A moments rashness by Gabriel Osho cost Cardiff City at least two points tonight as his lunge on Ewan Henderson saw him given a straight red card and this rime there was to be no repeat of their stroll to victory at Rotherham with ten men as they went down to a second successive 2-0 home defeat against Wycombe Wanderers.
If Osho stays on I don’t see us losing the game, maybe we end up with a 0-0 because Wycombe had defended pretty well for the first forty minutes and we didn’t have our shooting boots on, but that one act by a player who I’m afraid has shown himself to be prone to occasional lapses of judgment which have a habit of costing us changed the game completely.
Was it a justified red card? Looking at the message boards, opinions are mixed, but, for me, the key phrase here in the way that the modern game is officiated is “out of control”. Having now seen a replay of the tackle, it doesn’t look as bad as it did at the first time of asking. Seeing it live, I thought it was a definite sending off, but a second, closer look makes me understand why some are saying a yellow card would have been sufficient punishment.
However, I come back to the words out of control and I’m afraid that Osho was definitely that when he launched into his tackle and that’s why, if City are tempted to appeal the decision, I think they’ll probably lose.
For me, referee Carl Brook was inconsistent in his decision making – not for the first time, I find myself baffled as to how City end up with more cards than opponents who committed at least as many cynical fouls as we did and yet too often the ref decided that no offense had been taken place when the perpetrator was wearing Wycombe’s yellow..
That being said, to borrow the term which VAR was supposed to be restricted to, did Mr Brook make a clear and obvious error when he showed the red card to Osho? The answer has to be no – to use pundit speak for a while, Osho gave the ref the chance to get his red card out and he duly took it.
The next obvious question is was BBM’s response to having to play for close to an hour with ten men the right one? With the Rotherham example to go by, it didn’t come as a shock that our manager kept on attacking by moving Ryan Wintle back to play as a kind of centreback cum sitting midfielder which meant that the four attacking players were allowed to stay in the roles they were fulfilling when it was eleven v eleven even if they probably dropped a few yards deeper.
I must say I liked and admired the attacking attitude and it so nearly worked as City spent pretty long periods of the second half pinning the opposition back in the manner supporters have become used to this season.
However, when you look at how the all important first goal was scored with just over ten minutes to go, you do have to question how it was that the makeshift defender Wintle was faced with having responsibility for defending the red side of the pitch with Perry Ng miles up the park in pursuit of the breakthrough goal.
Given that Wycombe’s opener was a typical counter attack strike with a long ball into space which stretched an undermanned defence, you could be forgiven for thinking they were the team with ten men looking for some relief from the pressure they’d been under by playing a long ball into space for a forward to run on to.
Wycombe’s second goal was irrelevant really, it owed quite a bit to luck and to another dubious decision by Mr Brook to award a free kick against Joel Colwill and then, mystifyingly, showing him a yellow card. However, the goal that really counted could probably be put down to us looking for the three points late in the game having not made the type of substitution that nine managers out of ten would have done (i.e. bring on Calum Chambers or Will Fish within minutes of the red card being shown).
Therefore, the honest answer is yes, BBM got it wrong by reacting to going down to ten men like he did, but I’m not going to be too critical of him because I’m liking so much the type of team we are under him and it stands to reason that there are going to be mistakes made when playing in such a bold manner – if BBM was responsible for tonight’s defeat, then there are plenty of wins and goals scored which can be put down to his attacking approach..
Perhaps uniquely for this season, BBM named the same starting eleven and seven subs as the previous game and, in many ways, City played the first half in the same way as they did for most of the Exeter match. The difference was that, although Rubin Colwill, fresh from signing his new contract, was largely bright and accurate with his passing, the other attacking players were not quite as sharp as they’d been three days earlier.
The clearest example of this came when Omari Kellyman, who hasn’t looked quite right since returning from his groin injury, couldn’t sort his feet out when presented with a great opportunity within the six yard box. Colwill forced goalkeeper Will Norris into a diving save and Ollie Tanner was not too far wide with his shot after a lovely quick passing movement, but too many promising situations were wasted by an errant final pass or wayward shooting.
Wycombe had posed some threat on the break, but it was mainly a holding operation until the sending off – in fact that didn’t change much until about the hour mark when Wycombe began to show the first signs that they could cash in on their one man advantage as Nathan Trott was called upon to make some good saves with sub Junior Quitrina also firing narrowly wide.
