Interview With the Enemy: Cardiff City

By: Matt | July 17th, 2009

In the second edition of my new interview with the enemy, I talked with Martyn of the Cardiff City Offside. Celtic take on Cardiff City in Wales this Wednesday to help Cardiff break in their new ground. The Bluebirds will be playing Celtic for their first big match in the ground’s history. I picked Martyn’s brain on all things Cardiff, including his thoughts on the new ground, history of Cardiff, coping with David Marshall and their rivalry with Swansea. Check out what Martyn had to say!
What was Cardiff City’s highest honor?

Most people would opt for the 1927 FA Cup victory, or even the present-day achievement of reaching the same competition’s final at the end of the 2008 season. However, the former story has been told to death and the latter achievement is exaggerated to a certain extent, even though it was a joyous moment to behold as the club has spent much of the past 30 years in the 4th tier.

Two great moments in the club’s history that particularly fascinate me are the 1-0 victory over Real Madrid in the 1971 European Cup Winners Cup Quarter Finals and the top division campaign of the 1923/24 season that saw us miss out on the title to Huddersfield Town due to the now defunct system of ‘Goal Average’! We had a worse scoring to conceding ratio: 1.794 compared with Huddersfield’s 1.818. Anal? Just a little!

Who were some of the best players in the team’s history?

One modern-day hero would be Robert Earnshaw. Earnie has scored goals at every level of the professional English game (League Two, League One, Championship, Premier League, as well as FA Cup, League Cup, Football League Trophy and internationally – including a hat-trick against Scotland, but for City fans, it was his consistency season after season, colleague after colleague in the lower leagues that led to adulation beyond adulation. His trademark somersault celebration after every converted chance made otherwise tedious games against the lower-league Manchester suburb sides and dead-end Yorkshire towns more fun than they really were!

For an undisputed all-time City great however, I have to return to that 1927 FA Cup winning campaign. After 9 years and 362 ripples of the net with Motherwell, Hughie Ferguson started a trend that has been revisited in recent seasons by Steelmen players; ditching North Lanarkshire for South Glamorgan (see Paul Quinn, Ross McCormack and current trialist Maroš Klimpl). Ferguson’s most notable contribution came against the Arsenal at Wembley on the back of a season in which The Greatest Man Ever Named Ferguson netted 26 goals in 39 games – the trophy-bagging strike in the FA Cup final! As Dean Hayes notes in his excellent anthology, ‘The Who’s Who of Cardiff City’, Hughie was a sensitive soul, and despite having a wife and children Cardiff City’s top scorer for four straight seasons tragically committed suicide at the age of 32 after a difficult spell with Dundee. The man who had brought smiles to the faces of ‘well and City fans was unable to muster up anything but a facade of one himself. Perhaps after all, football really is a microcosm of real life; even in the 1920s, an age when the game was nigh-on immune to the pressure and suffocation attached to the game today.

How did Cardiff do last season? What were the weaknesses of that team?

Do we have to go there again?! A pathetic end of season collapse that would have been more at home in the circus saw us fail to make the play-offs despite having looked a good bet for automatic promotion at several points of the campaign. The weaknesses of the side were poor goalkeepers (Tom Heaton was on a season-long loan from Manchester United. He arrived with no ability to kick or shepherd a defence. However, even he looked competent compared to what we saw of Dimi Konstantopoulos…), inconsistent form from the wingers (LWB Mark Kennedy was pretty consistent with his abject delivery mind), and no creativity, pace or authority in the centre-midfield area. The goalkeeping and LWB areas have been remedied one hopes with the arrival of ex-Celtic net-tender David Marshall and Motherwell’s Paul Quinn respectively, the latter of whom can play RWB, thus allowing Scotland’s Kevin McNaughton to play in a more desired left-back role. Notice the Tartan theme to our side here? We also have former Rangers players Gavin Rae, Chris Burke and Ross McCormack on the books.

Celtic is known for being a part of one of the biggest rivalries in the world, but Cardiff is in a similar boat with Swansea. Describe a typical Welsh derby. What is your best Swansea related memory? What is your worst?

One thing you are guaranteed with South Welsh derbies is on-field drama to counter the also ever-present fighting between juvenile and idiotic supporters. The contests can hardly be described as a battle with religious tensions (ala Glasgow), the working-class vs the upper (ala Boca Juniors vs River Plate) or competing political ideologies (ala Barca v Real). Likewise, the teams have fluctuated between the divisions with such frequency throughout the decades that it’s impossible to depict the affair as being one style of football philosophy against another. In fact, taking into account our fortunes on the pitch, demographics and geography, we’re rather similar, and this in a sense has carved a rivalry. However, Swans fans (referred to as Jacks by us Bluebirds) and the city in general feels a large degree of bitterness to Cardiff because of our status as the capital city.

Last season’s games (2-2 x 2 in the league, 1-0 to the Swans in the League Cup) saw the flair and continental tactics of Swansea pitted against the raw and direct authority of the Cardiff City juggernaut. It was a good match-up. I’m young at 22 years of age, so I can’t talk from much personal experience of Welsh derbies (especially when the previous league meetings between the sides before last season took place in 1999). Therefore, using last season as a crutch, my worst Swansea memory was the League Cup game: Too many Swansea supporters are moronic thugs, plus the boys in blue were absolutely garbage that day. My best was the injury-time equalizer against Swansea in the last ever Welsh derby to be staged at Ninian Park. That it was such a soft decision for a PK in our favour made it ten times better!

This match is the first for a new stadium for Cardiff. Have you seen the new stadium yet? Is there an excitement for the new stadium? Will people miss the old stadium?

I work within a stone’s throw of the new ground, but even if I didn’t its impossible to miss: it’s made from Lego!

Ninian Park was adored by all, and the paucity of terracing at the new stadium will take some getting used to. However, the addition of half-decent facilities and acoustics will be a God-send, albeit in generic identikit surroundings.

Technically this isn’t the first official ‘exhibition match’ for Cardiff at the new stadium. We beat Staffordshire side Chasetown just last Friday by four goals to nothing.

Do you think Cardiff have a chance at promotion this year? What are your expectations for the season?

Expectations tend to remain locked in quarantine, grim and pessimistic footballing reality having disposed of the key. I hope for promotion, but although relegation won’t be a concern whatsoever we’ll finish anywhere between 8th and 12th.

Special thanks to Martyn for taking the time to answer my questions. I answered some question for him as well, so check his blog in the next few days for those.