A few things to report this week. For example, those of us who won’t be celebrating our sixtieth birthday again will have noted that the club’s pre season fixture list was completed with a significant game that will have sent us veterans back fifty six years to 1968 as we recall a Semi Final in the European Cup Winners Cup.
Almost certainly unfairly, I have had whatever the opposite of a soft spot is for HSV Hamburg ever since they beat us in the last minute of said Semi Final thanks to a goalkeeping blunder. It’s amazing to think that it all occurred more than half a century ago and I really should be more mature than to let the defeat fester for all of this time, but I’m not and I have to admit that it’s been a source of amusement to me that Hamburg have struggled so long and so unsuccessfully to get out of Bundesliga 2 since they were relegated in 2018 – especially as their City rivals St Pauli were promoted in 23/24.
Historically, Hamburg are one of Germany’s biggest clubs and it really does show that the Championship has a serious rival for the title of Europe’s top second tier in Bundesliga 2 – certainly, in terms of some of the stadiums you’ll find in the respective leagues it does.
There is another link between the teams in that they have both had Robert Glatzel leading their attack in the last five years. – if you looked solely at his record of eleven goals in fifty eight appearances at City compared with his sixty nine in one hundred and nine for Hamburg, you’d conclude that standards are lower at Hamburg.
However, that is to ignore a couple of things, Glatzel is back on native soil with Hamburg and, although I don’t remember anything to suggest he found it a problem to settle at Cardiff, you have to remember that we are a team that, Kieffer Moore apart, strikers tend to struggle to make an impact. Certainly in terms of goals scored ,- I would argue that this is down to the fundamentally defensive outlook that City have had since the time Glatzel played for us, but I say that while admitting that I have become somewhat obsessed lately with what I see as our boring style of play, so maybe I’m overstating things there – what I will say mind about our style and Robert Glatzel during his time with us is that it was not designed to play to his strengths.
All in all, Hamburg should be favourites when we meet them during our Austrian training camp on Sunday 21 July as their usual position near to the top of their strong league is higher than ours has been in our tough division for the last three seasons, but, perhaps, this will be nullified by the fact that it will be our fourth pre season game, we’ll be three weeks off our first league game, whereas it will be five or six weeks for Hamburg.
At under 21 level, things are taking shape with the announcement that twelve Academy youngsters have signed professional deals with the club – this is a few more than you’d expect normally and it tends to back up my view that the club have a very good crop of players around the age of seventeen/eighteen coming through currently, as is evidenced by the fact that two of them have already played for the first team.
The under 21s have already been boosted by the signing of four new players – Griffiths is a former Swansea goalkeeper, Ghabehan was at Port Vale for a portion of last season, Reindorf was, seemingly, very highly rated during his time at Norwich and Pearce had loan spells with Torquay, Weston Super Mare and Dover last season (intriguingly, Soccerbase says he also scored six times while playing twice for Eastbourne on loan, but i suspect that’s a mistake!).
New signings below first level then, but the summer continues to be a non event in terms of signings for the first team with the club denying any interest in either of two Icelandic international full backs who were linked with us last week. That’s it really, apart from some online hints that at least one potential signing is still involved in the Euros, so there won’t be any concrete news on that one until the country (almost certainly Turkey I’d guess if there is something to this rumour) concerned has been eliminated.
It’s also being said by some online that it’s doubtful whether we’ll hear anything positive on new signings before the week in Austria. if true, this is far from ideal because we’ll have played half of our pre season games by then and the time available for integrating them into the squad for the start of the league campaign will be limited.
I’m going to finish with another sport and mention Glamorgan’s incredible tied game against Gloucestershire which ended on Wednesday. There is so much I could write on this game, but I’ll just point out that at lunch on day one, Gloucestershire were 88-8 after being put in by Glamorgan – have a look at the scores from the game to see how it developed from there.
There’s a schoolboy error at the start of the piece, but, otherwise, it’s a decent report on what happened on an incredible last day which saw the action continued right down to the final ball of the final over – in that respect I suppose it was a proper tie.
