the team and the club deteriorated. There are few stand-out memories of the team's successes in Coyne's time, all of them individual results rather than successful campaigns. The win at Liverpool in the League Cup, the First Division victories over Crystal Palace and Wimbledon, the Mariners scoring five and six respectively, the last-day triumph over Fulham in 2002 to secure safety, are good examples in seasons that were otherwise only about the struggle to compete and the loss of players who had been heroes. But Coyne is a player who can hold his head high.

That is worth repeating: yes, his time at Town was only a struggle for the team and the club, but for him it was a period of consistency that we've not seen since. His first season, 99-00 saw us finish 20th, then 18th the following year and 19th in 2002, finishing with relegation in 2003. This was the time of Lennie Lawrence and his foreign experiments with mercurial players like Enhua, Nielsen, Fostervold and Willems. It was the end of Buckley Chapter Two, the beginning of Fenty. The end of a club punching above its weight and the beginning of a club that would be battered black and blue for month after month.

He kept 46 clean sheets in 196 appearances. Reading that stat in isolation doesn't sound especially impressive, but with Coyne it's all context. He had to take over from Aidan Davison, a fans' favourite at the club, (very impressive stats!) who had played during our most successful seasons in the last three decades: 1997-1999. In living memory we've rarely had it as good as those two years. True, we've had just as much and sometimes more excitement and more drama, we've had good players and older and newer heroes, but in the Football League we've not had that steady level of quality, that assured confidence that whoever we play will get a game today. Davison had been a significant part of that, so Coyne had big shoes to fill. And fill them he did. Since 1999 he is arguably the only player, certainly the only player when Town were in the Football League, who we could rely on week in and week out.

His contribution was recognised by all, winning the supporters' player of the year award twice, in 2001 and 2002. And let's not forget that this was the time of Michael Boulding, Jack Lester, Alan Pouton, Phil Jevons, Wayne Burnett; good players, First Division players, but we all knew who was keeping us up there. Coyne was a constant flame in our creeping twilight.

At the turn of the century we lost/released/retired/sold good players like Lester, Livingstone, Handyside, Ashcroft, Burnett, Donovan, Gallimore and didn't replace any of them with anything close to like-for-like quality. Except Coyne. His success wasn't instant; we were less than impressed with his first half season and his vampiric relationship with crosses. Not as good as Davison, not as commanding, not the complete keeper that Davison had been. But what a shot stopper - arguably, we've never had better - what an athlete, what a pro. And what a determined player he was. We've seen keepers crumble to the shouts and jeers that can rain down from the Pontoon. Not Coyne. He won us over with performance after performance that, increasingly, became the best on the pitch.

It's the only time in my time watching Town when the keeper has been the star, when the most memorable moments in many games were Coyne's one-to-ones with opposition strikers. First Division strikers. Good players. Yet we got so used to Coyne coming out on top in those moments that we anticipated them almost as eagerly and loudly as our own attacking moves.

Perhaps it was his physicality. Not blessed with the height of Davison, he was only just six feet tall, he couldn't simply step forward and take the ball, so he would move with every part of himself. A leaper keeper, throwing his whole body at everything. A mini Schmeichel, flinging, flopping and star-jumping his way to fame in the second tier of English football.

Perhaps it was his professionalism and focus. I've never seen a keeper so ready as him. He would set himself very deliberately, very consciously. I have no memories of him simply standing still, just images of him crouched, feet wide and firm, pillars for legs, or on the balls of his feet, his legs limber, arms crooked and rigid yet supple, hands huge, a stag's antlers.

Perhaps it was his positioning. Coyne was a keeper who knew exactly where he should be in any given situation: the right place, the right stance, the right focus, the willingness to launch himself at any situation. It was all of this and more. He must've been a joy to coach.

And for the defence a joy to have behind them. They knew that they weren't the last line, that Coyne would be there; every blade of grass in the area was his and he knew exactly where he needed to be in a moment. Not so much a goalkeeper as some teleporting Pokémon, his yellow top flashing and zipping around the area like an electron, zapping the opposition.

I must mention Anfield, 2001. On that night another player stole the headlines with his 3000-yard rocket, but it was Coyne who was man of the match. Go and watch the highlights (even though they don't show just how busy he was) and listen to how, by the end of the match, the commentator is taking his saves for granted.

His first action is a solid stop against England international Nick Barmby and after that it was save after save, rushing out again and again to stop wave after wave of red shirts. Only a penalty from McAllister in the 101st minute beat him. For 100 minutes he kept them out. Danny Coyne was the second name on everyone's lips for days and weeks after that night. Our friends who supported other clubs, watching on telly would ask us, who's this guy? Who's this keeper? How aren't Wales qualifying for every tournament with this guy in goal? And it wasn't a one off. His consistency is why we still think first of Jevons when we remember that night; it was another day at the office for our over-worked shot stopper.

Groves will always be the captain that went down with the ship, the ageing leader whose inevitable decline mirrored our own, but Coyne was the man who made us believe that we were still a club that could attract and develop quality players. Perhaps it was the memories of Coyne that meant we took so long to accept our status as a lesser side. Certainly, other than Dean Henderson's brilliant but all too brief spell, we haven't had a keeper anything like as good since he left. In a pound-for-pound comparison we might argue that Crocombe was as reliable, but for sheer talent and athleticism, it's Coyne all the way. It's hard to love a goalkeeper in a poor team in a poor time but love him we did.

Artwork courtesy of Alex Chilvers