However, Cian Ashford’s searing break which gave a lie to those who say he lacks pace, led to the best chance of the second period as he closed in on goal. The fact he was running with the ball so quickly made the chance that bit more difficult, but after his shot flew across goal and the wrong side of the post you couldn’t help thinking that he’d done the hardest bit already.
City had plenty of pressure after that and Wycombe definitely rode their luck at times, but, for the first time, it began to look as if the visitors might get the decisive first goal and it arrived when a long pass by Morley freed the sub Andre Vidigal who held off Wintle and calmly steered in his first goal in almost two years.
The second goal soon arrived as the harshly awarded free kick against the younger Colwill mentioned earlier was crossed in and after a couple of rebounds favoured the visitors, another sub, Cauley Woodrow headed in from close range.
Elsewhere, it looked like Lincoln’s long unbeaten run was coming to an end when they went down 2-0 early on at Huddersfield, but a goal in added time allowed them to salvage a 2-2 draw. City’s slip was hardly taken advantage of though by the only two teams who, realistically, could still catch us as they both could only draw at home – Bolton had a goalless stalemate with Doncaster and Bradford were held 1-1 by Mansfield.
A few hours earlier, the under 21s made it four games unbeaten as they came through a scrappy encounter at Leckwith against Fleetwood with a 2-1 win. After falling behind early on, headed goals by Alyas Debono and Charlie O’Brien from corners either side of half time gave us the points, but a fairly strong wind and what seemed like a lively pitch made for little in the way of quality football.
Paul compadre,
Good report as usual… not sure I would be as tough on the referee though, but I do agree that the Osho ‘red’ was probably a yellow. But guess who are to blame for it becoming a red… apart that is from Osho himself and that crazy 100 mph lunge?
Why… the home crowd of course. That mass gasp made the ref’s mind up for him.
As for Osho: he is clearly BBM’s pet love. After all, he is the only player he has paid money for… and alas has been a waste of money from the start. Three decent performances do not a season make. And how sad to see BBM reassuringly pat Osho’s back as he undertook his walk of shame down the tunnel.
I was expecting a close game after our earlier game with them at Adams Park, and that kamikaze tackle made it even tougher. For BBM then made things worse by not bringing on Fish, the one true centre-back we have. [Eh? What about our golden boy, Dylan Lawlor? He was playing centre-back, was he not?] Oh for sure Lawlor is very talented, but he is – in modern parlance – a ‘number six’ for me.
Wintle is a pretty decent midfielder, but loses too many 50-50 tackles to make him effective as a centre back.
So, that crucial mistake from BBM just compounded matters. Wycombe proved beyond a peradventure of a doubt that when BBM’s team confronts big strong physical opponents, he has no answer. He’d better get one quick, because Bolton and Huddersfield lie in wait… not forgetting a big Blackpool side who will want to give us more of the same on Saturday and perform the double over us.
This Saturday we will need to SHOOT. I lost count yesterday of chances to shoot that were spurned. I recall in the first half the ball coming to Wintle who was standing in the exact spot he stood when he crashed in that goal against Plymouth… and what did he do this time? He decided on an extravagantly optimistic pass to Ashford at the far post that predictably did not come off.
As for Ashford, comfortably our best player on the night, I can’t help but lament his miss after that outstanding searing break, early in the second half. But you could see he was going to miss by the way he clearly tries to bend it inside the far post… a mistake that Robbo duplicated with almost the last kick of the game.
Look, if BBM is such an ace coach, why cannot he tell players not to do this, but instead play a soccer equivalent of ‘percentage tennis’?
Take the Ashford’s miss. Now you will note that their keeper, unlike our keeper whose positioning for their opening goal – not for the first time in recent games – was highly suspect, (showing far too much of his goal to the scorer), gave Ashford no easy finish. All the more reason then for Cian to hit it hard and aim at the keeper’s left hand… percentage tennis if you like. Don’t look for glory goals.
But at least the boy did shoot. I credit him that. Far too often we tried little flicks when inside their third, instead of walloping the ball.
And then we let ourselves down with silly little passes in midfield, like the quite unnecessary 8 yard forward pass from Lawlor to Robertson, when Dylan could see that Alex had an opponent almost glued to his back… and what happens? Robertson who should never have received the ball in the first place, fails to control it and pulls back his man… and is rightly booked.
And as for the Joel Colwill ‘foul’… I agree with you Paul… it was never a yellow card. We have a specialist at using hands to pull back opponents, and that is the aforementioned Alex… this wasn’t your bog standard pull back.
