Congratulations to Trust member Jeff Cleaton, who correctly answered the quiz questions set in the March edition of Moving to a Different Beat. He was the lucky person to be drawn out of the hat and wins the first prize of £50.
As a player, he won 2 Football League First Division Champions medals and captained an FA Cup winning team and as a City manager, he won the Welsh Cup seven times – who is he?
Jimmy Scoular was part of the great Portsmouth team that were Champions of the old First Division two years in succession 1949 and 1950. He signed for Newcastle United in 1953 and was immediately made captain. He captained them at Wembley in the 1955 FA Cup Final. He left Newcastle in 1960 to join Bradford Park Avenue where he became player-manager. Sacked in 1964 he was appointed manager of the City in June that year succeeding George Swindin. He had an inauspicious start as our manager in that his first win did not come until his 13th game in charge at home to Esbjerg in our first-ever foray into the European Cup Winners Cup. His time as City manager is rightly remembered for exciting ECWC campaigns including the Real Madrid victory but his league campaigns featured 3 seasons where we avoided relegation in 20th position and the 1970-71 season which ended in the infamous 5-1 defeat at promotion rivals Sheffield United condemning us to 3rd place and a lot of broken dreams. City’s league fortunes then went from bad to worse and he was sacked in November 1973. An uncompromising individual, if you ever stood in the Enclosure his fusillades of bad language from the dugout was part and parcel of your match day experience. He is fondly remembered nevertheless.
- He played for the City in the Premier League in 2013-14 and later went on to play for Inter Milan, Besiktas and Bologna – who is he?
Gary Medel. Apparently named by his mother after Hollywood film star Gary Cooper. He signed from Sevilla for a supposed club record fee of £11m and “El Pitbull” made an immediate impact as man of the match in our home victory over Manchester City. Arguably our best player in that one season his reputation as a tough tackler with a never-say-die attitude was well-founded. However, his reputation as an avid collector of yellow cards and a red card every 13 games did not come to fruition much to the disappointment of the Press. Diminutive in stature he was very popular with City fans and his departure from the club was inevitable after our relegation. His transfer to Inter Milan for a fee that was £1m less than what we paid for him attracted a degree of criticism for a player that was still an established international and whose reputation had only been enhanced by his one season in the Premier League. He went on to play for Besiktas and Bologna and, at the age of 33, is still a current Chile international with 127 caps to his name.
- The Cardiff City Stadium was officially opened with a pre-season friendly on 22 July 2009 against which team?
The first formal emergence of a proposed new stadium took place in 2002 when the Club signed an outline agreement with the Council. The road to completion was not a smooth one with reservations expressed about the level of retail development adjacent to the stadium required to fund its construction as well as the Athletics Stadium. All this uncertainty took place against a period of financial turmoil at the Club with the departure of Hammam, the arrival of Ridsdale and the first appearance of the word “Langston”. Anyway, the stadium was completed in May 2009. Prior to the official opening two games were played- a Cardiff City Legends game on 4 July and a friendly against Chasetown on 10 July. These games allowed the Club to test the processes and health and safety of the new stadium prior to the official opening against Glasgow Celtic on 22 July. One of the reasons for choosing Celtic was in memory of the death of Jock Stein who died at Ninian Park in 1985. The game ended in a 0-0 draw in front of 15,701 fans. The Celtic team that day contained former City favourite Glen Loovens.
- Who were the City’s opponents on the last occasion that they won the Welsh Cup?
The City won the Welsh Cup for the 22nd and final time in 1992-93 at the National Stadium against the mighty Rhyl in front of a crowd of 16,433. It was a 5-0 victory consisting of a hat-trick by Phil Stant and 2 goals by Cohen Griffith. The 1992-93 Welsh Cup campaign was a bit of a goal fest with City scoring 17 times in 5 games en route to the final. Having said that it was only Wrexham that provided serious opposition. Phil Stant had previously scored a 16 minute hat trick in a 5th Round tie against Maesteg Park Athletic and Carl Dale scored 4 and Nicky Richardson a hat-trick in a 9-0 victory over Caerau. However, it wasn’t our last appearance in a Welsh Cup final, we reached that stage at the National Stadium in the 2 subsequent years losing to Barry Town and Wrexham respectively.
- Former Cardiff City player Harry Arter is the brother-in-law of which Premier League Manager?
Fulham manager Scott Parker is married to the sister of Harry Arter who played 25 times for us on loan from Bournemouth in our most recent season in the Premier League.
- He played for us in the 2008 FA Cup Final and also won 12 caps for England – who is he?
There were some pretty aged legs in the Cardiff City squad of 2007-08 and Trevor Sinclair owned 2 of them. Other notable aged legs belonged to Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Robbie Fowler. Trevor had had quite a high profile career with QPR, West Ham and finally Manchester City before being released by them in 2007. We signed him on a 1-year contract in July 2007.He scored twice in 27 appearances that season and was an 86th-minute substitute for Gavin Rae in the final. We did not renew his contract after that season so the Final was his last game before a retirement which he came out of 6 years later to appear briefly for Lancaster City and later Squires Gate in the North West Counties Football League at the age of 44.
- In the penalty shootout of the 2012 League Cup Final at Wembley the City only scored 2 penalties – one was by Peter Whittingham who scored the other?
