Much has been made of City’s very tough first three away matches, I’d have been quite happy with a return of one point from them before a ball was kicked, but knowing now that it could have been seven has set alarm bells ringing and it’s because we’ve been unable to hold on to leads that I never expected us to get!
Football’s weird like that, but, meanwhile, it could be said that our first couple of home games could not have been more gentle – against the context of our last three seasons, three points from two games at Cardiff City Stadium is a reasonable return, but it’s not been convincing and it took a penalty deep into added time against a team that didn’t have a point at the time to clinch our win.
Never mind, we’ve got another side without a win tomorrow at home, a team that has played very poorly in losing what could be called a local derby at home last time out, but the problem is they’re that team from not far to the west that turns our players’ legs to jelly if they get on the same pitch as them!
I’ll leave it at that, suffice it to say we’re playing a side we should be confident of beating, but I’ve got no expectation we will whatsoever, so here’s the usual quiz and I’ll post the answers on Sunday morning when we’ll know which one of the clubs is in an early season crisis and which manager will be feeling the pressure with just six league matches played – it might be both of course if we somehow manage to draw the game.
60s. What began at Bradford Park Avenue, ended at home to Exeter and contained trips to Oxford City and Weymouth along the way?
70s. This footballer with a more famous relative had ten different spells with clubs playing at different levels of the game in Wales. This included two with the jacks and his displays during his first time with the Swans persuaded a club to spend a record fee on him. Having started off with a Yorkshire club thats nickname sounds the same as a band that had one of 90s’ most controversial number ones, he then played for two First Division teams which began with the same letter. His record with both teams was modest, but he did at least earn a kind of immortality with one of them by scoring the only goal in a derby game. Next was his first spell at Swansea, followed by that club record move, The fact that it didn’t work out as planed could be proved by him next dropping into non League football at the place where Doctor Foster stepped into a puddle. However, he made it back to the Football League and had three more seasons playing in its lower reaches which ended with a second stint at Swansea before he went on a tour of some of the bigger names in non league football in south Wales, who am I describing?
80s. Four former England internationals played for the Swansea team which dropped into the third tier during this decade, name them.
90s. Voter pets, end yesterday initially favouring striker. (5,6)
00s. Why does a journeyman midfielder sum striker who turned out for the likes of Norwich, Luton, Blackpool, Millwall and Grimsby have a unique place in Swansea’s history?
10s. Debbie Reynolds/Marvin Gaye (to begin with anyway) collaboration leading the line!
20s. Attack a loved one maybe?
Answers.
60s.Swansea Town’s last ever season. The 1968/69 campaign for the jacks began with a 1-1 draw at perennial strugglers Bradford Park Avenue and ended nine months later with a 2-0 home win against Exeter. Swansea also faced FA Cup trips to non league sides Oxford City and Weymouth which they survived before losing at home to Halifax in round 3.
70s. Alan Waddle was a striker who is also Chris Waddle’s cousin. Waddle began his career with the Shaymen of Halifax (the Shamen got to number one in the early nineties with a song called Ebenezer Goode which contained what were generally considered to be pretty obvious drug taking references). Waddle was John Toshack’s deputy during his time with Liverpool where his only goal decided a Merseyside derby in Liverpool’s favour. There was just the one goal for Waddle at Leicester as well before he was reunited with Toshack at Swansea where he scored goals at a good enough rate to persuade Newport County to spend what was a long standing club record fee of £80,000 for his services in the early eighties. Waddle next played for Gloucester City, but would later have two spells with Hartlepool as well as spending time at Peterborough and Swansea, again, before turning out for teams like Bridgend and Llanelli as his career wound down in the late eighties.
80s. Jimmy Rimmer, Emlyn Hughes, Ray Kennedy and Bib Latchford.
90s. Steve Torpey.
00s. Adrian Forbes scored the last ever goal at the Vetch Field when Shrewsbury were beaten 1-0 in April 2005.
10s. Tammy was a hit by Debbie Reynolds from 1957 and the superb Abraham (Martin and John) by Marvin Gaye reached the UK top ten in 1970 – Tammy Abraham spent the 17/18 season on loan at Swansea.
20s. Harry Darling.
Good morning Paul and all MAYA readers,
As someone who truly cannot tell you what I had for dinner last night, these quizzes are well beyond my capacity to ATTEMPT at answering… let alone conquer. Yet I am always struck with the sheer effort you Paul put into compiling the questions. I have particularly never forgotten the picture quizzes… the sort where you compiled 50 pics of football stadiums and asked us to name them… I think I named about 7 or 8.
So I salute you as ever, for doing the hard yards.
But with Swansea being the link, let me think about the classiest ball player I ever saw at Ninian Park/CCS in our colours.
Peter Whittingham would get a shout, as would Ian Gibson. And Swansea boy, Barrie Hole. But it would surely be another Swansea boy who would win that title of Classiest Player outright…
… if anyone was better anywhere in Britain at showing ‘grace under pressure’ in his era, well, I would like to know who.
And mentioning Ivor, brings me to Mal Pope. A strange link you might think… and yes it might seem so, but let me explain…
In the early 1990s, I used to pop into BBC Llandaff to do occasional spots as guest film reviewer. I well recall one such discussion with Mal re the Martin Scorsese remake of Cape Fear. I thought Mal a very nice chap… though I did not endear myself to his producer who in the best traditions of Auntie Beeb found my preoccupation with that stunning finger in the mouth scene between jailbird Robert De Niro and 17 year old jailbait (in every sense of the word!) Juliette Lewis, a bit OTT. The producer was woke before the rest of the BBC went woke… and was no doubt right in figuring it was not exactly ‘cricket’ to emphasise as I did, the highly erotic content of this scene in a mid afternoon BBC Wales radio show.