It was Glamorgan’s first ever tied County Championship match and reminded me of a great book from around forty years ago called Cricket’s Fifty greatest matches (or something very similar to that). It featured reports on fifty games from throughout the game’s history with most of them being played in the County Championship. From memory, Glamorgan featured just the once – it was from the year following that game against Hamburg mentioned earlier when the County Championship title came to Wales for the second time in 1969.
Again, the game went right down to the last ball, with Glamorgan beating Essex by one run thanks to a run out. The win came very late in the season and it made Glamorgan favourites to win the title. Their victory was duly confirmed when they beat Worcestershire at Sophia Gardens a few days later. In terms of significance, the Essex game was the more important given that we seem to be heading for a mid table season this year because we cannot turn draws, or ties, unto wins, but I’d still say that last week’s game was the best in Glamorgan’s long history in the County Championship.
Thanks Paul, for reminding us what a fantastic website ESPNcricinfo really is. As a boy supporting Glamorgan at both Cardiff Arms Park* and St Helen’s**, I was never without my Playfair Cricket Annual… but this phenomenal website with its plethora of hyperlinks, is my regular Playfair Xmas present to the power of TEN…!! And the literary style of this website is engagingly HUMAN… it does not seem to be pages compiled by a computer.
I have had this website bookmarked since it arrived on the scene… and it is to my shame that I do not regularly dip into it. It is just BRILLIANT.
*yes, I remember Don Shepherd trying to smash the windows of the posh flats in Westgate Street. He always batter at #11… and was invariably the most entertaining aspect of the whole 3 days…
** gee… I note that the Ospreys are due to redevelop St. Helen’s as this next season will be their last at what I will always call The Liberty. That will be sad to think that where Garfield Sobers and Malcolm Nash created their ‘over of history’, will now bear little resemblance in 2025 to the glorious green oval with its open terracing of 1968.
DW
Yes, I don’t make as much use of Cricinfo as I should Dai. I have every Wisden since 1972 and, although I don’t read and use them as obsessively as I did twenty and thirty years ago, they still tend to be my first port of call for cricket stats.
I must say, I preferred watching cricket at St Helens to Sophia Gardens as it was a unique setting on the county circuit. I’m just thinking, I’ve seen Glamorgan play at Abergavenny (a lovely ground), Merthyr, Ebbw Vale (another favourite of mine), Neath, Newport, both Cardiff grounds and a second team game at St Fagans, but Swansea was probably my favourite. I can remember the first time I saw Ian Botham in the flesh must have been about 1978 – I was given a day off work to sit a civil service exam in Swansea and I rushed through that to make sure I got to St Helens as soon as possible to watch Glamorgan play Somerset – Somerset were a right bogey team for us at the time, but, from memory, we had them in quite a bit of trouble until Botham smacked a hundred at better than a run a ball in the second innings that paved the way for what was a pretty easy Somerset win in the end I believe. However, it was an occasion where it was hard to be too upset at your team getting hit to all parts because you were watching a genius in action.
Loved your recalling of 1978 and the young Botham in majestic form at St Helen’s.
As for your impressive list of favourite Glam grounds visited (a list that puts mine to shame); I realise you were too young for the Cardiff Arms Park days, but surprised that you never saw them on their annual visit to Ynysyngharad Park in Pontypridd. As a small kid it was where I first saw them play… catching the Ponty bus from Porth, armed with my half ton of sandwiches packed in greaseproof paper.
DW
Oops… I have just spotted a howler in what I just sent…
Make that ‘Ynysangharad Park’.
Apols.
DW
I saw a few games during the last two or three years of Glamorgan’s time at Cardiff Arms Park Dai, I can recall a match against Northants which was something of a top of the table clash where Glamorgan were bowled out for about 120 when chasing around 135 to win, but my main memory was the first day of a tour match with New Zealand in 1965 I think it was when there was a big crowd there and I was in a huge queue for Richie Benaud’s autograph at lunchtime. Tony Lewis scored a hundred that day whivh came at a time when he was in good form and there were plenty of calls for him to be selected for England – it looked like he was going to miss out on playing international cricket until he was selected to captain a tour to India and Pakistan in 1972 I thunk it was late in his career. .
No, never got to see a game at Pontypridd, I always seemed to hgve something else on when there was a match there – it was always something that I was going to get around to doing, but I must admit that a feeling that it always seemed to rain when Glamorgan played there also had something to do with it!