Ian Gibson (1943-2016).

8 Responses to Ian Gibson (1943-2016).

1. Richard Holt says:

   May 26, 2016 at 6:46 pm

   A lovely tribute Paul and one that does justice to such a great player as Ian Gibson. It’s probably because I’m about 3 years older than you that Barrie Jones just pips Gibson as my personal no 1 but both were fine players. One particular performance of Gibson’s that I remember was against Leeds in the 1972 FA Cup tie. Gibson had an outstanding first half – running Leeds ragged but I seem to recall Hunter and Bremner (doubtless following Revie’s instructions) kicking him out of the game come the second half. I’m not sure Gibson was ever quite the same player after that game.
   Incidentally I was interested to see that your picture came from the ‘Goal’ magazine. I still have every single edition up in my loft !
2. Dai Woosnam says:

   May 26, 2016 at 9:22 pm

   Paul,
   I was living away for a good chunk of his spell at Cardiff so only saw a few of his home games and probably more away games. But I echo your opinion/sentiment that he was a fine player.
   You make a good point re the fact we latch on to players in our formative years, and of course we lack the chance at 10 years to 14 years of age, to be able to look back and measure players against stars of yesteryear. Was Danny Malloy* as good a skipper as Fred Keenor? Did Steve Gammon have the engine of Billy Hardy?
   That said, I will stand by my 4 Greats in my lifetime: Danny Malloy, Graham Moore, Ivor Allchurch and King John.
   And I will tell you for why…
   Was it LP Hartley who said “the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”…?
   Well, let me borrow that opening sentence of The Go-Between, and put my gloss on it:
   Football 55 years ago was a different game: they played it differently then!

   That is to say that football back then was a LONGITUDINAL game: the best position to watch it was high up on the halfway line…as the ball flowed quickly from right to left and back again…a bit like today’s basketball games.

   But around about 1970, the game started its change into a LATITUDINAL game. The best position to see a game today is high up behind the goals …(provided you have a big screen at the other end to show you goalmouth incidents at the other end of the pitch).

   This way you can see Barca tiki-taka football properly, and fully get the best of watching the movement of players as they weave across the pitch. Kinda nice in a kaleidoscopic kind of way.

   But it is not what I call football.
   So I feel justified in claiming that my choice of my four heroes has nothing remotely to do with my youthful naivete …but just like Geronimo can be said to have led the last great uprising of Red Indians, so my 4 City stars presided over the sun setting on the Last Proper Football Empire.

   Today’s game is a travesty of what I knew as a boy.

   Will sign off now.

   Just a further word on siting of the main TV camera …
   Just as we would think it unconscionably daft to site cameras at Wimbledon high up level with the net, or at Lords high up at mid wicket, we bizarrely keep our football camera in the same position it was in for Stan Matthews and Stan Mortensen in 53.

   In soccer, we need to think outside the square…or rather, the line dividing the rectangle !!

   * You say “So, was Ian Gibson really that good? On the face, a mere two Scottish Under 23 caps seems meagre recognition for someone who is supposed to be the best player I’ve seen at Cardiff City”
   Malloy of course won two (at the most) caps for Scotland B.
   But then take heart: Vincent van Gogh only sold ONE painting in his lifetime !!
   DW.
3. The other Bob Wilson says:

   May 27, 2016 at 10:34 am

   Thanks both for your replies. Dai, if I accept your argument about longitudinal and latitudinal football, then the question which occurs to me is why did it happen? For me, the answer is simple – after years when the number of attack minded players in a team outweighed the number of defensively minded ones, the onset of the 4-2-4 formation in the late fifties, together with systems like Catenaccio becoming more popular, meant that the gaps which would automatically appear as defences struggled to stop overloads by the attacking team or empty spaces forming near their goal in the past were simply not there any more.
   Therefore, moving the ball from side to side to try and find that space they were now being denied closer to goal became a better option than playing it forward to where there were often twice as many defenders as attackers.
   England’s triumph fifty years ago also set the cause for attacking football back a few steps in this country in my opinion. The trouble with any successful way of playing football is that it spawns less talented imitators who also lack the spontaneity that the best sides have and so, especially with only two points for a win, you got more and more teams whose version of 4-4-2 or a sweeper system consisted of them sticking eight, or more, men behind the ball and showing little inclination in indulging in the basketball style game you spoke about.
   Certainly in his first season with us, Ian Gibson had plenty of massed defences to play against at Ninian Park and I remember that 1-0 became a regular scoreline in home matches as we closed in on the end of that campaign. I maintain that Gibson was good enough to play a leading part in breaking down the sort of massed defences that your four players never had a great deal experience of facing while they were at Cardiff.
   While I think people who saw them play can make a valid comparison between, say, Danny Malloy and Don Murray because the position they played in did not change too much during the sixties, I’m not sure the same can be said of those playing further up the field.
   I never saw Malloy or Moore play for us and, although I was too young to really judge his form for City too accurately, I cannot remember seeing John Charles do much to justify the glowing tributes I’d hear from my father whenever he talked about the man you call King John. It was slightly different with Ivor Allchurch though, because I’d say he was the first player I saw who made me concentrate on the match rather than the sights, sounds and smells going on around it – I can remember Allchurch scoring a great goal in a game against Newcastle (think it was probably about a year after my first match in October 63, so I would have been eight) and, after that, I made a point of paying attention to what was happening whenever he had the ball.
   Richard, although Dai denies it, I think your championing of the Barrie Jones cause makes me wonder if my theory can be amended to say that most football fans pick their “best player I’ve seen at the club” in their early teenage years?
   As for that Leeds match, my main memory of it now is of that save by Bill Irwin – at no time, did I think we had it in us to inconvenience Leeds much even on that awful pitch which must have been something of a leveller.
4. Dai Woosnam says:

