It’s strange how it seems like we’ve been living with Covid on our shores for ages and yet it seems like only yesterday when the way, way too soon death of the great Peter Whittingham was announced and yet the UK first went into lockdown on 23 March 2020 some five days after Whitts’ passing from head injuries suffered on 7 March was confirmed.
So, it’s been a long time for a formal recognition by the club of someone who all but the very youngest or newest City fan will have such fond memories of in the blue shirt to take place.
The blame for this can be put almost entirely on the aforesaid Covid, but, finally, a memorial match for Whitts was played last night between City and his first club Aston Villa in front of what I’d say was a good sized crowd of 10,027 at Cardiff City Stadium. With the distraction of the World Cup and it being the last night of November with temperatures taking a dip from the almost balmy weather of recent weeks in the last few days, that seems a good turn out to me and special praise goes to the six hundred Villa fans who made the trip down from the Midlands.
A couple of Whitts’ former team mates arrived from outside the UK to honour him. Aron Gunnarsson from Qatar and Steve McPhail from Ireland, while others came from around the UK including Roger Johnson, Matt Connolly and David Marshall and the man who signed him for City, Dave Jones, was also there – apologies to those I’ve not mentioned.
All proceeds from the game went towards the PW7 Foundation .
As for the match itself, the last similar type game for a long serving City player was the one held for Kevin McNaughton held in March 2017 which was between his team and one selected by Craig Bellamy. There are two types of testimonial game in my experience, there’s the light hearted one where everyone has a bit of a jolly with “guest” appearances from non players and the McNaughton one fell into that category as his ream ended up winners after a penalty shoot out following a 5-5 draw.
Last night was an example of the second type where it was a “proper” game that was played as if it mattered. Obviously, both teams were not at full strength because of World Cup commitments, but, within those confines, the teams were as strong as they could be with Villa including named like Digne, Mings, Young, Buendia, Watkins, Luiz, Ings and Bailey all playing at least forty five minutes.
Although there were some complaints about the timing of the game, it probably helped in some respects because the mid season break for Premier League and Championship clubs may have given the match more importance in terms of fitness and preparedness for the resumption of fixtures which comes a week on Saturday for City and on Boxing Day for Villa.
So, if I had to come up with a measure of the intensity at which the game was played, I’d go for the last pre season game a week before the proper stuff starts – it wasn’t like a league game, but the outcome seemed to matter to both teams.
For City, the absence of Rubin Colwill, Mark Harris and Callum Robinson left gaps in their squad up front and so they started with Gavin Whyte, Ollie Tanner and Kion Etete as a front three. Given our scoring record this season. It was hard to imagine City scoring unless it became one of those light hearted testimonials I mentioned earlier, but it turned out that they need no help in scoring – all three of the makeshift front line did well, especially Tanner and Etete.
Tanner and Etete probably attracted more comment than most of our seventeen summer signings, but, with Tanner finding the transition from non league part timer to full time pro the test that most in his position would do and Etete hit by an injury which kept him out for about six weeks, they’ve almost become forgotten men as the weeks went by.
However, both of them did not look out of place against Premier League opposition and Etete especially will have not done his first team prospects any harm at all.
Tanner had already done a few good things when City gained possession deep inside Villa’s half on forty minutes and the former Lewes player made ground down the left before hitting a low shot from fifteen yards across the keeper and into the corner of the net.
With City bringing on a new keeper and defence at half time and Villa making changes which, if anything, left their side stronger than it had been, that single goal lead seemed almost irrelevant. However, when a smooth build up saw Neils Nkounkou put in a neat low cross on fifty three minutes, Etete finished in impressive fashion with a first time effort from around the penalty spot.
Although the lack of meetings between the two teams down the years has played a large part in this stat, I make it that Villa had not scored a goal against City in Cardiff since December 1974 and Jak Alnwick will probably swear that they shouldn’t have scored tonight as he claimed a foul by Jacob Ramsey in the act of him heading in Luiz’s corner four minutes after Etete’s goal.
City brought on youngsters James Crole, Joel Colwill, Caleb Hughes and Morgan Wigley in the last half an hour and it was the last named who made the most impressive single contribution of the four on seventy three minutes with a quick and powerful run down the left and a fine cross which the unmarked Etete headed in from six yards.
