Cardiff City’s 23/24 season comes to an end, not with the last game being the climax to a relegation cliffhanger that many expected it to be (there were those who thought the relegation issue would have worked out badly for us before it got to the last game as well).
Instead, we go to a team that had their relegation confirmed weeks ago and, according to Erol Bulut in his press conference yesterday, have an injury crisis to match our own. Therefore, the prospect of us finishing in the top ten cannot be ruled out and, although regular readers of this blog will know that I’m not the manager’s biggest fan, you have to acknowledge that he, his coaching team and his players have done much better than most, including myself, predicted.
For the last time this season, here are seven questions going back to the sixties relating to our forthcoming opponents – I’ll post the answers on here on Sunday.
60s. This winger played in all of the divisions in the Football League bar the first and then had a spell in non league. In all, he played for sixteen years and never represented a club from outside his native Yorkshire. He started off with Rotherham and knew what it was like to experience victory over City as he built a reputation as a very capable operator with an eye for goal. His sale was greeted with protests by Rotherham fans as he signed for a club that was, like now, ambitious with pretty deep pockets. His new club, although in the same county, were not really rivals of Rotherham – for a start, they were not in the same division – although a promotion for his new side soon put the teams on an equal footing and it was the Millers who played Third Division football next. Onr man was a regular choice for nearly all of the eight years he spent at his second club as they came close to making it into the First Division at times, but he eventually moved north to wear a shirt that was unique. There was another promotion in the two years he spent at his third club and a short return to his home town on loan before finishing up at the seaside playing at a ground called Queensgate, who is the player being described?
70s. With a surname the same as a city known as a centre for peace and justice, this defender’s career occupied all but the very end of this decade as well as the last few years of the sixties. He began with his home town club, Rotherham, and played most games for them, before making what must be the longest journey within England that any footballer could make from Rotherham to play league football. His next move was to an orchard and from there he returned to Yorkshire to wear blue and white, before a shortish move to a side that only spent two seasons in the top two divisions before losing their league status – they played in colours that were as contrasting as you could get. Who is he?
80s. Hot yearling’s transformation into international! (4,8)
90s. What is the City related link between our former player Craig Middleton and Rotherham forward Lee Glover during this decade?
00s. Sounds like an equal share of snack food!
10s. Containers for an evangelist maybe?
20s. Which Rotherham player was interviewed on breakfast TV this week?
Rotherham answers
60s. Barnsley born Ian Butler scored just short of a hundred league goals in more than four hundred games. Around a quarter of these matches were played for Rotherham in the early to mid sixties before the club angered their support by selling him and Ken Houghton to Hull City. In 1973 Butler signed for York (they wore maroon shirts with a big, white Y on the front for at least some of his two years with them) and, after a loan spell with Barnsley, he finished his career at Bridlington Town.
70s. Neil Hague played for Rotherham, Plymouth, Bournemouth, Huddersfield and Darlington between 1967 and 1979.
80s. Tony Grealish.
90s. They scored goals past the infamous Peter Zois in his one and only game in goal for City in February 1998. Middleton’s early own goal put Rotherham ahead, Andy Saville soon equalised, but Glover restored the visitor’s lead in the second half, before Steve White earned a point for City with a second equaliser.
00s. Chris Beech (crisp each – I’ll get my coat).
10s. Matthew Tubbs.
20s. Charlie Wyke appeared on the BBC along with Fabrice Muamba and Tom Lockyer to talk about when they suffered a cardiac arrest during a game.
