A football reporter who invented a club nickname that has stuck for nearly half a century has died aged 81.

Derek Henderson, of the Coventry Telegraph, first coined the nickname Sky Blues for Coventry City when reporting on a pre-season friendly in the early 1960s.

The club, then managed by Jimmy Hill, had donned their new kit during a match against Birmingham.

Later Derek also broke the exclusive that Hill was resigning from the manager’s post just after securing promotion to the old First Division in 1967.

Derek, who died last month, spent 15 years as the Telegraph’s Coventry City reporter during one of the most dramatic periods in the club’s history.

His first game, a third division clash with Exeter, all but sealed the club’s relegation to the newly-formed fourth division.

But under Hill they made a rapid climb back to the top flight where they were to remain for 34 years until dropping out of the Premiership in 2001.

In his time on the paper Derek visited virtually every Football League club’s ground, missing out on just two.

And as well as writing for the Telegraph, he wrote a book on the club, an encyclopaedia on the game entitled Soccer, and Northern Ireland international Tommy Doherty’s autobiography.

Former Telegraph colleague Graham Andrews, who worked as a reporter at the paper between 1967-76, described Mr Henderson as a “consummate professional.”

“He was a modest man in many ways.  He could never understand how reporters could get so excited when someone scored,” he said.

“He was totally impartial. He could read the game like a book. He would instinctively know when a goal was about to be scored.”

After leaving the Telegraph, Derek moved back to his native Devon where he continued to work as a reporter until he finally hanging up his notebook five years ago.

His wife Ann Sleigh-Henderson, to whom he was married to for 56 years, said:  “Reporting may have been his job but it was also his life and he was successful too, which helped.

“He was so passionate about covering football and although he moved down to North Devon and worked as a news reporter he did continue to do a spot of football reporting.”