Contrasting fortunes for a City stalwart in two draws against Leicester City.

Posted on March 12, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

Two for the price of one this time as I recall two Ninian Park encounters with Leicester City from successive seasons in the late sixties and early seventies which both ended as draws but offered completely contrasting fortunes for a City player who became a fixture in the team over a period of six years from 1966 to 1972.

Dave Carver was signed for £11,000 from Rotherham United in 1965 and clocked up two hundred and sixty nine appearances in all competitions before leaving to join Hereford United in 1973. Although he played most of his football for City at right back, Carver also occasionally featured as a left back in the days before Gary Bell established himself in that position and during the period when we were promotion challengers to the top flight between 1968 and 1971, it was taken for granted that Carver and Bell would fill the full back slots (indeed, they only missed one league match between the two of them in the 1970/71 team which I rate as the Cardiff City side I have seen).

I can remember me and my mates giving Carver a hard time occasionally and, looking back, I think it was because we found him a bit boring when compared the ex winger on the other side of the pitch. At his best, Gary Bell was being mentioned as a possible for the full England team and a lot of that acclaim was down to his ability to almost double up as a winger by getting forward to beat opponents and knock good quality balls in from wide areas. Although Dave Carver was not like some full backs then who used to get a nose bleed if they crossed the half way line, he didn’t have Bell’s dynamism in forward areas and so we concentrated on that, slight, defect in his game at the expense of his strengths.

Carver (seen below wearing the number two shirt in the FA Cup Fifth Round against Leeds United in 1972) may not have been spectacular, but he was good at what a full back should be good at. A solid performer with good tackling ability, he was also, like many in Jimmy Scoular’s sides, able to mix it with his opponent if needs be, but most of the time his defensive qualities were good enough to cope with Second Division wingers without needing to step outside the laws of the game. I have already mentioned the versatility which allowed Carver to play on the other side of the pitch, but he would also find himself playing in central areas when he was occasionally given a man marking role by his manager (I can remember that Carver used to drive Rodney Marsh to distraction when he did that job in matches against QPR).

What you never expected from Dave Carver though was goals – that is unless he was scoring them in his own net and that is just what he did when Leicester visited Ninian Park on 13 September 1969 for a match between two sides who had made promising starts to the season. Leicester were something of a glamour side back then who had just been relegated from the old First Division despite having appeared in the FA Cup Final only four months earlier where they were beaten 1-0 by Manchester City.

Leicester had kept most of the players who had got them to Wembley and were generally regarded as favourites to go straight back up. With City. who were looking to improve on their fifth placed finish in 68/69, only having been beaten once in their first eight matches it wasn’t too surprising therefore that the Match of the Day cameras were there to cover the game – back in those days highlights of most home Saturday matches were shown on a regionalised version of Match of the Day on BBC Wales, but this was on national television.

However, Dave Carver must have wished the BBC had chosen another game when he diverted an innocuous looking effort into his own net around the quarter of an hour mark. After that City were faced with the prospect of trying to break down a visiting defence which included ex City full back Peter Rodrigues and future England international David Nish if they were going to get on terms and even when they managed to create a chance for themselves, they then had to beat the very highly rated young keeper Peter Shilton in the Leicester goal. It took City a long time to do this, but their pressure was eventually rewarded midway through the second half when John Toshack (who was to finish as the Second Division’s top scorer that season) nodded an equaliser.

A 1-1 draw probably satisfied both sides, but when City went to Filbert Street to record a 2-1 win just before Christmas it looked like they might be the better bet for promotion – especially when they went to the top of the table after beating Sheffield United 3-0 in a game played in monsoon like conditions 3-0 on January 10. However, hindsight shows that the crucial event of that season occurred just three weeks after the first game against Leicester when Barrie Jones broke his leg in a 3-2 defeat at Blackpool. The injury was so bad that Jones never played again and so in one fell swoop, City lost their main creative force.

While Barrie Jones wasn’t missed too much in the short term as City put together a run which saw them win nine of their next fourteen matches, his absence was clearly felt after that as only four wins were recorded from their final sixteen league games. With these matches only yielding seventeen goals and Toshack not finding the net at all after January, Jones’ absence was clearly felt at a crucial time – Jimmy Scoular tried to add to the creativity in his team by signing Bobby Woodruff from Crystal Palace for £20,000 in February, but, although Woodruff eventually proved to be a fine servant to the club, he could not stop a downward spiral that saw City finish the season tailed off in seventh place.