   May 27, 2016 at 11:18 pm

   I remember Barrie Jones when he played for Swansea. He was SOME player back then.
   But his transfer to Plymouth Argyle (which I seem to recall – without googling – was at circa £45K, a record fee for both Swansea and Plymouth) set him back a bit.
   And I would never quite fulfil that astonishing early promise at Swansea…and at national level too. He was a world beater back in the early to mid Sixties…I recall another astonishing Cup run in 1964-5 (after their semi-final defeat the year before) and one night time replay at the Vetch against Stoke, when he was amazing. I saw every home game in that Cup run.
   Re tiki-taka…gee, watching Australia tonight, was sooo frustrating…!!
   Rolling the ball out, and getting immediately under pressure.
   And trying intricate crossfield passes and one-twos, instead of …ATTACKING.

   As for Don Murray the boy from Duffus…I recall seeing his debut at 17, and thinking him very promising indeed.
   And he put in some fine performances over the years.
   But was not in the same footballing UNIVERSE as Danny Malloy.
   Indeed, I would claim Paul Went was – marginally – a better centre half than Murray…and far less likely to be sent off …!!
   DW
5. russell says:

   June 2, 2016 at 9:18 pm

   Gibson was a superb midfielder one of my favorites,lucky to see him in such a golden era.
   Gutted when he left.

   RIP Gibbo the warrior.
6. The other Bob Wilson says:

   June 3, 2016 at 9:40 am

   I never thought of Gibbo as a warrior Russell, but the more I think about it, the more I see what you mean.
   Interesting words as usual from Dai – I think you’re right about the record fee for both clubs in the Barrie Jones transfer, in fact I believe it may have been a British record fee for a winger at the time.
   I’d guess that most supporters who saw them both play would place Danny Malloy above Don Murray, but my point was that I’d say you can make valid comparisons between them because the role they played in didn’t change much during the sixties, whereas I’d suggest it became harder for more creative players as the decade went on, because more of the eleven they were up against were, primarily, there to defend.
   I can remember Paul Went being thought of as an outstanding prospect when he first broke into the Charlton team and that Portsmouth paid an absolute fortune for him a few years later – thinking about it, I probably agree with you that Went was, just, better than Murray when both players were at their peak. However, I thought Went was some way from that when he came to Cardiff and, if anything, he impressed me more when he was moved up front and proved that he was a far better centre forward than Don Murray would ever have been!
7. Dai Woosnam says:

   June 4, 2016 at 10:25 pm

   Thanks for that, Paul.
   I had forgotten that Paul Went was tried upfront.
   I forget all sorts these days.these days.
   I was only laughing at the telly a few days ago when someone was saying that it is unheard of for a massive club like Villa being out of the top flight.
   Tell me…am I dreaming Paul, or did I really see City demolish them in Div 2 in the mid 70s…?
   Was it not 3-0…and didn’t Derek Showers score a hat-trick?

   I later called on Derek Showers years later, when he ran in a pub in Merthyr. I never had the guts to tell him that I always reckoned he should have played full back, and Phil ‘Joe’ Dwyer should have played centre forward.

   As you know Paul, I have long believed that players and managers invariably have blinkered thinking…that is to say, that the position a boy plays at 12, will almost always be the position he plays the rest of his life…and if he makes the grade, his CAREER.
   This just cannot make sense.

   A twelve year old runner, does not decide whether he will be a 200, 400, 800, 1500, 5,000, 10,000 metre runner the rest of his running life…let alone an exponent of the marathon.

   I just wish PT will experiment in pre-season training with switching players’ positions…!!
   Put Sean Morrison up front…I promise you, it will be a move that will get results.
   DW.
8. The other Bob Wilson says:

   June 5, 2016 at 8:14 am

   Pretty sure you’re thinking of Cardiff 3 Villa 1 on a very windy and wet Saturday afternoon over Christmas 1974 Dai – we got relegated that season and they got promoted, but we were 3-0 up at half time and coasted to our win. Your memory is playing tricks on you regarding Derek Showers though – he got one that day, think Jack Whitham scored as well. In fact, the only game I can ever remember Showers scoring more than once for us was when he got both goals in a 2-0 win at Charlton in our first match back in Division Two in August 1976.
   I agree with you completely about players getting experience of different positions at a young age – if it’s good enough for Ajax, then it should be good enough for us.
   Of the players you mention, Phil Dwyer was considered good enough to play centre forward for Wales against England (he scored as well) – I think he could have made a decent go of that position. Similarly, as Sean Morrison is far and away the best of our centrebacks when it comes to attacking free kicks and corners, I’d like to see how he could do over 90 minutes as a striker. Apart from Zohore, we didn’t have a target man for the second half of the season and, certainly while Connolly and Manga were both fit and available, it might have been worth utilising him there in an Under 21 game to see how he went (I saw him play in one in March when he was on his way back from injury and, as the main object of the exercise was to get him some match fitness, I don’t see it would have made too much difference as to where he played).
   Not sure about Danny Showers as a full back though – wouldn’t he have been too slow to play there? Interestingly, I’m pretty sure he turned out for Hereford at centreback for a while right at the end of his career – Danny was a bit of an enigma because I thought he was pretty good at so many of the jobs a centre forward has to do, except for the most important one unfortunately!

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