Cardiff City mauve and yellow army.

With Germany playing games and other countries announcing restart dates, it seems a football of sorts will be fairly commonplace soon even though it still seems ages away to me in the UK despite players now being back training at Premier League and Championship clubs.

Testing at these clubs has identified a few players in the Premier League and a couple in the Championship (both at Hull City) who have the virus, something which doesn’t seem to be putting off the desire for a start sometime early next month that I’ve been reading about.

Anyway, for now it’s just quizzes to report about on here – here’s the latest one with the answers to be posted on Friday;-

1 I’ve heard it said that there are more footballers with birth dates early in the school year than there are with ones late in it – something to do with them being bigger in their academic year than those born later. Having seen a list of the birthdays of players in the current City squad who have played a league game for us, the evidence that this is the case doesn’t appear to be too strong, but how many of our players have a date of birth in May?

2. South American born, he offered a completely different approach to the position he played in compared to the person who most frequently played there for us in recent seasons. At twenty three, he was certainly older than most when making a first team debut, but he became a regular at his first club over the following four years. His move to Cardiff represented an upheaval and he only stayed one season amid some reports that his family were struggling to settle in the area. Maybe this was a factor in a drop in form from a fine start which saw him at his best as City tried a tactical approach that the manager at the time was quite a fan of, but, with a return to a more traditional system under a new boss, his place in the side was no longer secure and it was no surprise to see him returning to where he had come from, albeit with a different club. He stayed with his new side for another four years before retiring at the age of thirty three – who is he?

3. He had played nearly four hundred times in the Football League by the time he turned out for any one else but a London team. When he did try somewhere else, he did so at a place that suffered greatly in the blitz during the Second World War. He had tried his hand at management (and would return to it, with much more success, later) at his next, lower division, side by the time he turned up at Cardiff as part of what could be described as a short tour of selected south Wales footballing venues. He was next associated with a Victory for a while and then he was in quarters before a permanent switch to management, can you name him?

4. A sotonian by birth, he turned up first at a place with an alliterative ground name in London, but not for too long. He did better at a club that’s location has a connection with the stadium he had previously played in and his good form earned him a move to a city which includes the word “upon” in its name. He played for City next and generally did well when injuries allowed him to play with his only goals for us scored against what I would call local rivals and the team he first played for. He played in Hong Kong for a while after leaving us and then returned to south Wales to play and coach at non league level – he was also an occasional spectator at Ninian Park during that time, but who am I describing?

5. Who is this – most of his City goals were scored in the FAW Premier Cup, but he did find the net for us in the league in a romp which saw six different City players score and against men who deal in protein fibre, while he was the match winner at a venue with its own railway station where a current Championship club used to play. He was loaned out by City to play outside Great Britain at United Park and enjoyed more scoring success at each of his three west country clubs – he returned to Ninian Park with one of them to score a goal that he didn’t want to celebrate.

6. Described by a team mate at his first club as “A very gifted centre forward, lean and so quick but unusually with a sharp brain to go with it! He would take a row with a centre half in his stride and yet out-think his opponent, and he was incredibly fit too”, he had an unusual international career for a few reasons, but he scored at almost a goal a game during it and netted four times in an international tournament held in Rome. His Cardiff career ended abruptly following an encounter with a horse’s shoulders, can you name him?

7. This quote comes from a former City player and he’s talking about another former player of ours – can you name the two men?

“For a lad of 26 years of age this is a terrible thing to have to do, but …….. has suffered not only on the football pitch but off it. A good footballer like …… doesn’t leave his problems behind in the treatment room and eventually the problem permeates everything you do and can become intolerable.

“I’ve worked with ……….since he was fourteen, so to say I’m heartbroken for him is an understatement but his decision has been taken with this club in mind. He could have asked for a third operation without the guarantee of it eradicating the pain and resolving the problem, carried on getting paid, and left us short of a player as the season began, but he is such a humble, decent guy he felt that he owed us as a club, and me as his manager and friend, more than that.”

8. Rod in Brine makes landlord/hairdresser (6,4).

9. Crane in Rio by the sound of it (5,6).

10. The answer is sixty eight and it didn’t change during the last match we played, what is the question, which refers to Cardiff City 19/20?

