2011-12 Match Reports CCFC v DERBY

17.4.2012

CCFC 2 v 0 DERBY

As I sit here compiling this half-baked tosh raising my eyes in search of inspiration my gaze settles on my framed picture of a Ninian Park vista taken high up in the Bob Bank looking down on the City v Derby game from April 2009, one of the last games played at the grand old tin shack where I misspent my youth. The result that day was 4-1, the following year we put six past the Rams, and last year we thumped them 4-1 again. The chances of a similar return tonight seemed pretty remote. We have been spoilt in recent years with a succession of strikers capable of scoring in excess of 20 goals in a season – Chopra, McCormack, Earnie, Whitts(!) etc. – but this season it’s often been difficult to see where the goals are coming from with top scorer Miller on 11 & Mason on 10. (In fact even a half-baked Tosh would be very welcome). The midfield has only helped out sporadically and it’s unreasonable to expect your central defenders to help out (but more of this later...)

The evening began with tributes being paid to Eddie May, manager between 1991-94, who died this week. Ali’s eulogy was still in full flow when the game began, Referee Lee Probert sent down from the Premier League not exactly endearing himself to the crowd as the Canton End continued their ‘Eddie May’s Barmy Army’ chant. Probert warmed to his task as the game progressed with a number of questionable decisions, even overruling his linesman on an offside decision on one occasion! A new one on me.

Derby started very brightly. Typical of visitors this season they squeezed midfield cutting off our supply routes and didn’t allow our creative players time on the ball. But they kept our central defenders busy by playing two strikers and the Tyson / Robinson combination almost gave them a deserved lead on 15 minutes, the linesman coming to our rescue. Soon after, a speculative shot from distance (more of this later...) from Gunnarsson came close but it was very much against the run of play when Mason put us ahead, reacting first when a Miller strike came back off the post. Derby continued to dominate and it was a relief to go in at half-time 1-0 ahead.

The second half saw us, if not taking hold of the game then at least competing, but still the majority of chances were going Derby’s way. They were to be frustrated by an imperious display from Marshall and a solid performance from Turner and Hudson. Ah yes, Hudson.

In years to come many pints of the Brains family’s finest will be quaffed to the sound of misty-eyed reminiscences and claims of ‘I was there when...’ The distance of the strike and the numbers witnessing the event will be so engorged by exaggeration that even those of us who have kept our ticket stubs as an alibi will begin to doubt if ‘that goal’ was merely an outrageous urban myth.

My eye-witness account confirms that on 63 minutes the Derby keeper Fielding cleared the ball but only succeeded in finding captain Hudson standing outside Harry Ramsdens in Cardiff Bay. Without looking up from his chips Hudson took one touch to steady himself and struck the ball over the Senedd, up Bute Street in the direction of Penarth Road; it re-entered the stadium to find a panicked Fielding staggering backwards alive to the danger too late as the ball bounced over the goal line. 

Mark Hudson has cemented his place in Cardiff City folklore. Books will be written, statues erected, ashes scattered and glasses raised to one of the defining moments in the history the sport. The legacy has already commenced. I read earlier today that ‘Lionel Messi wears Mark Hudson pyjamas’.

2-0 with 25 minutes still to play. You might think that Derby would feel so aggrieved that they would now surrender. That had every right to. Not a bit of it. They continued to dominate the game but it was not going to be their night. A superb Marshall save diving full length to parry a late shot confirmed this.

The game will live long in the memory for one incident, and rightly so. But with Boro failing to beat the already condemned Doncaster the win is more significant as, barring another Deepdale denouement of Prestonian proportions, it more or less confirms our place in the play-offs. 

The manner of the win was scrappy, scruffy and came with more jam than a gig by a Paul Weller tribute band having a jam session while stuck in a traffic jam outside the Robertson’s jam factory in Jamaica. But we’ve covered every play-offs permutation from missing out by one goal over a whole season, losing in the semis and losing in the final. There is only one more outcome to complete the list. This is our year! After what we witnessed tonight anything is possible.