Indeed even giving a foul seemed a harsh decision: one that was sadly to have fatal consequences, in that it led to the killer second goal. But we need a coach who will instruct his players not to use their hands to even momentarily try to brush opponents off… which is more or less what Joel did on this occasion.
Okay, Blackpool next. They will have watched a recording of last night’s game by the time they arrive at the CCS… and will surely be wanting to test Trott with their corners by crowding him and will be hoping he will flap at the ball as he did last night.
TTFN,
Dai.
Yes – if the Blackpool coach and players do watch a recording of last night’s grim game they will know what to do and how to beat us : encourage us to get on with passing and passing the ball across and back and across while presumably hoping that eventually one of our players will be able to pass the ball into the opposing team’s goal – our players should also watch a recording of last night’s match and look for the many chances to SHOOT which were ignored. Then learn what they should do in future to improve their chances of scoring.
Thank-you Paul for your comments on last night’s Wycombe (h) game. For the referee, Mr Carl Brook (Sussex), it was his first City game. In his 8 seasons as a referee he has officiated at no Championship games. That says a lot, doesn’t it? City’s performance was not near the levels of the previous game at Exeter. It was very much after the Lord Mayor’s Show, but I believe it will be one moment of unprofessionalism (by Osho) and the referee who will live long in the memory. Even with a poor performance from the man in purple and black, with better decision making we should have come away with at least a point from the fixture.
For the first half hour or so I felt Mr Brook did well. But the game, and his performance, changed dramatically with the sending off just before the interval. I have not seen the incident again so I will let others speak on whether it was a red or yellow. But within moments Robertson was booked and there was still time for the incredibly cynical pulling down of Ashford near the halfway line that went unpunished. There was no attempt to play the ball. And as the game progressed, increasingly it was his performance that became the main talking point. Dai, I’m sure had you been present at the CCS, you’d not be as generous about the handling of the game. His performance was the major topic of discussion. Even my wife, when asked about the ref, simply said: “He wasn’t fair. Was he?” And that is the sole responsibility of the officials viz to apply the Laws of the Game fairly and not to show favour.
I care deeply about the game. Even if we lose a match 4-0 that can be accepted when the referee is impartial and we are beaten by a better team. Some will say the official’s performance was inconsistent and that his bad decision making evened out. It didn’t.
Even with ten men City still managed 56-38 final third entries and 136-55 accurate passes in that final third but the host’s efforts counted for nothing. Clearly the moving of Wintle to centre back took away from our midfield play. Surely we needed to add the height of Fish to our ranks for the second period but it was just one of those games. Furthermore, not for the first time of late, the foolhardy decision by Tan not to sanction the addition of a second target man has cost City acutely. After the novelty of playing with a false nine has worn off we have now lost three of the last six games. How the Cardiff City of 2025-2026 are hamstrung by this inactivity in the transfer market. Yet again another two opposition centre-backs had an easier night than they should, even if it was against ten men.
Ashford was as good as Tanner was ineffective; Colwill (R) must have run a marathon or two when simplicity and use of the ball would have better served him and City. Kellyman was certainly not functioning, so going into the final 15 minutes why was Fish used in attack and Robinson (at #10) whilst Chambers brought on at the back? At the close of the game our back four was Ashford, Ng, Wintle and Scanlon. There was more than one fan last summer saying that we needed more experience in the squad. That still applies.
Corrected Text:
“Kellyman was certainly not functioning, so going into the final 15 minutes why was Fish NOT used in attack and Robinson (at #10) whilst Chambers brought on at the back?”
Thanks Paul,
As always I find it difficult to find fault with your balanced account. First class analysis again. I wasn’t at the game though I am hoping to get back to my pre covid aim to see at least one at home before the season ends. I will be brief.
I thought the refereeing overall was inconsistent and sometimes poor though I fully understand the red card. Osho needs to wake up and smell the coffee. You cannot lunge feet first out of control in a tackle and haven’t been able to for quite some time. He may deserve some forgiveness for a sudden rush of blood in certain circumstances but that was not one of them in my opinion. To be honest I am not that impressed with him at all as a central defender. A win v Blackpool is now essential for the sake of morale even if the sides below us are failing to take advantage of our lapses. Finally my thoughts on shooting: Overall I agree we need to do more from outside the box but last night I did not think the ball was ever in quite the right place to do that most of the time the crowd was shouting for it and hopefully a returning Salech will solve the problems we are having closer to goal.
