|
Cardiff City Web Sites
|
City Drop Second Straight at Home, Slide to 12th
Saturday, January 12, 2002
Entry 172
Only six days after reaching the unimaginable heights of an FA Cup win over Premiership leaders Leeds United, City crashed to their second straight defeat in the league at home, falling to Peterborough United 2-0 and dropping to 12th in the division. The loss extends City's winless run in the league to five, matching their longest such stretch this season. Peterborough's two goals came either side of half time. Leon McKenzie scored in the 45th minute off a goalkeeping error, Neale Fenn getting the second half goal in the 54th minute via a bit of Route One football.
For Mike Morris, this defeat means that "City virtually kissed goodbye to a chance of automatic promotion." In his notes on the match, Mike points out that "it was the first City home match in which they failed to score this season and it was dire at times." Nigel Harris's match report summed up the overall performance as follows:
As far as the football action is concerned, well there really isn't a great deal to report. It was subdued in the stadium and subdued on the pitch too. City opened brightly, lost their way, had a purple patch just before half-time, conceded a goal either side of half-time and went through the motions in the second half without ever looking like getting back in the game, it really was a depressing day.
Today's setback comes at an inopportune time for the Bluebirds as results elsewhere went largely City's way. Brentford, Brighton, Huddersfield, and Oldham all lost, while Tranmere and Wycombe had to settle for draws. QPR and Reading were the only clubs above City in the table to register wins. City are now five points back of sixth-place QPR, though they do have a game in hand on the London club.
Sam Under Fire
Friday, January 11, 2002
Entry 171
"Will it never end?" asks Mike Morris in a posting to the Cardiff City mailing list, referring to the relentless vilification of Bluebird supremo Sam Hammam in the UK press. From the looks of things the answer could well be, "No!"
UK press moguls must have wet their pants upon learning that Sam's bodyguard, one Neil MacNamara, is one big-time troublemaker. In "Hammam's Man is a Thug," The Sun reports that MacNamara "was once banned from EVERY club for a year for the sort of trouble that marred the Second Division side’s 2-1 win over Premiership leaders Leeds." For those in the media out to get Sam this has to be just the sort of news they'll like seeing splashed across the tabloids' front and back pages. Mr. MacNamara has apologised for his past misconduct in an ICWales story, "I'm Sorry, Says Sam's Minder."
In other Sam news, Football Unlimited's Dominic Fifield reports, in "Hammam Warned Twice About Walk," that "John Nagle, a spokesman for the Football League, said Hammam had been instructed three months ago that the practice must not continue." Sam has already said he will no longer walk about as he has in the past. That wasn't enough, though, for the authorities, who have seen fit to ban Sam from any further strolling about the sidelines. In "Hammam Handed Walkabout Ban," TeamTALK reports that "Sam Hammam has been ordered to stay in the directors' box at Cardiff matches by the Football Association of Wales."
In another TeamTALK story, "Hammam Defends Cardiff Actions," Sam contests the charge that he had been ordered earlier on in the season to cease strolling about. In fact, he says, he has "a written letter saying that I am allowed to walk around the pitch."
Sam isn't sitting still either. Mike Morris's Cardiff City Online has details on the response the Bluebird boss is planning, "a war against hooliganism." Sam isn't any too pleased with the ferocity of media attacks on him and on Cardiff City. In "Hammam Slams Media 'Campaign'," Sam says that "In my 25 years in football I have never witnessed an orchestrated and vicious media campaign like the one Cardiff City is having to face."
City Claim Another Distinction
Thursday, January 10, 2002
Entry 170
In an earlier entry -- #138 to be exact -- I reported that, with their 3-0 win over Port Vale, City have 10 out of a possible 10 first- and second- round wins since the start of the 1997-98 competition. I noted that City are the only strictly lower-division club to go unbeaten in first and second round matches over this span.
With Sunday night's win over Leeds United, City can claim another distinction. They are the only lower-division club to advance to the fourth round in three of the last five competitions. Here's the list of lower-division and non-league clubs who have made it to the fourth round in each of the last five seasons:
* 1997-98: Cardiff City, Grimsby Town, Stevenage Borough (non-league), Walsall.
* 1998-99: Bournemouth, Bristol Rovers, Cardiff City, Fulham, Leyton Orient, Swansea, Wrexham.
* 1999-2000: Burnley, Cambridge United, Gillingham, Plymouth Argyle, Preston North End, Wrexham.
* 2000-01: Bristol City, Kingstonian (non-league), Scunthorpe United, Wycombe Wanderers.
* 2001-02: Bristol Rovers, Cardiff City, Cheltenham,
Leyton Orient, Tranmere Rovers. Also either Darlington or Peterborough United. Also possibly Brighton & Hove Albion. Also possibly York City.
By the way, City's fourth round opponent will be Tranmere Rovers, who topped Southend United 3-1 at Roots Hall Tuesday night.
Reserves Lose at Colchester
Wednesday, January 9, 2002
Entry 169
Cardiff City Reserves lost to Colchester 3-2 today at Layer Road. City led 1-0 and 2-1 only to get pegged back both times. Adrian Coote then won the match for Colchester with a 90th-minute strike. The lose in the second in a row for the reserves and their third in their last four matches.