City played some nice stuff and deserved their 3-1 win as, from their perspective anyway. They achieved a treble in honouring a fine player and getting a win to send them into the second part of the campaign in good heart while also having a group of younger players advance their cause in a competitive, if not “official” game.
The only slight disappointing feature for me was that the match would have been an ideal opportunity to give Ebou Adams and Isaak Davies their first game time of the season, but their absence suggests that they’re still not ready to play yet. That said, there is an Under 21 game against Wolves on Saturday afternoon, so maybe they were being kept back for that
Just to go back to Whitts to finish, I took the easy option in the title I gave this piece because I honestly cannot make a case for anyone else being City’s best player of this century, but could I have said he was our best player ever?
It’s probably impossible to make a judgement like that when you’re talking about anything that’s been going longer than the human life span and this is even more true when you consider that there are very few, if any, moving pictures of City’s best players of the 1920s out there.
However, I’d ask any one who is considering the question of who is City’s best player to have a look at this video of almost every league goal Whitts scored for us . From memory, there was a scruffy goal in a win at Norwich, the one he got in the 2-1 win over Leicester in the game Gabor Gyepes got sent off in would win no awards for style, but, apart from that, it seems all his goals which weren’t penalties would be called beauties if they had been scored by anyone else – the man really did do what he wanted.
The ‘best player ever’ thing is flawed from the start, because how can one compare a goalkeeper to a tricky winger? Or a dynamic centre forward, to a resolute stopper of a centre half? And if that was not enough, most people voting have no grasp of history: they are the sort of people who are amazed when you tell them that Paul McCartney was in another band before Wings.
And then, with your ‘best player ever for Cardiff City’ thing… how long does he have to have played? One year? Five years? A whole career?
And if that was not enough, the ‘best player ever’ concept has been brought into the realms of the laughable by WalesOnLine, who gave readers 25 players to choose from as the greatest Welsh players ever, and that list did not include Billy Meredith…!!
Truly, YCNMIU…*. Methinks Meredith should have been in the top three, with King John as the clear winner.
But the actual winner of that vote? No prizes for guessing it was Gareth Bale. It is enough to make me want to cry. Listen, Paul… he can give half a million to the Heath Hospital, ten times over… but he will never redeem himself in my eyes. The shame I still feel over that darned flag, and those grinning jackass playing colleagues who found it funny… well it is still unabated.
You note I said John Charles would have been my clear winner, had I voted in what I deemed to be a nonsensical vote. Let me say something about the great man…
My mind goes back to June 1958… I am a month short of my eleventh birthday. I am with my mother visiting my ‘Auntie’ Dollie Blake at her house in Troedyrhiw Road in my hometown of Porth.
While they are talking, I am listening intently to the radio commentary from Sweden. And I break down and cry when hear Alun Williams tell us that it is the final whistle and we have lost to a toe-poked goal from a 17 year old kid whose name I did not catch… but was to catch alright for the next quarter of a century.
And I did not need Jimmy Murphy to tell me his opinion that had King John been playing (and not been unfit to play, having been kicked black and blue by the Hungarians in the play-off for the Quarter Finals), then Wales would never have lost.
When John Charles signed for City in the summer of 63, he was 31. At least 50% of the games he played til April 65, he got star man billing in the Sunday papers (only Gareth Williams was to run him even remotely close)… and only in 65-66 did injuries make his form suffer, approaching 35 years of age… and he left for player management at Hereford the following year.
Charlo, when he signed for us, was several months younger than Robbie Fowler was, when Fowler came to City for his underwhelming spell at Ninian. And it pained me to hear Dave Jones stupidly say that “Robbie is the greatest signing in Cardiff’s history”.
Dunce.
Earlier this century, I went with my Cleethorpes mate Dave-the-Cobbler to see Atalanta versus Napoli in Bergamo. At half time I got talking to some veteran fans alongside me. They asked where I came from. I told them.
One old chap said to the others in Italian… “the same country as Jon Charl-ezz…!!” And blow me if the five of them then all queued up to shake my hand… and these were not Juve fans…!!
Can you imagine a similar scene in Spain fifty years from now? No chance.