Thanks for the replies all. I’ll limit myself to covering a couple of the points raised. First, I’ll raise a couple of counter points to Dai and Graham about our apparent reluctance to shoot. Whoscored.com’s stats
https://www.whoscored.com/regions/252/tournaments/8/seasons/10785/stages/24581/teamstatistics/england-league-one-2025-2026
for League One show that Bolton have 16.9 goal attempts per game which is, by some distance, the most in the division. We’re second to them though with an average of 14.9 per game, which is well clear of Bradford in third with 13 per match (Lincoln are eighth with 12.5 – another example of them making the most of their resources) and we remain the League One’s leading scorers. City have had 49 goal attempts in their last two games so, certainly against Exeter and Wycombe, I’d be questioning more the accuracy of our shooting rather than the frequency of it. Four goals from forty nine goal attempts seems low to me and, certainly on Tuesday, it felt like that at the time.
We’ve scored our fair share of long range goals this season, but it’s only with David Turnbull out of our squad that I feel a bit of confidence about him scoring when he lines up a long range shot in open play and, even then, my faith in him stems more from what he did in a Celtic shirt than a Cardiff one. To use Rubin Colwill as an example, he’s scored with two really good finishes from open play in his last three matches, but I had much more confidence in his long range shooting in open play when he was a teenager than I do now. Colwill’s goals from twenty yards plus out tend to come from free kicks these days, but when it’s in open play he often scuffs them – he forced the Wycombe keeper into a save with a shot from twenty yards plus on Tuesday, but, unless he was trying to be clever with his placement, it looked like he didn’t catch the shot that cleanly to me.
Dai has referred to it being reported that BBM seems to prefer his players to look for another pass as opposed to shooting from, say, twenty five yards out and that’s the impression I’ve got when listening to him. So, you can only assume that our manager was, for example, urging Calum Chambers to pass when he crashed in the matchwinner against Wigan and Perry Ng got our third goal against Luton. Clearly, the law of averages says that there must have been times when we would have scored with a long range shot if it had been attempted instead of looking for another pass to try and work a chance closer to goal. However, given the lack of quality in our general shooting from distance, I doubt it if there’s been many of them. By the same token, I can’t tell you how many goals we’ve scored as a result of one of players refusing to take on the chance of scoring with a spectacular long shot and opted instead for a pass which played a part in the creation of a goal, but I’m pretty sure our total goals scored would be quite a bit less than it is now if we had adopted a “shoot on sight” policy throughout the season.
The other subject is Tuesday’s referee. It seems to me that Steve’s wife summed it all up so succinctly when she said “He wasn’t fair. Was he?” That’s exactly how I felt watching Tuesday’s game and how I’ve felt in too many of the games we’ve played this season. Putting it brutally, we’ve had third class referees this season, but, then again, what can we expect when we’re playing in the third tier? My answer to that question is that we should expect mistakes to be made, but we should expect the officials to apply the laws of the game in the same way to both teams – for me, Carl Brook did not do that on Tuesday.
Steve mentions Mr Brook’s worst, but far from only, error when he talks about when we weren’t even given a free kick for a foul on Cian Ashford that was more cynical than Osho’s. I had my say on the red card in my reaction piece and I’ve not changed my mind in the last twenty four hours or so – the decision was on the harsh side, but Osho could have few complaints about it as he flew into a tackle which was always going to be a risky one and, furthermore, he did it in an area of the pitch where our goal wasn’t under an imminent threat. However, having taken the ultimate sanction available to him, Mr Brook then chose to ignore a foul a few minutes later which, in some ways, was worse than Osho’s – BBM’s booking came when he complained about yellow cards not being shown to Wycombe players for fouls similar to the ones which earned City players a caution (e.g. Alex Robertson). I had sympathy with BBM at the time and felt the same way later in the game when Joel Colwill was yellow carded for what I’m not even sure was a foul and then. to add salt to the wound, Wycombe scored their second goal from the free kick.
Finally, I will just touch on another matter brought up by Steve and suggest that if I was going to move one of our centrebacks to play up front in the chase for a equalising/winning goal, I think I’d probably opt for Lawlor.
Thank-you Paul, for your calm response to the MaYA fraternity postings after the Wycombe game. I wouldn’t disagree with anything substantive you wrote. My only slight point in not moving Lawlor forward is that in my view his calmness is needed at the back, particularly when Osho plays. On the issue of Osho he’d be my first choice to play as a striker, but by the time that option was needed, he was well out of the shower and dressed.