11. With a father who was a champion in another sport, this nomadic striker played in five different countries. Starting off by a river in the Midlands, Swansea were interested in him when he was released, but he decided he didn’t want to move that far and dropped into non league football instead. Strangely, he was prepared to come to Wales for his next move and his exploits for two clubs down here helped him find a way back into league football with United blues. After coming a long way south, he briefly returned to Wales on a temporary basis to play a few games for a struggling City team, but made no real impact and after another loan move to a club further down west than the one he was contracted to, left the Football League never to return. He went abroad to play, firstly, for a side City had faced in European competition a couple of decades earlier and then to another country to play for a club in its capital and then one in its north west area. After that he returned to his native land to see out his career playing as a centre back – he had not reached sixty when he died a few years ago, can you name him?

12. There is a connection between Zsa Zsa Gabor, Arnold the pig and a City striker from the nineties, what is it?

13. Sharing his name with someone who joined the England one cap wonder club in 1966, this full back arrived at City from a team in sky blue whose nickname makes it sounds like they are a bunch of nutters. His five league appearances for us came consecutively, starting at the Valley and ending with a match where two of our players scored five times between them against one of their former teams. His only other appearance came in a Welsh Cup Final defeat shortly before he left the game to become a trainee architect, who is he?

14. What individual club record was equalled in a home game with Mansfield at Ninian Park in March 2003?

15. . Described as “strong, powerful and technically good” by the manager who signed him, this striker with a couple of full caps, proved to be far from strong during his time at Cardiff. Unavailable for some time due to an injury he suffered at his previous club, he lasted less than a quarter of an hour on his debut before picking up a further knock which kept him out for another six weeks. His next first team chance came when he was introduced as a substitute late on in a game in London which we lost to a stoppage time goal and that was the end of his career at the club – after a season away on loan, he moved on during the following summer to play in a city which is one of the homes of an organisation which has one less member this year and is currently going around and around on loan, do you know who he is?

16. Name the season – a website I use describes the City team that year as “dour”. There are only three debutantes, one being an expensive signing who generally gave his all to the team, but I remember him most now for the acrimonious welcome he got from the home fans when he returned to Cardiff with another Welsh team. The other players given their first matches were a midfield player who arrived from the Midlands via a place associated with a singer who died in Cardiff in 2005 and a winger who had been released by a south coast club that would soon be making their first visit to the top flight – the new men managed three league goals between them out of the total of just forty one we scored, but at least one of them provided supporters with some bragging rights in what was a pretty nondescript campaign.

