Seven decades of Cardiff City v Norwich City matches.

I wonder if Aaron Ramsey had the riot act read to him after his pre game media conference for mentioning that City had been relegated? It’s not uncommon to hear from clubs at either end of league tables to talk about the “p word” and “r word” being banned in the closing weeks of a season, but City don’t seem to be alone in being reluctant to mention the latter even after the fact!

I could get increasingly angry at this being yet another example of modern day football clubs not realising what they signify within the area in which they’re based (and to the thousands of exiles who no longer live in the locality) as they fall into the trap of using corporate speak and treating supporters like customers of a shop. I admit that I was angry when I read City’s Twitter feed using the term “will be competing in League One” last Saturday after relegation was confirmed.

However, as the days have gone by and the club continues to find different, less brutal, ways of saying we’ve been relegated, I find myself laughing at how pathetic it all is. Until Tuesday, the only confirmation from anyone at the club that we’d be competing in League One because we’d been relegated came from Ramsey again when he spoke at the Player of the Season awards held hours after the West Brom match.

Tuesday saw statements released almost simultaneously from.Vincent Tan and the club. Our owner managed to mention that City had lost their place in the Championship, while the club statement spoke of us leaving the Championship and it being the first time in twenty two years that we would not be in the top two divisions, but neither of them could quite bring themselves to mention the r word! Can I urge all concerned at the club, bar Aaron Ramsey, to take a deep breath, keep calm for a few seconds and then quietly say “we’ve been relegated” – the effect will be cathartic!

Anyway, on to what Tuesday’s couple of, very brief, statements actually said. Apparently, we’re going to have a “a thorough period of review across several structures and practices”. According to Vincent Tan, “This review has begun and involves the Owner, Board, Executive Management and stakeholders. It will culminate in the appointment and announcement of a new permanent manager and management team that can sculpt and coach a competitive squad through pre-season and into the 2025/26 campaign.”

I’m afraid to this increasingly cynical fan who has reached the stage where he has been worn down by fifteen years of damaging mismanagement of the club under Vincent Tan’s ownership, that just reads as “more of the same”. I should retain some optimism though that at this lowest point in his decade and a half with us, our owner might finally, finally have realised that he does not know better than everyone else when it comes to running a football club and, maybe, we will at last start putting ourselves on an equal footing with the competition by not behaving like a very eccentric outlier.

On to the final quiz of the season then with a confession that it’s going to be interesting seeing if I can come up with two sets of seven questions for each of the teams we’re going to be facing next season!

I’ll post the answers on Sunday.

60s. Details are sketchy on Wikipedia for another of those players with a unique surname in that I’ve not come across another footballer in the domestic game with it in the sixty plus years I’ve been watching football. I remember him as a winger and can tell you that his career took him on what I’d call a pretty extensive tour of the eastern half of England with, probably, just the one dalliance with the west side and then I might be wrong in saying that. He played for two Yorkshire clubs, one on the coast and one inland on grounds that no longer exist. His second club saw him, perhaps, cross to the west as he found himself on the coast again with a team which would have had the longest name in the league at that time. From there, he stayed in the south to play on a pitch for men of the cloth perhaps and then, after the second of his stays in Yorkshire, he had a couple of years at Norwich. He won a title with his final club as he wore stripes in what could be described as England’s equivalent of Dundee before a broken leg meant he finished with football, but not with Rugby League which he played to a decent standard after his retirement from the round ball game. Can you name the player?

70s. I’m pretty sure this forward is another with a unique surname. He started off close to his birthplace with a team that had fallen on relatively hard times compared to what had been happening quite recently, but left for Norwich before a nadir was reached. He was a regular starter at Carrow Road in his three years at Carrow Road before a few months spent in a City synonymous with a form of music which would surface around a decade later. His next move took him to what was probably the closest league club to his birthplace and he moved into the veteran stage of his career during the four years he spent with them. There was then a loan move into the lower divisions to wear red on a ground that wasn’t named after a City scorer in a famous Semi Final! He finished his playing days at a club that once had our most recent manager in charge of them, but can you name the player being described?

80s. Curse Eve with consumption? (5,5)

90s. Historical ladies clothing item precedes crop top!

00s. What is the connection. between a Christmas novelty record sung by, among others, Nat King Cole, the Chipmunks, Danny Kaye, The Platters and Dick Emery, a Norwich player from this decade who scored over 200 league goals and Kevin Muscat?

10s. Another connections question. What is the connection between Norwich City in one of our promotion seasons in this decade, Everton’s Championship win in 69/70 and Luton Town?

20s. Which member of the current Norwich squad has also played in white for for the Ravens, in red for the Wings and in yellow for the Wands?

Answers

60s. Charlie Crickmore started out with Hull City before signing for what was then Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic. He next moved to Priestfield Stadium, Gillingham before a move to Rotherham. Crickmore was with Norwich from 1968 to 1970 and then was part of a Fourth Division Championship winning Notts County squad (Meadow Lane and the City Ground in Nottingham are the closest together club grounds in England, but they’re nowhere near as close together as the couple of hundred yards which separates Dens Park and Tannadice in Dundee).

70s. Chingford born Jimmy Neighbour started with Spurs in the late 69s as they entered a period of decline following their League and Cup double early in the decade, but he left for Norwich just before their relegation in 1977. Neighbour spent a summer in America with Seattle Sounders before signing for West Ham. There was a loan move to Dean Court, Bournemouth before he finished his playing career for Cheshunt who were later managed by Omer Riza.

80s. Steve Bruce.

90s. Spencer Prior (a Spencer is a short ladies jacket from the Regency period).

00s. “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” is a novelty record written in the 1940s which has been covered by numerous artists. “All I want for Christmas……..” was the title of Iwan Roberts’ (who lost his two front teeth in a football related injury) book about his final season for Norwich in which he described how he deliberately trod on Wolves’ Kevin Muscat in a game as retribution for Muscat’s horror tackle on his former Norwich team mate Craig Bellamy a few years earlier.

10s. James Husband was a member of Norwich’s squad for the 17/18 season and Jimmy Husband was a member of Everton’s title winning squad of fifty plus years ago who later went on to play for Luton Town.

20s. Full back Kellen Fisher was signed from Bromley (the Ravens) where he had loan spells with Welling (the Wings) and Cray Wanderers (the Wands).