In saying that though, City only finished four points behind second placed Blackpool (in those days you got two points for a win) so they wasn’t too much wrong with the team and hopes were high for 1970/71 when Scoular added the richly talented midfield player Ian Gibson to his squad in the close season. Gibson’s arrival, for £35,000 from Coventry, had the feel of a final piece in the jigsaw and he was to prove a tremendous capture as, with Woodruff also settling in, City were in the thick of the promotion race right from the start.

Leicester had also missed out in 69/70 as they finished two points short of promotion in third place (only the top two sides went up in those pre-promotoin play off days), so, the feeling that this could be City’s year only grew stronger when Brian Clark’s goal gave them a tremendous win at Filbert Street on the opening day of the campaign.

However, by the time the teams met again on 17 October, there wasn’t as much confidence around – City were still doing well in fifth position, but poor home form which had seen the team win only once at Ninian Park so far was holding them back.

The game was, again, chosen for national coverage by Match of the Day and two good sides came up with a fine match, which had the bonus of late drama, provided by a most unlikely source, for the cameras. There were no after effects from a 4-3 defeat from 3-1 up by Middlesbrough in their previous match at Ninian Park as City put on a good first half showing which saw them deservedly leading when Ian Gibson converted one of only two penalties City were awarded that season.

However, it was a different story after the break as Leicester began to show why they had won five out of their previous six matches (they would finish the season as Champions). Future City man John Farrington (who was a much better player for the Foxes than he ever was with us!), levelled and veteran centre half John Sjoberg then headed the visitors in front as they closed in another win, but they were to be foiled in the dying minutes by Dave Carver of all people who fired a close range shot across Shilton for a dramatic equaliser.

Carver’s effort grabbed City a point and, although he also found the net in an FA Cup win at Sheffield United in January 1972, it was the only league goal he ever scored for us. The emergence of Phil Dwyer early in the 72/73 season effectively signalled the end of his City career and, after a short time on loan at Swansea, Carver was released at the end of that campaign to eventually finish his career at Doncaster in 1976 following his spell at Hereford.

As for City in 1970/71, the story’s been told often enough – just short of promotion in third place, a generation of supporters lost after the sale of John Toshack etc, etc, etc!

13 September 1969

Cardiff City 1 (Toshack) Leicester City 1 (Carver OG)

City Davies; Carver, Murray, Harris, Bell; Phillips, Jones (Sutton), Lea, King; Toshack, Clark

Leicester Shilton; Rodrigues, Sjoberg, Cross, Nisht; Brown, Woollett, Roberts, Glover; Lochhead, Fern

HT 0-1

Att 26,978

17 October 1970

Cardiff City 2 (Gibson pen, Carver) Leicester City 2 (Farrington, Sjoberg)

City Eadie; Carver, Murray, Harris, Bell; Gibson, Sutton, Phillips, King; Toshack, Woodruff; sub (not used) Bird

Leicester Shilton; Whitworth, Sjoberg, Cross, Woollett (Fern); Farrington, Manley, Kellard, Glover; Partridge, Brown

HT 1-0

Att. 26,088

Posted in Memories, 1963 - 2023 | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The day the penny finally dropped.

Posted on March 11, 2010 by The other Bob Wilson

The news that Cardiff City had been given a “final extension” by the High Court of fifty six days to come up with the money owed to the taxman prompted some melodramatic responses from supporters such as “TODAY WAS THE WORST DAY IN THE CLUB’S HISTORY”. I don’t agree with that, in fact, our Court appearance went better than I for one was fearing it would – I certainly wasn’t expecting us to be given as long as eight weeks to sort things out. What the day did do though was give us an idea as to what those who will decide our fate if we cannot find the money owed are thinking (the fact that we now owe more than the £1.7 million left to pay on our winding up order at the time of our last appearance in Court despite us having paid off half of that sum this week tells you all you need to know about how bad things are) and that made for sobering reading.

Any supporter who has been following our financial woes reasonably closely will have known that barring promotion (increasingly unlikely), outside investment (possible, but not to the degree that would see us emerge completely from the mess we are in) or a fire sale of players (out of our hands and unlikely to bring in as much as we require in the current financial climate) we would not be able to pay off the tax bills which are the cause of us being so close to liquidation. It has been clear for some while that Cardiff City is currently insolvent and has been for some months, but to hear experts in that field actually come out and say it brought home the magnitude of the situation we find ourselves in.

Council Matt Smith for HMRC commented that Cardiff City were “plainly insolvent” but it was Mrs Registrar Derrett’s remarks which really made me realise the seriousness of our position. The person who will pass judgement on us on 5 May if we don’t settle our tax bill said;

“On the face of it this company is not able to pay its debts as they fall due. The only basis, I’m being told, on which there is a prospect of this being resolved is through a third party investor, but there is no evidence before the court.

