THERE is currently considerable and understandable anxiety over the issue of cloning.

In football Coventry City have been at it for 30 years now, season after season replicating teams that somehow manage to keep them in the top division and nothing much else - save for that FA Cup win 10 years ago of course.

And the Sky Blues will in all probability survive again this time although matters might have been made considerably more comfortable with three points last night. Coventry dominated virtually throughout yet still contrived to fall behind to an Efan Ekoku strike before Dion Dublin equalised.

Newcastle, with all their current injury problems in attack, might have wished they had hung on to Darren Huckerby, who is not only fast but strong. Wimbledon were frequently hard pressed to suppress his exuberance.

Apart from an early effort by Marcus Gayle which skimmed across goal, Wimbledon had barely created a chance, but with Coventry straining body and soul to take the lead, it was the London club who broke away through Ekoku, whose long run at goal, holding off Gary Breen and finally Richard Shaw, brooked neither challenge nor argument.

Gordon Strachan must have been fretting about such an eventuality having watched his side play so well and do everything but take the lead. What Coventry badly needed was an immediate equaliser.

The frustration mounted for City when Eoin Jess laid off to Gary McAllister whose shot was awkwardly turned for a corner by Paul Heald. However, from the corner, six minutes after Wimbledon's goal, Dublin equalised. McAllister's corners had previously caused Wimbledon some trouble and on this occasion Dublin timed his run perfectly.

He has such ability with his head that to play him in defence, as Coventry did again last night, seems tantamount to a waste.