Bale brought shame on Wales with that dreadful flag.
I wrote to a Spanish doctor friend to say that we Welsh are proud to be a hospitable nation, and are famed for keeping a welcome in the hillside. I asked him not to think badly of us and that this ungrateful chap earning £1.5 million a year of Spanish money, had such contempt for the Madrileños that paid him.
Football baffles me these days. But most baffling of all is that overpaid TV pundits have no grasp of the laws of the game.
WalesOnline readers are this weekend getting their knickers in a twist over two contentious World Cup incidents: the ball that was only 2% in play for Japan, and the Uruguayan penalty claim turned down.
The Laws are the laws. The amazing thing is, not that there are so many WOL readers who cannot understand, but so many celebrity pundits also. TV pundits were adamant the Japanese ball was out, and pundits were also later saying that Cavani deserved a penalty kick for running at speed alongside a Ghanaian and cunningly ensuring that he inserted his shin into his opponent’s stride so that both players fell over. A ‘nailed on penalty’ according to Rio.
Thank God that unlike our celebrity ‘ex pro player’ pundits, the young German referee did not fall for it. Thankfully he probably was a case of someone who (horror of horrors) had never played the game. [Ouch!]
* = You Could Not Make It Up … even if you tried…
Will sign off now Paul after my first appearance on Mauve & Yellow after some 4+ years (or is it 5+?… time accelerates and ends up cheating us all… all I know is my two dear brothers were alive when last I posted on your fine site… and now they are alas dead.)
And talking of ‘dead’… when you can provide me with a death certificate for that cowardly ex Porth County School troll who besmirches the proud name of Harry Kirtley, using it to hide behind, then I will come back to your site… but not before.
TTFN,
Dai.
It’s great to hear from you again on here Dai – you know I’m sure that you’re welcome any time.
Regarding “best ever” conversations, I’ve set out my position in the piece on Peter Whittingham. I think it’s possible to have a worthwhile debate about recent developments (e.g. best ever reverse sweeper/best ever ramp shot player in cricket) that cover a timescale that most contributors would have lived through. However, although we’ve had an online discussion about my view that Gareth Bale is the best ever Welsh player, I’m thinking now that I’m taking a few liberties there when the truth is that my memory can only stretch to about a third of the time that Wales has been playing international football.
On the subject of John Charles, I know I saw him play for City, but I don’t have any memories of that now. My only memory of him as a player is when he played against City in 1967 as Hereford player-manager when we won 6-3.
Clearly, it would be wrong and stupid to judge him on what he did in that game, so I’ve not got the personal experience of him as a player to comment with any authority on anyone’s contention that he was better than Bale (what I can say is that anyone my Dad rated as a better player than Tom Finney must have been something special and he told me John Charles was the best player he’d seen).
I would make a couple of observations though about Charles’ move here that I’ve always found surprising and they seem to me to be at odds with the view that he could be Wales’ best ever player.
The first thing is that Charles signed for City at all. As you mention, he was thirty two at the time and, although Wales’ recent World Cup efforts showed us that Aaron Ramsey looked to be a faded force at that level at an earlier age than Charles was when he signed for City, it’s not really an age where you would expect a player with his pedigree to be signing for a mediocre second tier side as we were then – you’d have thought there’d be a First Division club somewhere who’d have been prepared to take a punt on him.
Secondly, the reported fee we paid for John Charles seems low to me by the standards of the day for someone of his ability – £25,000 at a time when players were being sold for four times that does not seem much. City were to sell Peter Rodrigues and Barrie Hole for considerably more than that pretty soon after Charles arrived.
I say that while taking John Charles’ age into account and an online review of his career I’ve just read says that he was never fully fit for City because he was beginning to suffer with the effects of the knee injury he sustained in the 1958 World Cup.
One other thing from after he left City suggests an exceptional talent – while Hereford were a non league club in those days, they were a good non league side that would be making their mark in the FA Cup and Football League not long after John Charles left and yet he managed to score 130 goals in 243 matches for them between the ages of thirty five and thirty nine with a dodgy knee!
Paul this is a test to see if the response goes directly to the blog
Sorry Anthony, I only came across this in the pending folder this morning, as you can see I did receive your message.
Paul