But Mal Pope made a good impression on me, and I have dipped into his website several times down the years.
And it was there I found the remarkable (then 88 year old) Esme Allchurch, the widow of Ivor. Just play the video on his blog here…
https://www.malpope.com/esme-allchurch-the-1958-world-cup/
Isn’t she amazing? What a great spirit she has. And she is so smart in her thinking.
Indeed, you can also find on his website (and on YouTube) the even more recent filming of Esme watching Wales v USA on TV in the World Cup. Her comments are really quite astute.
Just one thing before leaving Esme and Mal… I see they trot out that old bolloxio about the Welsh players arriving back from Sweden by train in 1958, and being asked where they’d been by a railway porter.
Am I questioning whether the incident occurred? No, of course not. But what seems to have escaped the protagonists in the anecdote is simply this… just because someone holds down a humble job, does not preclude him from having a very droll sense of humour.
(Ah, but methinks the battle is lost on that anecdote… it has been trotted out so many times over the years that it has become cemented as an Unshakeable Truth that hardly anyone in Wales knew the 1958 World Cup was taking place. What balderdash.
I lived through it and can tell you it was the Talk of Wales at the time. Even non-football lovers in our Rhondda street were tuned to their radios for the commentary from Gothenburg. And no doubt they cried like me when hearing Alun Williams report the 17 year old Edson Arantes do Nascimento toe poking the only goal.
But the battle is lost re the greater veracity of that ‘train porter’ anecdote. Kids of today will genuinely believe we Welsh were largely unaware of our football team’s exploits. Sorry kids, but that is cobblers.
But as I say, this misrepresentation of a Welsh railwayman’s humour is trotted out again and again. Only last year I recall hearing Lesley-Ann Jones, daughter of the famed sports reporter, the late Ken Jones, talk of her ‘uncle’* Cliff’s return from Sweden and cited that anecdote as proof of Welsh public indifference. Oh dear… it was clear she believes it.
I wonder why incidentally she and podcast partner Mike Parry parted ways so suddenly? They have kept it so hush-hush. I have my theories… Porky has a bit of previous here, as who can forget his acrimonious breakup with Mike Graham, and the sudden ending of ‘
The Two Mikes’?
*she calls him ‘uncle’ but he was Ken’s cousin, not brother.
~~~~~~~~
Oh and before I sign off …
I recently sent out a football terrace chant to you Paul at your private email address. It was a very clever reworking of the very singable chorus of the Robbie Williams hit song ‘Angels’… all aimed as a hymn of praise to Spurs’ most impressive new Aussie manager, Ange Postecoglou.
Robbie, commendably no glory hunter like the plethora of Man Utd and Liverpool supporters here in Grimsby who shamefully ignore their local 4th tier team, has stayed loyal to his local boyhood team, equally humble Port Vale.
But news that this great adaptation was being sung by the fans at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, reached Robbie, and to the guy’s immense credit, he sat down in the back of some sort of motorhome, and sang the new chorus like his life depended on it.
He learned the new words which included the names of five managers… including that of the long forgotten Austrian, Christian Gross… a chap who appeared at his first Spurs press conference proudly brandishing his Tube ticket… alas this did not give him the brownie points he was surely expecting for him adopting the London Underground as a means of travel, and thus showing himself to be a ‘man of the people’… as a Board of Directors with Rolls-Royce driving Alan Sugar at the helm, saw Tube travellers as instant ‘losers’.
Although I sent out this great link the day after Robbie posted it, I send it out again here, for a reason. And it is this…
I cannot hear it too often. Guy Chambers melody for that chorus was a absolute corker… alas Robbie’s lyrics did not quite prove the equal. But here we have new football lyrics that really fit the melody like the proverbial glove. And gee, Robbie, God bless him, gives them maximum welly, there in the back of the motorhome. And puts the seal on this mini-masterpiece with those 8 utterly disarming (indeed, quite charming) spoken words at the end.
But the real reason for sending it again was that only on about the 20th time of listening and my getting a real frisson from it, did I notice something that sorta adds to the charm further… viz… he has learned the managers’ surnames, and pronounces Ange’s – the hardest name – correctly, and even has the ‘nho’ ending of Mourinho pronounced in the true Portuguese way… but it is only now that I have noticed that he slips up on Mauricio’s surname…!!
I wonder, is his attempt at pronouncing ‘Pochettino’ indicative perhaps of a possible lifetime of Robbie ordering cappuccinos?!!!
But weirdly, the mispronunciation just endears this clip even more to me.
https://youtu.be/OlYMGCrTNg0?si=vRPE1yc3W73bZ0mU
All the best for tomorrow evening. At least in Erol we have – I think and certainly hope – a manager who ‘gets’ the importance of the game. None of that nonsense of ‘it is what it is’ that we heard from Steve Morison… acting like it was just another game, and having the effrontery to say (words to the effect) that 1-0 or 4-0 it was a defeat, and the scale of the defeat was incidental. We had just been CRUSHED by four goals…!!
TTFN,
Dai.
A big thank you to Dai W (and Mal Pope) for guiding us to this delightful link to Esme Allchurch.
And thanks, as ever, to Paul for providing the ‘platform’.
Speaking of delightful, I write this in the afterglow of the Ramsey/Siopis/Tanner show versus our neighbours.
I’d guess no-one’s holding their breath, but don’t we all start to believe all over again?
Good to hear from you Lindsay. Your contributions are always thoughtful… and needed… and have been missed.
Dai W.