17. Did he put any vest on when he played for us? (4,5)

18. Explicit men of the cloth? (5,7)

19. Fifth Beatle turns up at Ninian Park in early twenty first century?

20. Four players in the current City squad have scored one goal this season, who are they?

Answers

1. Curtis Nelson is the only player in our squad who was born in May. As far as the theory about the school year goes, Matt Connolly, Will Vaulks and Isaac Vassell were all born in September and Joe Ralls and Callum Paterson were October births, but November is the only month that does not have any of our squad born in it.
2. Surinam born Winston Faerber played just short of one hundred and fifty times for Den Haag before signing for City in the summer of 1999. He was, perhaps, the best player in the side in his early weeks with the club as City made a decent start in the third tier after their promotion in the previous season. Playing on the right in a three at the back, wing back system used by Frank Burrows, Faerber scored in his second game as City won impressively at Oxford, but he and the side began to struggle in the weeks that followed. When Burrows left, his replacement, Billy Ayre, decided on a 4-4-2 system which meant that Faerber’s defensive weaknesses left his place in the team vulnerable – City went down and Faerber returned to the Netherlands to play for Den Bosch in the summer.
3. One time England captain Gerry Francis returned to QPR for a second spell after a couple of years at Palace before moving to Coventry City in 1982. He became Player Manager of Exeter City at the age of thirty two, but it was solely as a player that he was taken on by City for a none too successful spell in the poor 1984/85 team. It was a struggle for him at Swansea as well and he left to join Portsmouth and, finally, Bristol Rovers before becoming manager of that club.
4. Dave Roberts was born in Southampton and signed for Fulham as a teenager in the sixties. After playing just over twenty matches in three years he moved on to Oxford United (the Oxford v Cambridge boat race passes Fulham’s Craven Cottage ground) and he did well enough there to gain the first few of his seventeen Welsh caps. Hull paid a big fee for him in 1975 and it cost City £70,000 to bring him here three years later. Injury meant he only played forty six times for us with his goals coming at Bristol Rovers and then in a home win over Fulham. After playing in Hong Kong, he was a player coach with Barry and Bridgend.
5. Christian Roberts was loaned to Drogheda United while with City. Scoring league goals for us in a 7-1 win over Doncaster, a defeat by Macclesfield and a 1-0 victory at Boothferry Park Hull, Roberts scored at a decent rate for Exeter, Swindon and Bristol City for whom he scored in a 2-0 win here in 2002.
6. Bobby Brown won caps for England at amateur level and represented Great Britain at the Rome Olympics in 1960 scoring four times in his three matches. His career was ended on Boxing Day 1967 when he suffered a cruciate ligament injury in a collision with Aston Villa goalkeeper Colin Withers (a horse’s withers is the ridge between its shoulder blades).
7. Neal Ardley talking about Jon Meades – Ardley was Meades’ manager at AFC Wimbeldon when the latter was forced to retire at just 26.
8. Ronnie Bird.
9. Derek Brazil.
10. The number of yellow cards received by City in all competitions this season.
11. Paul Bannon’s father was a three times all Ireland hurling title winner and his son started his football career at Nottingham Forest before moving on to Corby Town. His goalscoring for Ammanford and Bridgend persuaded Carlisle to sign him and he played nearly one hundred and fifty times for them whilst scoring forty five times. He next signed for Bristol Rovers and was loaned to City by them in the 84/85 season. He didn’t score in his four matches for us and was then loaned to Plymouth before he moved to Holland to play for NAC Breda. His next side was PAOK Athens and then he moved on to Larissa before finishing his career in Ireland by playing as a centreback for Cork City and then Cobh Ramblers.
12. Zsa Zsa Gabor’s sister Eva was a leading character in the American comedy series Green Acres that ran from 1965 to 1971 which also featured a pig called Arnold. Chris Greenacre scored twice for City in eleven appearances during the 97/98 season while on loan from Manchester City.
13. Gordon Harris signed for City from Forfar Athletic (the Loons) in March 1965 and played in the game in which we beat Swansea Town 5-0 at Ninian Park thanks to a hat trick from Ivor Allchurch and a couple of goals from John Charles. His last match for us came in May of that year in a 1-0 defeat by Wrexham at the Racecourse in the Second Leg of a Welsh Cup Final that we eventually won in a replay.
14. Robert Earnshaw equalled Stan Richards’ club record for the most league goals in a season by a player when he scored the only goal of the game against Mansfield on 21 March 2003 – he claimed the record for himself six weeks later when  his goal earned us a 1-1 draw at Crewe in the last match of the regular league season in 02/03.
15. Algerian international Idris Saadi was signed by Russell Slade in 2015. He made a favourable impression when coming on in a 2-0 home win over Reading some three months after he arrived, but a separate injury meant it was April 2016 before he featured again for the senior side when he replaced Aron Gunnarsson in the eighty second minute of a 2-1 loss at Fulham. Eventually sold to Strasbourg, he is currently on loan with Cercle Bruges.
16. The 1979/80 season saw City finish half way up the Second Division with a low scoring side that were hard to break down. Billy Ronson was a club record signing from Blackpool who scored the only goal in Swansea’s first league visit to Ninian Park in fifteen years, ex West Brom player Wayne Hughes was signed from Tulsa Roughnecks (Gene Pitney, whose song Twenty Fours hours from Tulsa reached number five in the UK charts in early 1964, died of a heart attack following a performance at St. David’s Hall fifteen years ago) and Mark Elliott who had been released by Brighton and made little impact in his eight first team appearances for us were the three players to make their debuts for us that season.
17. Tony Evans.
18. Frank Parsons.
19. Tony Sheridan is an Irish midfield player who played in a couple of FAW Premier Cup matches for City in 00/01, while his namesake is one of many people considered to be contenders for the title of the fifth Beatle – he was one of only two non Beatles (the other was Billy Preston)  to receive label performance credit on a record with the group, and the only non-Beatle to appear as lead singer on a Beatles recording which charted as a single (My Bonnie).
20. Curtis Nelson, Isaac Vassell, Leandro Bacuna and Gavin Whyte.