Norwich City the Nineties

2017 | Sport & Leisure

The castle lies at the heart of the city while the cathedral is its soul. But the football club, modest in name yet bright and vibrant with it, is its life. Unlike any other city in England, the day-to-day life of Norwich was, is now, and ever shall be intertwined with the fortunes of its famous football club. Whether in time of crisis or celebration at Carrow Road, the emotions of the club are carried and shared by the people of Norwich. For the first seventy years or so, the Canaries rarely rattled their own cages, let alone those of their rivals, but they rose from sleepy obscurity into the previously unheard-of heights of English football's top flight for the first time and, in the early Nineties, even challenged for the title in the inaugural season of the Premier League before going on to defeat Bayern Munich in the UEFA Cup. The rest of the decade proved less illustrious and the club were relegated to the second tier before being bought over by TV chef, Delia Smith and her husband.

For both the football club and the historic city that gave it its name, the Nineties would prove a decade of great change, as they both made their way, apprehensively, towards the fast-approaching millennium.

Edward Couzens-Lake (Author)