Seven decades of Cardiff City v Barnsley matches.

Posted on August 5, 2021 by The other Bob Wilson

A new season and the same old quiz! Seven questions on Barnsley, our opening opponents in 2021/22, with the answers to be posted on here some time over the weekend.

60s. Starting off with his home town, this avian defender had a healthy scoring record, but he didn’t trouble the scorers so to speak at his second club among the sidings. He continued in red at Barnsley for three years, starting in 1964, where he was a semi regular. Next, he headed for a procession in a dip, staying there for a couple of years before heading for a club which was unique nominally at the time and there has only been one since then to match them I believe (neither side can boast the same claim to fame these days). He stayed with this club for the rest of his career and had a memorable, and prolonged, encounter with City while he was there which saw him score a hat trick of sorts – who is he?

70s. You could pack a dictionary with this Barnsley stalwart by the sound of it!

80s. Born in a place which now has a fishy troop, this midfielder didn’t travel far to join his first club where he did enough to earn a move to another seaside location for what was a big fee at the time. Although he didn’t leave them under the best of terms, he did endear himself to his second club’s supporters with a rare goal. He headed north to play in red after that, not with Barnsley initially, but he had four good years with them during this decade which ended with a falling out with his manager and a couple of moves to other clubs beginning with a B (one of which represented a short return to his roots) before moving abroad to play in the country where he lived until his death at a fairly early age. Can you name him?

90s. Did band play in key at dance in Barnsley (5,5)?

00s. A midfielder who won in his only appearance for his first club when they traveled north to Rotherham and won 3-1. His early senior experience came mainly from loans by dreaming spires, in a left sided dip and in half a dozen pastures. His career began in earnest when he signed for Barnsley as he became a regular during a two year stay which began with a game against City. Although you wouldn’t think it now, his next move probably represented an upward move as he switched to stripes in the east and he was part of a side that earned a promotion. Moving on to a place with a wonky belfry, he was loaned out to alliterative Wanderers and then teamed up with a mad dog in a home for insects before following the aggressive canine to the Spitfires for £20,000. His final club was in Wernham Hogg country, but who is he?

10s. In the Barnsley side for a high scoring game at Cardiff City Stadium during this decade, this loanee has been managed by twice Champions League runner up Hector Cuper during his career, who is he?

20. Possibly an instrument of punishment with medicinal properties?

Answers.

60s, Barry Swallow scored ten times in not much more than fifty appearances for his home town club, Doncaster, before moving out of Yorkshire for the only time in his career to Crewe for a couple of years that saw him feature mainly as a back up. Swallow was more of a regular at Barnsley between 1964 and 1967, but didn’t make it to a hundred appearances at Oakwell before moving on to Bradford City. It was at York (they and Yeovil are the only teams to have played in the Football League which begin with a Y) where Swallow really made an impact as more than half of his five hundred and fifteen league appearances came for them – in 1970, his own goal meant City escaped with a 1-1 draw from Bootham Crescent in a Third Round FA Cup tie, but, after another 1-1 draw at Ninian Park, Swallow scored twice at St Andrews in the second replay to help his side to a 3-1 win.

70s. Phil Chambers.

80s. Born in Fleetwood (home of the “cod army”), Billy Ronson signed for Blackpool as a teenager and was a club record buy for City in 1979. Never a prolific scorer, he did come up with the decisive goal in the first Cardiff v Swansea league derby at Ninian Park in fifteen years in April 1980, but he was booed relentlessly by City fans when he returned for his new club Wrexham in a Welsh Cup tie. Ronson was only at the Racecourse for a season before he moved to Barnsley in 1982, but a row with manager Allan Clarke meant that his days with them were numbered and, after a loan spell at Birmingham and then three more games for Blackpool, he headed to America where he played for a bewildering number of clubs (including Washington Warthogs!) before retiring. Ronson died at the age of 58 in Maryland in 2015.

90s. Nicky Eaden.

00s. Sam Togwell only played the one game for Crystal Palace who loaned him out to Oxford United, Port Vale and Northampton. He made his Barnsley debut against City on the opening day of the 06/07 season and was a non playing sub in the FA Cup Semi Final against us in 2008. Togwell next played for Scunthorpe, where he played a part in their promotion to the Championship in his first season with them. Togwell signed for Chesterfield in 2012 and there was a loan move to Wycombe before he teamed up with “Mad dog” Martin Allen at Barnet and then Eastleigh – he retired earlier this year after a spell with Slough Town.

10s. Sam Morsy was in the Barnsley team which won 4-3 at Cardiff City Stadium in December 2016 and was also in the Egypt squad (managed by Hector Cuper) in the 2018 World Cup Finals in Moscow where he was used as a substitute against Uruguay.

20s. Herbie Kane.

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Weekly review 1 August 2021.

