Six decades of Cardiff City v Burnley matches.

Posted on April 11, 2019 by The other Bob Wilson

Six questions about Saturday’s opponents going back over the past half a century or so, I’ll post the answers on matchday morning.

60s.

The player pictured in the foreground of this odd photo which shows four men all wearing different kits (!) went backwards to go forward in his Burnley career. Starting off at the Turf Moor club, he established himself in the first team over the second half of the 60’s after something of a false start. A new decade brought a new opportunity as he moved on to the site of a ship that enjoyed its greatest moment over a century and a half earlier, but a desire to return home saw him leave after a couple of years for a ground which is not the celebration of acne that first impressions may suggest it is. His final three teams are all either former Football League clubs or they have returned to the competition after a spell out of it. Two of them are on the same side of the country and have the colours white and black featuring prominently in their kits, while the other, the team he finished his career with, were always regarded as something of an outpost on the other side of England – his one season with them turned out to be their last in the Football League as they played their last match in the competition in South Wales, but can you name the player?

.

70s. Mixed up head of television went on hike and ended up with someone who arrived at Burnley via their great rivals and a bunch of confectioners, with a short stop off in Mexico along the way.

80s. The word “perseverance” probably best sums up the career of this man who enjoyed a 100 per cent winning record from the three appearances he made for City against Burnley during this decade. Starting off at a lofty meadow, he moved on to a ground which ends with the letter x and his sole goal for his new club gave them one of the biggest surprise victories in the top flight of the decade. After a loan spell at a seat of learning, he went on a three venue tour of south Wales (Cardiff being his last stop) before arriving just over the border at a county town. His league career looked to be over after that, but he came back to turn out for the team that used to play at the Feethams and some red and white scamps. More non league football beckoned, but he played one more game in the Football League for one of the first sides Neil Warnock managed, before he came back to Wales to turn out for Merthyr, Inter Cardiff, Aberystwyth and Rhayader among others – who am I describing?

90s. Who is this future manager of Banbury United who played in a winning City team against Burnley during this decade?

00s. Can you identify this long serving (by today’s standards!) current manager from the following description?

This defender served his local club for the best part of a decade. His only goal for them came in a 1-1 draw at Leicester which also saw him put through his own net. A near £1 million fee took him across country to a team of blues who were soon promoted to the Premier League and he must have taken great pleasure in returning to the city of his birth to score in a 3-0 win over another side that play in blue. His new club were surprise qualifiers for Europe in that first season back in the top division, but things went nowhere near as well a year later and he was soon back in the equivalent of the modern day Championship where he saw out the rest of his career. Burnley were his final club as he spent three seasons at Turf Moor – one of his appearances for them at Ninian Park saw a pretty spectacular collapse by the visitors who ended up well beaten in a game which saw three City players make their debut for the club

10s. This international captain played twice for Burnley against us during this decade (both games were drawn) and scored a hat trick last weekend – who is he?

Answers

60s. Colin Blant was initially picked as a centre forward for Burnley, but, after having only modest success in that position, became a far more effective centre half for them before being transferred to Portsmouth. A move back to Lancashire was not a success as he admitted his transfer to Rochdale was a mistake and he did better at Darlington, the team he played more games for than any other. He then had a short spell at Grimsby before his career ended with a season at Workington, who were relegated from the Football League in May 1977 – their last match as a League club was a 1-0 defeat at Newport.

70s. Keith Newton was a member of England’s squad for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico who played for Blackburn and Everton before ending his career at Burnley in the late 70s – his name is an anagram of “went on hike” with a letter t from the “head of television”.  

80s. Steve Mardenborough started off at Coventry and then signed for Wolves for whom he scored the goal that beat mighty Liverpool at Anfield in January 1984 at a time when his team were bottom of the league and heading for relegation in a season which they only won six times. He had a loan spell with Cambridge, before signing for Swansea, then Newport, before arriving at City for whom he scored once in his two years at Ninian Park. His next stop was Hereford United and then after a time in non league football, he resurfaced with Darlington, Lincoln and Scarborough before his return to south Wales.

