'Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in'
- Michael Corleone
‘Fish in aquariums…swim in circles
I pity their hopeless journey
Someone should tell them
It’s all a trick’
I made my debut as a Cardiff City fan at Ninian Park on Boxing Day 1967 in the Boys’ Enclosure on the Grange End. I was approaching my 8th birthday. City were hosts to Aston Villa. The record shows we won 3-0 but I was more impressed by the drama surrounding our striker Bobby Brown's broken leg. This incident ended the Scotsman’s career but fired my young imagination and set me on the path to an obsessive, irrational fandom from which I never really recovered.
My devotion to the Bluebirds in those early days was often painful, my physical health and mental well-being often profoundly affected. A few early incidents hint at my vulnerabilities:
- In 1969 City were drawn at home against the mighty Arsenal. 55,000 fans were shoe-horned into Ninian Park. In the crush to get through the totally inadequate Grange End turnstiles I fought for breath as panicked adults around me screamed ‘Give the kid some air!’ I thought I might die. I made it through to join Mike at our usual spot where he looked up briefly from busily swapping copies of ‘Commando’ and ‘Bulldog Breed’ war comics to enquire with the merest hint of sibling disquietude ‘Where have you been?’.
- Aged around 9, Dad who had been watching with his chums elsewhere in the ground failed to meet me after the game for the agreed rendezvous, leaving me wandering tearfully around the mean streets of Canton where an elderly chap took pity on me, dropping me off at Canton Police Station at around the same time Mum was suggesting to Dad that he might have forgotten something / someone.
- Around the time of my 10th birthday a Rover P5 3 litre Coupe driven by City favourite Ronnie Bird ran over my foot as I was making my way into the ground.
The mental torment of perennial under-achievement and thwarted ambition on the pitch was equally as painful. The 5-1 defeat away to Sheffield United in 1971, in the season John Toshack was sold to Liverpool, stands out as a defining moment condemning a generation to second, third and the ultimate indignity of fourth tier football. But before this descends any further into a footie fan’s pity memoir I should introduce a sense of perspective.
On 14th April 1976 City beat Hereford Utd 2-0 in front of 35,549 fans as both teams secured promotion from Division 3. In the away end that day stood a young Rick Jolley. The 75/76 season was to prove the high point for the Rams, on a par with the FA Cup run just a few years earlier. Yes, Rick was at Edgar Street to witness THAT Ronnie Radford screamer and to join the pitch invasion following the win against Newcastle.
For City fans the subsequent decline in our fortunes is now a barely acknowledged precursor to a significant uplift. Twenty years of relative financial stability and ambition have made us complacent. For Hereford fans a similar fall from near-grace was to prove catastrophic. Relegated from the football league in 2012, the club was wound up in 2014. The ‘phoenix club’ Hereford FC currently play in the 6th tier of the EFL.
Fast-forward to today. Freya India Jolley is 8 years old. She’s a good kid. Life is all Ha-Ha-He and cartwheels. The time seems right to give her the chance to make terrible choices that will haunt her forever and give her gilded life some perspective. As a 5th generation Bluebird (verified) she claims her birthright. May the lord have mercy.
Optimism amongst the City faithful was high, buoyed by some eye-catching late summer transfer deals. Amongst the starters, former PL Gooner Callum Chambers was to prove a reassuringly composed presence at the heart of the defence, while former Gooner Junior Willock provided plenty of early indications that the midfield creative role so sadly lacking in recent times has been addressed.
I was distracted early on by the need to explain some footie basics to the new signing in the Ninian Stand and to answer some peripheral questions: Who is the man in black? Who do you think will win the singing competition? Why are there so many empty seats?
Back on the pitch... the Bluebirds were enjoying a lively start, pressing well with every suggestion that their good pre-season form might be taken forward. Willock and O'Dowda were linking well on the left but the lack of a menacing presence in the box meant that we had nothing to show for the early domination.
The Black Cats (a nickname adopted after a fan took a kitten into Wembley Stadium for the 1937 Cup Final in his coat pocket at a time when it more de rigueur for chaps to arrive laden with Woodbines and Everton toffee mints) were quick on the break, spurred on by a large noisy following, and scored against the run of play after 18 minutes as the callow City defence followed the ball like so many school yard simpletons, allowing an unmarked O'Nien to head home unchallenged.
For all our possession (an uncustomary 65%) Sunderland's high line and banks of four were comfortably snuffing out any danger. The hope pre-season was that the the all-too-obvious failings last year upfront had been addressed but it was clear that the lack of an aerial threat in the box was likely to be our undoing. It wasn't until the hour mark with the introduction of Meite and new boy Wilfried Kanga that the Sunderland defence looked remotely unsettled. Questions might be raised about the starting line-up as Kanga in particular looked sharp, with every indication that he is far more than a lumbering target man.
The match was a well-balanced contest, with no little skill on display. Unfortunately it was the opposition that was most likely to provide the decisive moments of flair that would turn the game. Well-equipped to take advantage of the loose ball, Sunderland were capable of breaking out of defence at pace with PL transfer target Jack Clarke and Jobe (brother of Jude) Bellingham to the fore.
After a period of intense pressure from the home team but no end product, Clarke took the ball to the edge of the box, dropped a shoulder and struck an unequivocal curler through a sparsely populated defence beyond Horvath. And that was decisively that as the home support headed for the exits, much to Freya's consternation as she observed 'Pops, I think there are more Seagulls in the ground than people!' and the opposition was proclaimed comfortable winners of the singing competition.
We're used to morale-sapping season openers, having won only two of the last eleven, but there was plenty to suggest today that Bulut can mould this new squad into a team potentially capable of challenging for a top six finish. Not a great start to the trainee Bluebird's career, but as Erol Bulut said at the post-match press conference 'Today we can speak about more positive things than negative things'.