Thanks Paul for your summing up. Can’t disagree with much, but clearly I need to give my head a wobble when it comes to your interpretation of the stat you started your piece off with.
The fact that we feature so glowingly in the ‘shots stat’ is surely to be expected, and in no way runs counter to the view of Graham and myself that we are if anything, ‘shot SHY’… For was it not only the other day that Steve told us that we made more entries into the final third of the pitch this season than just about everyone else? Ergo, the really valid statistic is one that divides the number of shooting opportunities* by the number of shots taken… and then, I will wager that you will find we might even fall below Lincoln’s stat.
And the only other quibble I have with your very balanced summary, comes with your observation that Osho’s foul was less cynical than the foul on Cian that went uncarded. My response to that is ‘well of course it was… for Osho’s foul was not remotely cynical’.
We are comparing apples with oranges there. The adjective to apply to Osho’s lunacy is not cynical – it lacked the degree of premeditation that is required for something to be cynical – but Osho firmly deserved a yellow card (not the red he got, we agree) for an insanely RECKLESS 100mph… lunge.
And the next time he does it – and methinks there assuredly will be a ‘next’ time – please City fans, do not audibly gasp and put thoughts of it ‘deserving a red’ into the ref’s head. But also next time, please loudly boo the eejit off, and also boo BBM if he again pats his pet love’s back as he makes his lonely ‘walk of shame’ down the tunnel.
Talking of referees: I am disturbed that MAYA is occasionally resembling the fanzines of all 92 clubs in exhibiting the anti-ref paranoia that you will find in ALL of them… without exception. We are no more ‘hard done by’ than any of the others. Maybe ‘twas always thus…
What do I mean by that? Let me add chapter and verse…
The other day I watched a re-run of the whole of the 1966 World Cup Final. And two things seemingly jumped out at me. First, the fact that there was not a flag of St George to be seen… it was all Union Jacks… which was how it should be, since most of us Brits (Denis Law excepted…!!) wanted England to win… in my mind as a callow youth, I regret to say that the fact that my uncles Hayden and Reg had fallen to German bullets was still RAW in my mind… just as Maradona’s pro Malvinas comments after his handball had me mightily miffed so soon after the Falklands War.
And the other thing that jumped out of me was this curio… a song now long forgotten…
Twice the crowd burst into an innocent anti-ref song… that used to be sung at games all over Britain. I do know the original song, and wrote about it in MAYA about 10 years ago, but momentarily I have forgotten its title. I believe the football song was set to the melody of a familiar song of the 1950s. Billy Cotton Band Show perhaps? No… I am thinking of Cambridge United’s I’VE GOT A LOVELY BUNCH OF COCONUTS… and no, it is not that. Gee this is annoying me… the way my brain is going to seed. What is the betting that before the day is through, I will remember the original song?
Anyway, this is what the Wembley crowd sang that day in 1966… touchingly free from the expletives that are de rigueur in football songs today…
OH MY, WHAT A REFEREE
WHAT A REFEREE
WHAT A REFEREE
OH MY, WHAT A REFEREE
AND WHAT A ROTTEN LINESMAN TOO…
(Note that they did not sing it after the Soviet linesman signalled that questionable ‘over the line’ goal…!!)
But I cite that song as evidence that we in MAYA should not be ashamed of joining the other 91 clubs in what is clearly a traditional distrust of refereeing standards.
* Mike Herbert’s comment re few shooting opportunities presenting themselves the other night, was prima facie, a fair one. But I would be remiss in my duty to logic, if I did not point out, that the best goals often come from shots that take the goalie totally unawares… viz… they don’t come from an obvious shooting opportunity.
TTFN,
Dai.
Ah, mention of the World Cup in 1966 brings memories flooding back, Dai.
At the time, attending the local grammar school in one of the Gwent valleys, where it was rugby, rugby and rugby, I enquired of one of the more enlightened masters if he would organise a trip to a World Cup game. I was so surprised to learn that the school remarkably sanctioned the jaunt. A coach of boys from the rugby loving school set off to see the game at Villa Park featuring Spain v Argentina. One Antonio Rattin played for Argentina. The game in Birmingham was notable that in their following game Argentina and Rattin faced Alf Ramsey’s wingless wonders. Wikipedia sums up what happened at Wembley so beautifully:
“It was in the quarter-final match against the host team that Rattín was sent off by the German referee Rudolf Kreitlein for, ‘violence of the tongue,’ despite the referee speaking no Spanish. Rattín was so incensed with the decision, believing the referee to be biased in favour of England, that he initially refused to leave. As a way to show his disgust, he sat on the red carpet which was exclusively for the Queen to walk on. He eventually had to be escorted from the field by two policemen and as a final sign of disgust he wrinkled a British pennant before he was escorted out. This incident, and others surrounding the same game, arguably started the long-lasting rivalry between both national teams but, on the other hand, allowed for the institution of yellow and red cards into the football practice, a solution devised by FIFA after the spark that set off the incident.”
