Cardiff City reach the halfway point of their league season tomorrow and, if the Chairman’s remarks at the start of the campaign were representative of Boardroom feeling, there are going to be some frustrated and angry Board members around the place this morning. Whatever the situation at the club though, the seven decades quiz goes on (except when we play Wycombe!) and although our next opponents, Rotherham United, are a side we’ve not played too often in my City supporting life time, there have been ample matches between the two sides in the last fifty seven years to enable me to set a quiz in the usual format – I’ll post the answers on Sunday.
60s. The football world mourned the death of Tommy Docherty yesterday and the controversial Scot had a spell as manager of Rotherham – what was the score in the only match City played against a Docherty managed Rotherham? Also, Docherty signed someone who was playing as a midfielder in Central League (reserve team) football who undoubtedly was his finest signing for the club, who?
70s. Who was the forty four times capped international who scored a match deciding goal in a game between the two clubs during this decade?
80s. A few years after this forward’s brief and forgettable City career came to an end (he made his first start for us in a match with Rotherham), there was a documentary narrated by John Peel about his birthplace which had its own “scene” or “beat” – not bad going for a Scottish town with a population of around 20,000. The most famous purveyors of this beat were a band named after a character from a children’s TV programme who had a top five hit with a cover of a Rolling Stones song. As for the player, he departed City for Caerleon – who is he and can you name his musical birthplace and the band with the top five hit?
90s. What was the combined age of City’s scorers in the “Zois match”?
00s. Rotherham defender best avoided on a golf course perhaps? (7)
10s. Church in need of wide football boots? (4,9)
20s. Only red washing for this summer signing. (3,7)
Answers
60s. Tommy Docherty managed Rotherham for much of the 67/68 season – in typical style, Docherty would say “I promised to take Rotherham out of the Second Division – I did, they got relegated”. On 20 January 1968, Rotherham were 2-0 up at Ninian Park at half time, but goals from Ronnie Bird and a first for the club by sub Leighton Phillips enabled City to escape with a draw. In the Rotherham defence that day was Dave Watson, who would go on to win over sixty caps for England, who was playing in midfield for Notts County reserves when Docherty had signed him a few weeks earlier.
70s. City were beaten 1-0 at Millmoor during their 75/76 promotion season – the match was decided when Mike England put the ball into his own net.
80s. Will Foley made his first start for City in a 3-2 home loss to Rotherham in March 1986 in front of a crowd of just 1,863. Foley was born in Bellshill a small town situated a couple of miles away from Motherwell. According to Wikipedia, Bellshill was “an indie rock hot-spot in Scotland” in the late eighties and early nineties and the Bellshill Beat “was celebrated by influential DJ John Peel in the Channel 4 television series Sounds Of The Suburbs”. The Bellshill Beat’s most famous exponents were probably the Soup Dragons (named after the character in the Clangers) who made it into the top five of the British charts in 1990 with a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “I’m Free”.
90s. The Zois match is so named because the most memorable thing about it now is that it featured the one and only appearance for City by an Australian goalkeeper called Peter Zois. To put it mildly, Zois’ display in a 2-2 draw played in February 1998 was erratic, but he went on to have a long career, mostly as a second string, with a variety of clubs in the Netherlands and Australia, so maybe he wasn’t quite as bad as he looked in his one outing for us. City’s goals that night were scored by Steve White and Andy Saville who were thirty nine and thirty three respectively at the time, so they had a combined age of seventy two.
00s. (Chris) Swailes.
10s. Kirk Broadfoot.
20s. Wes Harding.