It was Don Cowie. I still have nightmares about that penalty shoot-out and it was a pretty miserable trip home from Wembley for the third time between 2008 and 2012. With Kenny Miller and Rudy Gestede having missed penalties, we needed to score our 5th penalty to stay in the Final. I’m sure I can’t have been the only one to have had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when Anthony Gerrard stepped up. He never struck me as an obvious choice to take a penalty in such a situation. The fresh legs of Darcy Blake or Filip Kiss might have been a more obvious choice but it was not to be. Fair play to Anthony Gerrard, he stepped up to the plate and did his bit and should not be criticised. Another case of what might have been.
8. He won 34 caps for Wales and had 2 spells with the City on loan, once from West Bromwich Albion in 2005-06 and once from Wigan Athletic in 2010-11 – who is he?
The enigma that is Jason Koumas. Koumas found himself on the transfer list at WBA after manager Bryan Robson was not happy with his attitude. Understandable I suppose when you think that Koumas had been on virtual strike there having previously been their player of the year. August 9th, 2005 against Leeds United he came on as a sub for Willie Boland and transformed the game within minutes by going past two defenders and smashing a 25 yard left foot shot past the stunned Leeds ‘keeper. Debuts don’t come more dramatic than that. He made 47 appearances scoring 13 times in a season when, after struggling for match fitness, he settled down to play a dominant role in midfield. I remember journalists at the time using the word “inspirational” to describe him. Words of that magnitude don’t get deployed very often to describe City players. In 2010-11 Jason’s second spell on loan with us, this time from Wigan Athletic, was less than memorable. Struggling for any degree of fitness he only made 6 starts and 21 appearances off the bench scoring 2 goals, both in the same game in a space of a couple of minutes away at Doncaster Rovers. After his second spell with us he was released by Wigan. After a spell out of the game, he resumed playing in 2013 with his first club Tranmere Rovers and retired from football in July 2015.
9.In 2018 whilst playing for Central Coast Mariners in Australia this former Cardiff City player provided the assist for Usain Bolt’s first goal in an official football match – who is he?
Ross McCormack. Apparently, Ross decided to join us from Motherwell rather than Premier League Wigan because he could play alongside his idol Robbie Fowler only to discover that, when he signed in June 2008, Fowler had packed his bags and left. He scored 30 times in 88 appearances and certainly made an impact on the pitch. Off the pitch, he was arrested in Cardiff Bay for drink driving and banned for 17 months and fined £15,500. He was sold to Leeds in August 2010 for £400,000 where it took him some time to settle down but he became the first Leeds player for 50 years to score in 6 consecutive league games and the first to score 4 in an away game for 87 years. Not being one to let his reputation for off the field activities suffer, in 2013 he was prosecuted and fined for flytipping. When he was sold to Fulham in 2014 for £11m we asked ourselves why we had let him go so cheaply. His 2 years at Fulham were successful and he was voted Fulham’s player of the season twice. In 2016 when he signed for Aston Villa, this time for £12m, we asked ourselves the same question as when he had signed for Fulham. However, it was at Villa where the wheels really came off. He was dropped from the first team squad by Steve Bruce for continually missing training and was accused of being nowhere near fit enough to play. Villa seemingly gave upon him and tried to loan him out at every opportunity. One of these loan spells was at Central Coast Mariners in New South Wales where he provided an assist for Usain Bolt. He left Aston Villa at the end of his contract at the end of the 2018-19 season, two years after playing his last game for them. When this was announced jubilant Villa fans changed his Wikipedia page to show his next club to be “FC Burger King” and the sentence “Overweight Scottish professional footballer who contributed nothing” was added to the Aston Villa section. However, Ross still managed to keep himself in the news. In April 2020, Villa star Jack Grealish crashed his car at 4.00 am after attending a party during lockdown. Whose party was it? Yes, you’ve guessed it – Ross McCormack. In September 2020 at the age of 33 he signed for Aldershot Town. Having said all that, he did a good job for us but you can’t help but think we were short-changed on his transfer fee to Leeds.
- In January 2011 on his debut, this rotund striker scored his only Cardiff City goal – who is he?
Jon Parkin – “The Beast”. You wouldn’t have thought that someone who wore an XXXL sized football shirt would be the person to bolster our promotion ambitions in 2011 but Malky Mackay did when he signed him from Preston. Parkin didn’t have a track record of scoring in the Championship until he joined Preston where he scored 28 times in 100 games. Of course, he scored for Preston in their nightmare 6-0 demolition of us in April 2009. Anyway, Malky thought he was the man for the job and he duly scored on debut with a cracker against Norwich. Admittedly, he was back up for the injured Jay Bothroyd at the time. He did score one more goal for us in the League Cup against Huddersfield in August 2011. His last appearance for us in a “League” game was in the dreaded 2011 playoff semi-final against Reading coming on as a sub for Michael Chopra. A larger-than-life character, literally, my abiding memory of him is the crowd shouting “Beast” in unison when he made an appearance. It surprises me that I should have an abiding memory of him since he actually only made 2 League starts for us but he is a memorable player for all the wrong reasons. Whilst he was with us he had 3 loan spells with other clubs before his contract was cancelled by mutual consent in June 2012. Was he a worthwhile signing? Not really but you got the impression that, under all that timber, there might have been a decent Championship striker.