Ramsey’s words that featured as headlines in the national press afterwards viz, ‘Animals,’ further exacerbated relations between the two nations.
But that was not the only notable feature worthy of reposting. As our coach came to a halt at Strensham Services it was clear to the world and his wife that a coach load of school boys had entered the cafe for some food. One, Dewi Thomas, when it was time to give his order, proudly and repeatedly in a poor French accent, said: “Deux sausahhze eh chips.” [* spelling to approximate spoken word] A half crown was offered in payment. After young Dewi’s second or third attempt to give his order to the girl at the till, each time becoming more and more insistent, it was all those near him could do but to stifle laughter. Cutting a long story short not only did young Thomas (D) get his two plates of sausage and chips but also at the budget price of said half crown.
Incidentally, I still have all the English, Brazilian & Portuguese squads’ autographs from those World Cup Finals plus my World Cup Willie tie.
What memories.
Sweet story, Steve. I much enjoyed it. Loved your reminder of the fact that Rattin was sent off for ‘violence of the tongue’ by a German referee who spoke no Spanish.
I think we must have had the spiritual brother of strong-minded West German Rudolf Kreitlein, in East German fellow referee Rudi Glöckner, ten years later for that Yugoslavia game that turned into a riot.
Both referees left the pitch to heavy police escorts: the difference being that Kreitlein was being protected from Argentine players and officials, whereas Glöckner was being protected from being lynched by the Cardiff crowd… of whom myself and my then Mexican girlfriend, made up two of the number. It was only the second game of football my late friend Socorro ever saw… and it turned into a riot.
A riot that led to a ban on home games in Wales, and resulted in the FAW unwisely deciding for financial reasons that the vital World Cup qualifier against Scotland go to Anfield rather than Ashton Gate… which played into Scotland’s hands and was 80% full of Scots who vociferously appealed for that Joe Jordan fraudulent penalty.
And, re your fine recollections: I also hope your old classmate Dewi Thomas was not sick on the coach after the sausage and chips… trust me, I remember with some personal embarrassment the problem for the passengers who had the misfortune to sit ‘over the wheel’ in those old coaches, and I recall once as an 11 year old losing my lunch on the coach from Cheltenham as we came down Hafodyrynys Hill.
As for the quaint song… What A Referee… I have found the lyric… but trust me, we never sang any of the verses… and we totally changed the last two lines of the chorus at Ninian Park… circa 1961/2/3/.
Ah… those days when I had my blue and white wooden football rattle…!!
The ‘rotten linesman too’ bit is what I remember… part of the Folk Tradition, I guess of the hoi polloi habit of changing a lyric. (As shown by the way Pete McGovern – granddad of Alison, the MP – found his wonderful song In My Liverpool Home, brilliantly but cruelly changed into In The Liverpool Slums.)
Here is the lyric that Billy Cotton used to deliver…
https://tinyurl.com/ajsemsk3
And here is the barely listenable old shellac of Billy doing it…
https://youtu.be/lmUnv42Gk6c?si=-DklA9fpzyRktcrc
Oh and before signing off, will MAYA readers help me by answering some of the questions I posed as a final comment currently on Paul’s Exeter report page? Please answer on that page… so I will know where to look for an answer… should there be any forthcoming.
DW.
Dai,
Ah Billy Cotton and Dixon of Dock Green, when life was in white, black and grey and football was innocent. Things changed after England’s victory in 1966. The spectre of football hooliganism rose its ugly head and the Grangetown End became my second home.
I remember well that Yougslavia match. Didn’t the ref even threaten to abandon the fame because his nation’s flag was not flying outside Ninian Park? His performance on the pitch was disgraceful and the scenes that followed surreal.
Hafodyrynys Hill is still there though the worst excesses of bends, hills and its narrow nature have now been ironed out by new tarmac.
Young Dewi was a stoic fellow in the making and the contents of his meal did not issue forth in an upward trajectory on the journey to Birmingham.