Posted on August 1, 2021 by The other Bob Wilson

The first game against a Bath City team that had not played a game in months (it may even be years!) apart, Cardiff City’s pre season programme consisted of one match against a Premier League side, three against teams that are in League 2 (Division Four in old money) and two against a side that were promoted from that section last season (both of them lasted an hour against Cambridge United)..

Looking at it now from a distance of nearly four days, the 4-0 loss to top flight outfit Southampton does not seem as bad as it did at the time. It was some way short of a full strength City side that night and our opponents started out with a strong looking team and, arguably, had an even more powerful one at the final whistle.

No, the reason why I’ve been finding our warm up matches a cause for concern is that in our two games against Cambridge and in the ones against Forest Green and Exeter, a football fan who knew nothing about any of the sides involved would never have believed you if you had told them that in all four matches there was a side who were two leagues higher than the others back in May involved.

It wasn’t just City’s failure to make their alleged superiority count, it was that as each game went by, there was no sign of the gradual improvement in fitness, understanding and performance you would expect to see as a pre season schedule progresses.

So, there was just one game left to go, against our nearest neighbours Newport County at Cardiff City Stadium this afternoon, for City to allay those doubts – if it was possible to do so in just ninety minutes.

Well, I think City went some way to doing that with a 2-0 victory that could, and probably should, have been a bigger one. Newport passed the ball neatly at times and Alex Smithies, surprisingly picked in front of Dillon Phillips, was forced to make a fine first half save from a Matt Upson header, but this was what you would expect to get when a top half Championship side takes on a strong League Two team at home.

Unlike on Tuesday, City’s side looked very like the one you’d expect to see line up against Barnsley in seven days time for the first competitive game of the season. In my last article on here, I outlined the various injury/Covid concerns we had at that time, but things have improved on that score to the extent that Sean Morrison and Leandro Bacuna were able to see their first pre season action as they both played the first hour, Ryan Wintle came on as one of a raft of changes we made on the sixty minute mark and Curtis Nelson was on for the whole game.

Both of the goals were beauties in their different ways and exemplified an approach which was somewhat at odds with the crash, bang wallop stuff I spent so much time moaning about on here.

For the first one, which arrived around the twenty minute mark, City played up to their image at first with a Marlon Pack long throw that was half cleared by County back to the midfielder who, instead of lumping it straight back in, exchanged short passes with Perry Ng before picking out Joe Ralls some twenty five yards out who arrowed a left footed shot high up into the net beyond keeper Townsend.

The second one was scored late on and owed so much to a lovely bit of play by Ryan Giles out on the left as he faced up his marker and then jinked past him on the outside before delivering a perfect low ball into that really dangerous area between goalkeeper and central defenders which was touched in from six yards by the lively Mark Harris who made a good impression as one of the subs who came on for that final half an hour.

It really was a piece of play by Giles which promises much for the months ahead, because, it’s hard to imagine how it could be bettered when it comes to wide attacking play.

Giles was close to getting his first City goal when he shot just wide in the first half and then became one of quite a few of our players to be denied in the second half by fine saves by our former keeper Joe Day who was on as a half time sub.

Off the top of my head, Ralls, and subs Lee Tomlin and Will Vaulks were among those who were foiled by Day while James Collins also had a header cleared off the line. Also, in the dying seconds of the first period, Bacuna was guilty of missing a simple chance from about eight yards out with no outfield opponent within yards of him after Giles had picked him out.

Although we’ve still got Keiffer Moore and Josh Murphy to come back and I’m more optimistic about Giles as he offers that very rare commodity by Cardiff City’s standards, a combination of creativity and pace, I still can see us struggling to open sides up and I’m not just referring to his miss here when I say employing Bacuna  in a front three only tends to suggest my doubts are not misplaced..

Nevertheless, this was more encouraging overall from City – hardly beating Newcastle 4-1 stuff as we did in our final pre season match in our Championship winning 12/13 campaign, but evidence that the next nine months might not be as bad as the seventeenth and twentieth placed finishes I’ve seen predicted for us in the last twenty four hours.

Whenever I’m asked to predict at the start of any season where we will finish, I tend to reply that I might give an answer after the transfer window closes. However, with the transfer market having been very quiet throughout the summer, I’d say this, more than any other season, is probably one where I might be tempted into an opinion on the grounds that the various squads probably won’t look too much different in early September than they do now.

So, here’s a prediction of sorts for 21/22 – if there are no more new players to come in before the window closes, I will be very, very pleasantly surprised if we improve on last year’s eighth place finish.

However, with Gavin Whyte’s return to Oxford United on a season long loan deal confirmed today, we may see another newcomer if we’re operating on a one out, one in recruitment basis. Therefore, maybe we will see a Welsh international signing on the dotted line for us in the coming days, but will it be Marley Watkins or Gareth Bale?

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