90s. Kevin Brock.                             

00s. Birkenhead born Colchester United manager John McGreal played for Tranmere and Ipswich before signing for Burnley in 2004. In January 2006, he was part of a Burnley defence which conceded three goals in five minutes at Ninian Park as they lost 3-0 – two of City’s goals came from Steve Thompson, who, along with subs Ricky Scimeca and Guylain Ndumbu-Nsungu, made his first appearance for the club that day.

10s. Canadian international Scott Arfield was in the Burnley teams that drew 2-2 and 0-0 with us in 15/16 and scored all of the goals in Rangers’ 3-0 win at Motherwell last Sunday.

Posted in Memories, 1963 - 2023 | Tagged | Comments Off on Six decades of Cardiff City v Burnley matches.

A round up of the last week.

Posted on April 10, 2019 by The other Bob Wilson

Regular readers will know that the summer months on here see me doing a series of weekly reviews which, in an essence, consists of a round up of the week’s more believable transfer gossip and a round up of other Cardiff City related news, such as announcements of pre season friendlies, league fixtures for the upcoming season etc.

Well, as we come to the end of yet another long delay without a match and we enter a final phase of the campaign where the games come, relatively, thick and fast, I wonder if I should have made such round up’s a regular item over the past few weeks when the notion of Cardiff City actually playing a first team game was something of a novelty!

I’m afraid the latest blank weekend made our relegation all the more likely as Burnley conceded an own goal inside the first five minutes and then cashed in on a very charitable Bournemouth team’s generosity to leave the south coast with all three points as they won 3-1. That victory lifts Sean Dyche’s side to thirty six points and means that City will, in all likelihood, have to win half of their remaining matches to stand even a remote chance of finishing above them. In truth, Burnley will go into Saturday’s match, which was being billed as a real relegation dogfight, knowing a win will, surely, keep them up as their awful looking final four matches appear more and more to be an irrelevance.

The sliver of good news was that Southampton lost 3-1 at home to Liverpool, so they are now five points above us with a better goal difference, but they have played the same number of matches as us. Unfortunately, the Saints have a very decent looking run in and have the buffer of a home game against relegated Huddersfield to end their season on – I just can’t see us finishing above them now.

Despite them having played a game less than us, Brighton now look the most catchable team for me, but with Bournemouth and West Ham currently pooled with the two relegated sides as the best opponents you could wish for, this weekend’s home match with the Cherries looks almost like a banker. Chris Hughton’s team do have a tough looking run in, but I think we are now in the territory where City need a minimum of nine or ten points from eighteen to stand a chance of staying up.

3-1 was a popular result over the weekend as both our Under 23s and Academy team suffered away defeats by that score. The Development team went down at Birmingham where Stuart O’Keefe scored a late consolation for a side that, just as it had done a few days earlier in a goalless draw at Watford, featured an awful lot of trialists.

There’s a home game against Bolton to end the season for the Under 23’s on Monday night. Currently, they sit eighth in a ten team league and, even with a win in their finale, that would appear to be their likely finishing position – so, for a second consecutive season at this level, I find myself asking what is the point in our Development team playing in it’s current format? It certainly doesn’t “develop” first team footballers.

Two or three years ago, Brentford ditched their Academy and Development sides and opted for going ahead with a B team. One downside of this idea would appear to be be that the London side’s B team squad does not get to play matches where there are league points at stake, but a look at their fixture list shows a frequent and interesting line up of opponents.

Based on what I’ve seen of our Under 23 team over the past two and a half years, I’d welcome something like Brentford’s B team idea, but I do appreciate that our location would probably make it difficult to compile a fixture list that compared favourably with theirs.

One thing I certainly wouldn’t do is follow Brentford’s example of scrapping their Academy though despite the fact that our under 18s are ending their season in very disappointing fashion. They are currently coming to the end of a spell of five matches in a fortnight in which the absence of important injured players has been keenly felt.

In my last piece I mentioned the unlucky 2-1 defeat at Sheffield United the Academy side had suffered on the day the first team were beaten at Manchester City, but it was a horror show on the Saturday I’m afraid as they were beaten 3-1 at Crewe against a team that had lost their previous nine matches and were at the bottom of the Northern Section of the league.

Dan Griffiths put City ahead, but Crewe soon leveled and in the second half City fell away badly as they conceded a couple of goals and had Keenan Patten dismissed for two yellow cards. Ironically however, on the day they gave what may well have been their worst performance of the campaign, it was confirmed that City had qualified for the end of season Play Offs because the only side that could catch them, Millwall, had also lost form at the worst time and had suffered consecutive defeats (yes, by that 3-1 scoreline!) at Barnsley and Charlton.

Leaders Ipswich were hammered 4-0 at Sheffield Wednesday, but, with City unable to take advantage, they maintained their two point lead over us. City were able to cut the gap by one point and end their losing run by drawing at Bolton 1-1 yesterday as Dan Griffiths (the lack of alternative scorers to him in recent games has to be a big contributory factor towards our poor run of form) scored a late goal to equalise the one we had conceded a couple of minutes earlier, but it’s now only two wins in ten for the Academy team and you have to think their chance to win the title has gone.

City have one last game, at home to Burnley on Saturday, in their regular season before the Play Offs which, if they follow the format of previous seasons, will consist of a one off Semi Final almost certainly away to Leeds or Sheffield Wednesday (we’ve beaten the former and lost to the latter in the last month) before a Final which I believe is due to be played on the ground of the team from the Northern section if one gets through.

Blaenrhondda were undoubtedly the team out of those covered on here to prosper most in the past week. Firstly, they continued their transition into a lower scoring, more defensively solid, outfit with a 1-0 win at Penrhiwfer AFC a week ago, thanks to a very late goal by Huw Bowtell. Things got better for Blaenrhondda despite them not playing over the weekend when promotion rivals Cornelly United and FC Cwmaman were beaten by already promoted Porthcawl and Tonyrefail BGC respectively – Tonyrefail are the best side I’ve seen Blaenrhondda play this season and they are coming up on the rails with a late run as the latest table shows.

Finally, Ton Pentre were once again heavily beaten at home, this time 4-1 by Llantwit Major, and, with only four games left to play, they trail last but one placed Goytre, who have played a match less, by five points – Ton were spared relegation after finishing bottom last season and it’s looking pretty certain that they’ll have to hope for something similar this time around.

Finally, it’s been revealed on social media that Steve Tucker, who wrote about City for Wales Online for what must have been a decade or more, has passes away.

I posted the following on a City messageboard this morning as a tribute to someone was always well worth a read, whatever he was writing on.

His music taste suggests he couldn’t have been much older than fifty
(I subsequently found out he would have been 53 tomorrow) – I’m really shocked by this news.

Thanks for posting that link because I think it goes a long way to support my view that Steve Tucker was a better, and very funny, writer on the world in general than he was on football. That’s not to say he was poor when it came to writing about the game in general and Cardiff City in particular by any means (what came over when he was writing about City was the fact that he was such a fan), but I used to love his columns before he became a football writer first and foremost at Wales Online and his articles in that link brought back memories of his earlier stuff.

One thing is for sure, if I was asked to name all of the people who have written on Cardiff City for the Western Mail and Echo since I first saw us play, Steve Tucker would be one of the first names I’d come up with because bland he most definitely was not!

RIP.

Condolences to his friends and family.

the link I referred to can be accessed here .

Posted in Football in the Rhondda valleys., Out on the pitch, R.I.P., The kids., The Premier League, The stiffs | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on A round up of the last week.