With so many centrebacks from the Development squad going out on loan this month (captain Ciaron Brown’s move to Scottish Premier League side Livingston this week added to those of Paul McKay to Morecambe and Jack Bodenham to TNS, while there has to be the prospect that Matt Connolly’s move to Hull may be resurrected), I suppose it was inevitable that players from our Academy side would be drafted in to fill the gaps.
Therefore, it is likely that even without Craig Bellamy voluntarily stepping aside from his Under 18 coaching duties for now, what had been the norm with the Academy team since the start of the 17/18 season would be discontinued.
Whereas it was virtually unheard of for a player from the Under 18 team to be picked for the Development side for close to eighteen months, the last two games for the Under 23s have seen around half of the side consisting of regulars for the younger team that had led their league virtually continuously since August.
Therefore, I went along to the game at Leckwith against Queens Park Rangers this lunchtime expecting to see a few changes from the starting eleven I’d got pretty used to this season, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to see a team in blue barely containing anyone I recognised!
I did hear before the game started that the City side was hit by injuries and call ups for the Under 23s, but, having now seen the starting eleven and subs, I can say that there were probably only two or three who I would call members of our strongest Under 18 team involved.
Maybe once a few injuries clear up, the squad will have a more familiar look to it, but I think it’s probably fair to say that a decision has been made whereby important members of the Under 18 squad will finally be making the step up to the Under 23s. The upshot of this may well be a downturn in results for the Academy side which sees them lose their position at the top of the table and, possibly, miss out on the end of season play offs. However, I think that the situation we saw for the whole of last season and about two thirds of this one could not just drift on indefinitely and so I support the decision which appears to have been taken.
A visit from fourth placed Queens Park Rangers was sure to provide a stern test for the new look City side and so it proved to be. Indeed, the Londoners cannot be blamed for thinking that the better team had lost when the game ended in a 2-1 win for City after one of the most enjoyable matches I’ve seen so far this season.
There can be no doubt that the visitors had more of the ball, territory and chances over the ninety minutes and so, to that extent, there was a degree of luck involved in City’s win, yet, given the way this very young team battled, defended and then rose again after the heartbreak of a QPR equaliser with just ten minutes to go, I would say that they deserved what good fortune they had.
The early stages saw the sides pretty evenly matched, but it was the visitors that had what chances there were with a shot not too far wide and the first of what would be three or four good saves from keeper Jordan Duffey who certainly made a good impression in what I’m pretty sure was the first match I’ve seen him play at this level.
On the twenty minute mark though, City took the lead from their first serious attack as Connor Davies broke powerfully into the penalty area to pull back a low cross which rolled into the path of Taylor Jones who found the corner of the net from around the penalty spot despite the best efforts of Rangers keeper Mahoney to keep the shot out.
To be honest, from the moment they went 1-0 up, the match became something of a holding operation for City as Rangers probed for a way back into things only to find themselves foiled on so many occasions by defending and organisation of a standard you would not really expect to see at this level from a City team that was given their all to the cause.
Whenever Rangers might have thought they had worked an opening, there would nearly always be a City player getting a block in or winning a vital tackle and, when that didn’t happen, Duffey proved to be a dependable last line of defence – none more so than when he dived full length to turn aside a shot by Babajide that looked destined for the corner of the net.
City got to half time with their lead intact, but, in a side which must have contained a lot of players not used to forty five minute halves (they last forty minutes at most at Under 16 level and below), there were some signs already that some of the team were tiring.
Therefore, after a lively start which saw them mount one or two useful attacks, it was back to grim defence for the City as the game wore on. However, apart from one mad scramble in front of their goal which included another fine save by Duffey and was ended by a shot blazed just over the bar from about six yards out, there weren’t too many signs of the visitors coming up with a goal as their frustration grew against dogged and fully committed opponents.
Although you couldn’t help but admire City’s character and tenacity, the truth was that, as the match went into it’s last quarter, they were struggling badly in terms of ball retention as they tired and it was hard to see how they could see the job through to the bitter end.
Typically, just as I was beginning to allow myself to think we might just do this, Rangers equalised as they got in down our left and the resultant cross was knocked in by Douglas for a goal that was quite similar to the one we had scored an hour earlier.
Level with ten minutes left, the best City could hope for surely was to hang on for a draw because it looked like at least half of the team had nothing left to give.
Indeed, the lack of substitutions from the home side had been something of mystery given that the team sheet showed they had five of them available, but the truth was- the named substitutes had not spent the game sat on the bench, they’d been playing for the Under 16s!
So it was that City were finally able to make a couple of changes as the game entered its final five minutes, but not before another great save by Duffey had kept them on terms.
One of the replacements was Cian Ashton (one of four or five involved today who were new names to me), and just as the ninety minutes were up, he dramatically won the match on his first appearance at this level by moving powerfully on to a through ball and shooting past the advancing Mahoney via a post to clinch an unlikely victory for his team.
It’s going to be tough for these kids in the coming weeks as they compete against opponents who will, almost always,be bigger and older than them, but they have proved to themselves that they can succeed at this level and I must say, at a time of so much hardship and grief for Cardiff City, they did the club proud today.
Apart from Duffey, Connor Davies and Harry Pinchard impressed me most, but every City player deserved praise for their part in this against the odds win.
I had to drop into the Trust Office after the match and as I drove past the Fred Keenor statue and it was both heartening and sad to see about thirty people in the heavy rain paying their respects and viewing the tributes that had been laid for Emiliano Sala. Judging by the number of flowers, scarves etc. I saw, I think there must have been quite a few people who had come along this morning to add theirs because there were definitely more there than I’d seen in one or two earlier photographs of the scene.
Also, it’s being widely reported this afternoon that £183,000 has been raised already for a fund set up with the intention of continuing to look for the missing striker and pilot David Ibbotson following the calling off of the official search on Thursday.
On the other hand, the Premier League’s refusal of our requests, due to the unique circumstances involved, for an extension to our transfer window and a relaxation of the rule which says you can only loan two players from other clubs in this division brings home the nature of the true situation City find themselves in with the window almost closed and no one’s mind fully focused on football yet.
The awful events of the past week have, surely, made what was a hard enough task already for us to avoid relegation into a much more difficult one. However, a young group of footballers wearing the blue of Cardiff City proved today that they could defy expectations and battle through to succeed when so much was against them – they provided a fitting tribute today for Emiliano Sala in their own way, let’s hope our senior players can follow their example.