City's lineup looked like this: Walton, Jones, Giles, Weston, Hughes, Maxwell, Low, Hamilton, Fortune-West, Collins, Jeanne. (Unused Subs: Wallis, Porter, Heal, Anthony, Fish).
Check Cardiff City Online's report for additional details.
Media Frenzy Continues
Tuesday, January 8, 2002
Entry 168
The media frenzy over Sunday night's disturbances at Ninian Park continue. Cardiff City and Sam Hammam are the bad guys. Trouble at City matches is catalogued in a Times piece, "Gary Jacob Traces the Troubled Recent Past of Cardiff City." Over at the Independent, Glenn Moore and Tim Rich report, in "Cardiff Face Threat of Ground Closure," that "there was widespread relief among officials and police when the fourth-round draw gave them an unglamorous tie away to Southend or Tranmere." You wonder how Moore and Rich found that out!
The events of Sunday night have put Bluebird supremo Sam Hammam in the harsh glare of the media spotlight. In "Wacky Hammam is Adored for Putting Cardiff Back in the Race, the Times's Russell Kempson characterises him as "mad, bonkers, a nutcase." The Guardian's David Lacey took aim at Sam's standing behind the goal in the last minutes Sunday, in "Why the Cup Must Be Rid of This Poison." Lacey writes:
When he owned Wimbledon, Sam Hammam made a habit of standing behind one of the goals during matches in his cloth cap and muffler. It seemed a harmless, matey gesture towards Wimbledon's decent, docile supporters.
When Hammam did the same thing at Ninian Park for the final hectic 10 minutes on Sunday, however, he risked being accused of, at best, reckless irresponsibility and, at worst, incitement.
You get the distinct impression that the London media have been waiting for the chance to have a go at Sam and are only to happy to do so now.
Media Run Riot Following "Battle of Cardiff"
Monday, January 7, 2002
Entry 167
I'm thousands of miles away from Ground Zero Ninian Park and so I'm well-insulated from the media frenzy over last night's "Battle of Cardiff", but I've been listening (Talksport), reading (UK media web sites), and watching (Sky Sports News). What I'm taking in is nothing less than a media riot. They've gone stark raving bonkers. Leeds boss O'Leary talks of an "agenda" in connection with Alan Smith, red-carded just before half time. But what about the media'a agenda vis a vis Cardiff City, Sam Hammam, the Welsh people?
Classic case in point. I'm listening to Talksport's late night blowhard James Whale on Monday night. He starts out with something like, "I can't let pass what happened last night in football," then launches into an hysterical anti-Welsh tirade. He "confesses," first off, that he's part Welsh. Then adds, of course, how embarrassed he is by his countrymen. Then says that, as a result of Sunday night's violence, the Welsh Assembly should be abolished. Then says that the Welsh language should be done away with as well. Adds that the Welsh language is a major impediment to educating the people of Wales (in how to behave, I guess) and that if only they had some education they wouldn't carry on as they did on Sunday night. I'd heard enough at that point and tuned out so I don't know if anybody called in to challenge his mad ravings. He's one sick puppy.
The Sky Sports News coverage tonight (Monday night) is another case in point. The closeups of the poor Leeds supporter Mr. Schofield's badly bruised limbs, combined with the footage of the police having a go at prone and defenseless Leeds fans (including Schofield?), were there to impress the
"third world country" idea upon viewers and to help push
another thought as well, that you take your life in your hands when you cross the Severn. It's not hard to imagine viewers half paying attention and missing the fact that the injuries they'd just seen were inflicted by police and not by marauding City fans. There are reports, too, that Mr. Schofield was quite the innocent bystander he's claiming to be.
If the nutters couldn't resist taking advantage of the opportunity that presented itself Sunday night, UK media have barely shown any greater self-restraint since. There should be some entertainment value, though, in watching them attempt a "climb down" from their
indefensible behaviour once cooler heads assert themselves in the days ahead.
The bad media behaviour I refer to has to do with the wholesale exaggerating of what happened at Ninian Park last night. It's true that some bottles and coins were thrown and that big numbers of fans invaded the pitch at the end of the match. It's true, too, that Sam Hammam did have a stroll around the ground in the last minutes of the match and that he did do a bit of an Ayatollah to the crowd. (Big crime that!) It's true, as well, that some Cardiff fans did run over to the Leeds fans and did a bit of taunting. None of this adds up to a "Battle of Cardiff" however. There were but four arrests and police might have got a bit rough with a few fans, but that's not exactly a riot. Considering how supercharged the atmosphere had become by the end of the match, then, it's just plain irresponsible to suggest, as Richard Williams did in his "Still Crazy" story in Football Unlimited, that "it was like the darkest days of the 1970s all over again." That's rubbish. Even more ridiculous was Williams's account of Sam's stroll around the ground:
Just in case anybody had indeed failed to spot him, he made a curious gesture of tapping his forehead with the palms of both hands. This, they say, is his way of acknowledging the nickname bestowed by the people of Cardiff on the man from the mystic east: Ayatollah. Others, however, have a different explanation. They say that among Cardiff's several "firms" - groups of hard-core fans - is one calling itself Intifada. Hammam's gesture, they claim, is his way of acknowledging their support.