However, I take note that it is only the second hearing. I will grant an adjournment for 56 days and that is for settlement in full.”

A moment of unintentional humour was provided by Mr Smith who when telling of how the club had paid £850,000 off the debt before the Court by defaulting on ongoing PAYE and VAT payments remarked that Cardiff were “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.

There are increasing signs though that Mr Smith might have got it half right because it is beginning to look like the priority is to pay off other creditors before HMRC (the land deal which was being trumpeted as our salvation a month ago now seems to have been used as a way of reducing debts owed to the likes of major shareholders Paul Guy and Mike Hall) resulting in a state of affairs that would have a cynic thinking that the decks were being cleared before the club goes into Administration.

No, with the possible exception of the man currently over in Malaysia reportedly trying to secure the £6 million investment from Dato Chan Tien Ghee (TG) referred to in Court, it looks like all the major players at Cardiff City will have their own pockets rather than the well being of the football club as their priority over the coming eight weeks, so I think supporters have to prepare themselves for the possibility of a worst case scenario whereby the Official Receiver takes over on May 5.

Given the possible consequences for us, it was poignant to see Chester City FC wound up shortly before we appeared before the Court, but what also struck me was the way in which the Chester fans being interviewed about their club’s demise were almost treating it as a positive development and an opportunity to put things right in some way as their “phoenix club” looks to start all over again from the beginning of next season. Representatives talked of business plans and meetings with their local council with a view to the new club continuing to play at the Deva Stadium and it was clear that a lot of time and effort had been put into planning the way forward for a new football club in Chester.

Of course, even outsiders such as myself have seen what happened to Chester yesterday coming for a while and so their supporters have probably been planning for their new club for quite some time, but we have to accept that for Chester City on 10 March, it could, conceivably, read Cardiff City on 5 May – how would any City fans present outside the Court that day react if they had a microphone shoved in front of their face and were asked “so what happens now?”?

On the face of it, if the worst came to the worst, and we had to start from scratch again with a phoenix club, then my initial thought would be if other clubs have done it, why couldn’t Cardiff? To use Chester as an example, we have a much larger supporter base than them and I maintain that a cross section of that support would be better equipped to make a decent job of running the club than Ridsdale and co have done. You only have to see the level of expertise shown by some posters in messageboard debates about the club’s finances and various legal matters affecting it to see that it would be entirely possible to form a committee of supporters suitably qualified to run a modern day football club in a prudent manner. When you also consider that it would be a labour of love for most, if not all, of those involved, you also have to say that running costs would be a tiny fraction of what we currently pay to Peter Ridsdale and his cronies – I am convinced that given time a phoenix club run by the fans for the fans could eventually be as successful as others such as Aldershot and our neighbours at Newport for example.

However, when you see the depressing aftermath to the supporters march on Saturday which soon turned into a witch hunt against the Supporters Trust and, in particular one member of it’s committee then you fear that too many of our fans prefer to indulge in petty rivalries and point scoring than working together for the good of Cardiff City. I emphasise again that all my talk here of phoenix clubs is looking at things from a worst case scenario – hopefully, it won’t come to that, but even if it doesn’t, isn’t it of over riding importance now that the supporters try to present a united front over the coming weeks? Even if we come through the present storm, haven’t the last few months taught us that supporters have to at least have some sort of structure in place to fall back on if we face a similar situation in the future?

By all means keep on marching against the current Board and majority shareholders if you want to (I’ll be joining you!), but, essentially that is just a way of letting off steam against the incompetents in charge – I can’t help thinking we need to be working together and being more proactive than that.

I am going to borrow from our Chairman now (I don’t think there are many who can claim to have done that down the years!) to ask a question. Wouldn’t it be great if, rather than moping around saying “we’re doomed” (sorry Dr Pop!) , every Cardiff City fan looked in the mirror over the next eight weeks and asked themselves “what can I do to help my club today”? If enough of us just took a few minutes out of their day and did something that meant that we as supporters are better informed as to how we can play a more active part in the running of our club then I think we might be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Speaking for myself, a working life which has seen me acquire a decent knowledge of the Intellectual Property business and not much else rather restricts the impact I could make. However, having accepted early retirement last year and being in a position where my monthly pension means I don’t need to find another job immediately, I do have the spare time on my hands that others may not have. Therefore if, for example, somebody with the sort of expertise I mentioned above ever needed someone to research a City related matter which they felt might leave us better placed to become more credible as a body of supporters, then I’m your man – the next few weeks and months are going to be very testing and I just think we should be doing more than we are currently.

Posted in Up in the Boardroom | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments