Cardiff City’s Development team recorded what I’m pretty sure is their largest ever win yesterday at Leckwith when they destroyed a hapless Colchester United side 7-0.
Alex Smithies, Matt Connolly, Loic Damour and Gary Madine, who have all played varying degrees of first team football this season, were all in the starting eleven and, apart from the latter named who missed the last few minutes after sustaining an injury which did not seem too serious, were all on the pitch throughout.
Given that they are a League Two club, it’s hardly a surprise I suppose to see Colchester propping up the table in the Professional Development League 2 southern section, but it’s hardly as if they are tailed off with no chance of climbing the table. Indeed, their total of ten points was only four fewer than we had going into the game and they are still only three adrift of last but one Watford.
So, although it was an experienced and strong (on paper at least) City side they were up against, you still would have expected stiffer resistance from the visitors than they provided – City did what they had to efficiently and they played some nice stuff at times, but, in truth, I must say that this was a thrashing which had more to do with the inadequacies of the beaten team than the brilliance of the winners.
That said, I can remember leaving our last home game at this level against the same opponents a half an hour early back in April because, in losing 1-0 to Colchester, City were turning in the display which typified their thoroughly miserable 17/18 campaign at this level more than any other. From what I saw that day, Colchester were well worth their win.
Therefore, even if you allow for the fact that the composition of teams can vary tremendously from one season to another at this level, a win like yesterday’s does offer evidence that there has been some progression from the City side this season, with the last six weeks to two months seeing a clear upturn in results.
Heavy pre Christmas traffic (it took me ten minutes to drive from the car park at Asda’s to the car park at the Athletics stadium – a distance I could have covered in a minute or two had I been walking!) meant that I missed the opening fifteen minutes or so and in that time Jacob Evans hit the post apparently.
The game was still goalless when I arrived, but, within about five minutes, City had scored twice (their goals came in batches throughout this game). On both occasions, the home team received a degree of help from the visitors with the first coming when Madine challenged for a high free kick but didn’t get much, if any, contact on the ball. However, the Colchester defence was distracted to such a degree by the target man that no one was anywhere near Jack McKay as he was left with a simple chance which he took by lobbing neatly over advancing keeper Coulter from around the penalty spot.
McKay has been with City for about a year now, but, after picking up an injury which sidelined him for months in his first home match for us, I’ve seen barely anything of him in that time. Yesterday, he played up all alongside Madine in what looked to me like a 4-4-2 diamond formation and revealed a decent turn of pace and mobility for someone who is only an inch or two shorter than his striking partner.
City’s second goal was a comedy of errors which started with McKay winning a corner after a run down City’s left. I know it was a corner because Colchester’s right back sprinted unsuccessfully to keep the ball from crossing the line, while McKay was happy for it to do so, but, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, the ref gave a goal kick. As it turned out, the official had done City a favour, because in an attempt to “play out from the back”, Coulter side footed his goal kick straight to Madine I think it was who was stood on the edge of the penalty area and he simply slipped the ball to the advancing Waite who netted easily for a goal which would have left former contributor to the Feedback section of this blog, Dai Woosnam apoplectic if he had seen it!
Those two goals were three minutes apart and the couple which ended the game as a contest just before half time were separated by about half of that time. For the first of them, a cross was half cleared to Lloyd Humphries who would show later on how good he can be when shooting from distance and I think a shot from about twenty five yards was what was on his mind when the ball was coming towards him, but, unusually for him, he let the ball roll under his foot. Humphries was able to recover though and, instead, dinked a ball to the far post where the unmarked Ciaron Brown headed home – the centreback was in such isolation that you automatically looked towards the linesman, but his flag was not raised and so City had their third.
That soon became four when Madine, who never really had the opportunities to add his name to the scoring list, tried his luck from about twenty yards. It was a well struck shot, but Coulter should have done better than palm the ball into the path of Waite who netted his second simple goal of the afternoon.
For a long time in the second half it looked like the match would peter out in the manner they so often do when a side has a lead of three goals plus at the interval – the unlucky Evans struck the woodwork for the second time with a header, but, that apart, there was little sign of a goal at either end in the third quarter.
However, on seventy one minutes, Waite completed his hat trick following some slick build up play in which Madine played a significant part – Waite’s angled finish was, by some way, the hardest of his trio, but he made it look pretty easy.
Ten minutes later came the goal of the game as Humprhies showed that shooting ability I mentioned earlier as he rifled in a beauty from what must have been something like thirty to thirty five yards out and sub Lawrence Wootton completed the scoring a couple of minutes later with a shot from about a third of the distance Humphries had scored from.
So, City repeated their achievement of March 2017 when they scored seven against Watford in a game played at Cardiff City Stadium – that one finished 7-1. Waite scored four that evening and, at the time, it was possible to see him getting some game time in the first team as the 16/17 campaign came to an end with us safe from the drop which had threatened earlier in the season.
That opportunity never came for the diminutive, but talented attacking midfielder who can also operate as a striker and, as he ended a frustrating 17/18 season playing left wing back in the Welsh Youth Cup Final, I couldn’t help thinking that he would never get a first team game.
However, after impressing Neil Warnock in pre season training, Waite played forty five minutes in the friendly at Rotherham in July. If, as I assume we will, we go down the road of playing a weakened team in the Third Round FA Cup tie at Gillingham in a few weeks time, wouldn’t it make more sense to give players like Waite, Cameron Coxe and one or two others from the Development team (I’d also like to see one or two from the Academy team in the squad as well, but I’m probably pushing my luck there!) a chance rather than the assortment of jaded senior players who are not in the first team for one reason or another whose performances in such games in recent years have strongly suggested that they would rather be somewhere else?
