Questions relating to every decade since the 60s on our next opponents with the answers to be posted on here on matchday morning.
60s. This forward would not be the first footballer you would probably think of when hearing his name, but he had a perfectly respectable career himself and served Barnsley well through almost a decade. Starting off with a stripey team from his home town, he came south to Barnsley and managed over fifty goals for them in close to two hundred and thirty appearances before signing for a team who had someone who could come and fix your boiler in their ranks. Scoring ten more goals than he did for Barnsley from a few more matches, he was able to adjust to the higher level he was now playing at with few problems and even managed a Cup Final appearance before he returned to Barnsley for a short, unsuccessful, stay which, just about, stretched into this decade. He finished off playing non league football for a coastal club that shared it’s name with a famous Bartholomew, but can you name him?
70s. This striker’s career did not turn out to be as successful as his surname suggested it would as it turned into something of a country wide tour of lower league venues with Barnsley being the only side he made much of an impact with. Starting off with non league Londoners, he did well enough with them to earn a move into the Football League with a team which played in maroon during the time he was with them. A scoring rate of just under one in two looked impressive until it was realised that he only played eight times for this club before he was off to Barnsley where he stayed for four years with appearance and goals figures which fell into the not brilliant, but decent category. The same applied to his record during a loan spell with a team of northern Friends in white who later signed him on a permanent basis. Two unremarkable years later, he made a nearly four hundred mile move to another team with distinctive colours that had seen better days and he saw out his league career there with a record of three appearances and no goals – who is he?
80s. Rest ye on this and you could end up a one cap wonder (4,4)!
90s. Horse with a health club membership by the sound of it!
00s. Who was the City player who was only on the pitch for three minutes in a game with Barnsley during this decade before suffering an injury which saw him stretchered off the field wearing a neck brace after an eight minute delay to the match while he received treatment?
10s. He played for City against Barnsley during this decade, but was advised to retire a few years later after his heart rate rose to just under three hundred beats per minute during his final game, who am I describing?
20s. Which current Barnsley player, originally from a village in Gloucestershire, had a trial with Benfica at sixteen?
Answers
60s. Dunfermline born Jimmy Baxter played for Barnsley and Tom Finney’s Preston (Finney was a plumber by trade).
70s. John Peachey, who played for Hillingdon Borough, York, Darlington and Plymouth Argyle besides Barnsley.
Well, the first thing I’d like to say about
today’s 2-2 draw at Cardiff City Stadium against Brentford is that I thought it
was one of the most entertaining Cardiff matches of the season. Yes, okay, I
could qualify that statement with something along the lines of “not that it had
much to beat”, but chawrae teg and all that, it was a match played in horrible
windy conditions with regular heavy downpours of hail and or rain between two
sides who approached it just as they should have – they both really needed a
win and they both went for it.
I say that mind, but it’s not quite true – City were passive, if not downright negative, in what was yet another poor start in this season of poor starts and conceded the first goal for the fourth home league match on the trot. This one was not from the first corner we had to defend like the ones against Wigan and Stoke, it was from the second, but it all gives more evidence to those who berate our concentration levels early in games and, for such a big side, we are alarmingly susceptible at corners.
Still City had little in the way of a positive response
and a second Brentford goal soon arrived – it was only after a scuffle in front
of both benches and the fourth official around the half an hour mark that got
the fans going and seemed to fire up the players that we shook the visitors out
of their unhurried control of proceedings.
That incident I mentioned earlier was the first in what were many which thrust referee Simon Hooper into the spotlight. Mr Hooper was, far and away, the main topic of conversation with the Cardiff fans who rang Radio Wales’ Rob Phillips phone in tonight and I think it’s fair to report that very little of what was said about the official was complimentary!
Conversation on the phone in tended to centre on
three incidents where it was generally felt that Mr Hooper had got things wrong
by making no decision, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to come over all Arsene
Wenger here and say that I didn’t have a good view of two of them and wasn’t
even aware of the third one happening!
In fact, I came out of the game thinking that Mr Hooper and his assistants were the latest in a growing list of poor performances from the men, and women, in charge which saw us coming off a lot worse than our opponents. John Brooks was very poor I thought in the Wigan game and his assistant on the Grandstand side of the ground had a shocker, Steve Martin was only a little better in Tuesday’s game with Nottingham Forest and now we have Simon Hooper with an assistant on the Ninian Stand side who got what was an obvious throw in decision wrong as well as giving Brentford the benefit of the doubt in the first half in a series of offside claims.
I was convinced we had got next to nothing from the referee and his linesmen today, but it seems I may have been wrong on that score if some of the opinions expressed on the phone in were correct.
Getting down to specifics, the incident that I
referred to earlier which led to Brentford Head Coach Thomas Frank being warned
by the referee was, apparently, sparked by a Will Vaulks challenge on Brentford’s Christian Noorgard that saw
the City man allegedly leading with his knee when making contact with the
visiting player’s back.
Rob Phillips and one or two callers were of the view that Vaulks was lucky to stay on the pitch as the referee, on the advice of the fourth official it seems, decided not even to administer a yellow card.
I can’t comment on this decision because I was
on the wrong side of the ground and basically didn’t have a clue as to what had
happened. When it came to the penalty appeal at my end of the ground, there
were a lot of bodies between me and the ball as a Vaulks long throw came into
the box, but I saw Sean Morrison go down heavily as he tried to jump up – it
looked like a penalty to me, but I’ve become reconciled to the fact that we
only get about one in ten given in incidents like this involving our skipper.