None of this "information" is even remotely accurate. Strikes me as borderline libelous!
Not all media were out to distort and sensationalise, however. Sky Sports commentator Andy Gray offered a more measured report on Sunday night's goings on, as reported by Mike Morris in a Cardiff City Online story entitled, "Andy Gray Speaks Out."
Still, headline writers had a field day. The Independent's Gordon Tynan has a piece entitled "FA Awaits Report on Cardiff Chaos
." Another piece in the Independent, Ian Parkes's "Hammam Provokes Furore," reports on a related "Battle of Cardiff" storyline, the near dust up between Sam and Leeds boss O'Leary. It must be noted that O'Leary has played a key role in advancing the view that Leeds barely escaped Ninian Park with their lives, likening playing in Cardiff to a visit to Istanbul. The Leeds manager says as much in a Times story, "O'Leary Stands by Criticism."
Magnificent City Topple Leeds 2-1, Advance to Fourth Round
Sunday, January 6, 2002
Entry 166
For most City games, I'm in the Cardiff City Online chat room following the match via Gill Samuel's superb commentaries. If I can, I find a netcast to listen to at the same time. Sunday was different, though. I got
to see City play for the first time. Ever. I'd all but resigned myself to missing the match when I discovered Saturday night that my cable company was offering the match pay-per-view for a mere $14.95. Then spent the night tossin' and turnin' in nervous anticipation. Kinda like an eight-year-old on Christmas Eve. I was cranked.
As this was my first chance to see City (and quite possibly my last for a good while), I prayed that the match would at least be competitive so that later on I could bear to watch the tape I was making. Now, with what I have on tape, a glorious 2-1 City win that's sent Leeds United crashing out of the FA Cup, I may not ever need to watch anything else. I fear I've peaked too soon in my career as a Bluebird watcher!
My favourite moment came just a minute or two after Graham Kavanagh's magnificent, 21st-minute free kick that levelled the score at 1-1. The Sky play-by-play man came out with a great "Game on!" and it perfectly captured the incredible impact of the equaliser. Here, suddenly, was a contest that might just match the occasion itself. Up to that moment, I confess to having had my doubts. Leeds had punished City with a magnificent strike from Viduka, made possible by a poor Spencer Prior pass, to go up 1-0 at the 12-minute mark. From the moment Kavanagh equalised, however, City more than held their own. Leeds didn't help their cause when Alan Smith got himself sent off in the 43rd minute for elbowing Andy Legg in the face, but City were more than up for it. A spectacular, saving tackle from Scott Young kept Viduka from putting Leeds in the driver's seat in the 74th minute. Thirteen minutes later, Young was the hero again with a close-range winner following up a header from substitute Leo Fortune-West. The strike came off a third successive City corner.
Besides the many great performances there was something magical, too, about the aura of a Ninian Park on this night, packed to the rafters with 22,009 fans. Couldn't help but feel that the hallowed ground added something a bit special to the telecast. Some scribe referred to Ninian Park's taking him back to "the days of bovril and brylcreem" in a Monday morning write-up and
there was that. I got the sense, though, that little from those halcyon days could have compared to the sheer brilliance of Sunday under the lights.
In his match report, Nigel Harris summed things up perfectly:
This was no fluke, City thoroughly deserved to beat Leeds with a supreme performance. The Bluebirds were the better team in all areas of the pitch, they tackled better, they passed better and, to a man, they were heroes. If anything, it just made it a bit more frustrating that they haven't produced this form and results consistently in league action but today's not the time for that, let's celebrate and large it.
For a great page on the match, including top photos of the goals, check Mike Morris's report for Cardiff City Online.
Major media reports on the match chose to focus more on an after-the-match pitch invasion and accompanying disturbances, downplaying the magnificence of City's achievement. The Times's piece, "Cardiff's Cup of Cheer Spilt in Return to Hooligan Dark Ages ," by Oliver Holt, devotes its first half dozen paragraphs to the post-match troubles before addressing City's fine display. In "Cardiff's Glorious Day Spoiled by a Shower of Missiles," Jon Brodkin takes even longer to get to reporting on the match. Mark Irwin's report for the Sun, "Cardiff 2 Leeds 1," summed things up pretty well: "the greatest shame was that the disgraceful crowd scenes totally overshadowed an amazing giant-killing performance in this all-action tie."
The ICWales report, "Premier Performance by Supercharged City," put the focus on the football, however, noting that the win "will surely be talked about in the same breath as the 1927 FA Cup final win over Arsenal, and the first leg home win over Real Madrid in the Cup Winners' Cup in 1971." That's right. The day was just about that magical!
City's reward is a fourth round match at the winner of Tuesday night's Southend-Tranmere contest. Here's the draw for the fourth round.
|
15 Top UK Footy Sites
Other UK Footy Web Sites
UK News Media
|