However, it was what then happened that got the pundits criticizing Mr Hooper – unfortunately, my view was obscured for what was an absolute stone waller of a penalty according to Jason Perry and Ivan Roberts when Junior Hoilett was brought down a few seconds later.
Roberts also stated his belief that Brentford
were denied a clear penalty when Morrison handled inside his own area, but this
was news to me as I had been completely unaware of any such appeal at the time.
Besides those three incidents, there was one
more that provoked a discussion between pundits and callers and that was when
Callum Paterson jumped for a header with Brentford keeper Raya. Paterson was
looking only at the ball as he managed to get above the goalkeeper to win the
header, yet he was penalised!
An exasperated Roberts gave his opinion on the
phone in saying it’s just not worth forwards jumping for the ball with
goalkeepers these days because they’ll nearly always be penalised. Similarly,
there was an inevitability about what happened when Paterson chased a through pass
as Raya advanced.
The pair slid for the ball on the wet surface
and Paterson appeared to have gained possession only for Mr Hooper to award a
free kick to Brentford as their goalkeeper rolled around in “agony” caused by I
know not what – again, the goalkeeper being protected when he shouldn’t have
been.
For me, both of these decisions went to exactly
why I felt like I did on the final whistle. The BBC’s match stats say that we
committed fourteen fouls to Brentford’s six, many of those fourteen were
dubious in my opinion and, just as in the Wigan and Forest matches, I had the
feeling that the referee was not being even handed in his decision making.
Furthermore, based on our last three home league
matches, I have a feeling that Paterson is becoming something of a marked man
with officials. The man City keep on returning to play centre forward for them
has a couple of habits which I do not feel do him any favours when it comes to
match officials in that he goes to ground very easily when challenged by an
opponent and also that he has a habit of “letting the opposition know he’s
around” with a series of niggly, late, challenges on defenders just after
they’ve cleared the ball.
Such things are hardly designed to maim or
seriously injure anyone, but I’m sure referees notice and remember these things
and Paterson suffers accordingly.
There’s a lot more I could write about today’s
officials, but I won’t at this stage, I’ll just close by making a few
observations about the reaction both online and in the mainstream media to
Simon Hooper. First, I cannot go along with the theory that he is a part of
some anti Welsh element among the refereeing community that is deliberately
making decisions against us and Swansea.
Secondly, the line expressed by a few people
online that Hooper has some sort of personal agenda against us seems very far
fetched to me. A penalty not awarded against Watford in a game we lost 5-1 is
the proof offered by those who stick to the view this one official has it in
for us, but when you consider our overall record in games Simon Hooper has
reffed us in, it seems pretty unlikely.
Today was the thirteenth time Mr Hooper has done one of our matches and, as of this evening, our record reads won seven, drawn four and lost two – as someone who generally tends to favour the cock up explanation over the conspiracy one in all walks of life, I just think he is one of a few officials we’ve had lately who had “a bad day at the office”.
Back to the game, I’d say Brentford are perhaps my second favourite Championship team because I like the way they play, admire their recruitment policy and we always seem to have good games against them, but I must admit I was a little disappointed by them today.
For me, the reasons why we were able to come back from 2-0 down to get a point were almost as much down to them as us. Having benefited from a goal scrappily conceded by us from a corner very early on and then a free kick cheaply and needlessly given away by Junior Hoilett which made the score 2-0, they tended to wait for things to happen rather than pursue the clinching goal.
The visitors, if anything, played better in the
second half, as they largely controlled the game and carried more of a cutting
edge, but, Alex.Smithies, unfairly blamed by some for being beaten by Mbeomo’s
excellent free kick I thought, made some
good saves when called upon and although we wasted many counter attack
opportunities with the careless and clumsy passing which has been a bane of our
season, we still troubled Brentford a lot when we broke.
Indeed, it was Joe Bennett who had the best
chance of the second period when he did very well to get so far forward to get
into a position where he was unmarked in front of goal some five yards out and
then not quite as well to knock the ball wide.
I’m not really convinced by a three man midfield of Vaulks, Joe Ralls and Leandro Bacuna because they seem too similar in style to me, but they did give us more energy. In some ways, we were like a lower league side giving a good account of themselves in a cup tie against a Premier League side because Brentford were much the more accomplished team when it came to ball retention and creativity.
However, from somewhere, we conjured up a lovely goal on thirty four minutes when we worked the ball patiently down the right and Albert Adomah was able to put over the best cross by a City player in our two home matches this week which Hoilett managed to nod in from eight yards out.
Our equaliser just over ten minutes later was not as easy on the eye, but it did offer further proof that Vaulks’ long throw is much more effective than anyone else’s at the club. Perhaps it’s something to do with the trajectory, or maybe it’s down to the pace he gets on the ball, but I make it that five of our last seven home league goals have come from them. This one was quite simple as Morrison back headed to the far post where Ralls got ahead of his marker to show again that he is, by some way, our,most likely goal scorer from central midfield by netting with a close range header.
Although it does grate with me somewhat that, as
a team that has spent more on transfer fees than the large majority of clubs in
this division over the past three seasons, we still look less proficient
technically than virtually every side we play – I’m afraid that’s what comes of
having a previous manager for whom sophistication meant having a slice of lemon
with your cod and chips. This is a squad put together very much in Neil
Warnock’s image, but today offered a tiny glimpse of what we saw in 17/18 that
proved this isn’t altogether a bad thing.
It was postponements all the way apart from that with the Academy team’s match at Charlton, Blaenrhondda’s home cup tie with Cefn Cribbwr and Ton Pentre’s home league match with Risca all falling victim to this weekend’s named storm – it was Jorge this time, but I have not had confirmation yet as to what next weekend’s is named.
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