Cardiff City FA Cup Final Songs

The FA Cup Final song is one of my favourite FA Cup traditions, Chas and Dave's effort in 81 being a personal favourite of mine. Unfortunately it is something that has fallen by the wayside in recent years but thankfully followers of Cardiff City have thrown themselves into it.

BLUEBIRDS FLYING HIGH (5/10)
The official song, Bluebirds Flying High, is sung by ex-Fame Academy, Eurovision entrant James Fox. It's very middle of the road, innoffesive stuff. Describing the quality of Tony Capaldi's long throw and Enckelman's ability at saving "spot kicks". The most cringeworthy moment in the song comes near the beginning where Fox sings "at the helm is Peter Ridsdale". Singing about a football chairman is always wrong, but I suspect it was the best way for James Fox to convince the club (i.e. Peter Ridsdale) to endorse the song as the official song - it was Fox who approached Cardiff City with the song. The most interesting part of the video is City fullback Kevin McNaughton dressed in a Dangermouse suit, something I am yet to get to the bottom of.

DO THE AYATOLLAH (2/10)
A week or so later a few Cardiff City fans created a musical monstrosity in "Do the Ayatollah" - is a song based on the dance floor hit "Do the Macarena". (The ayatollah is wonderfully described on wikipedia as "Performing the Ayatollah is done by having both hands flat pointing towards each other raised above your head and repeatedly moving them up and down in a patting motion".) It is as bad as it sounds and it only gets worse when you watch the video. Being a huge fan of rather poor jokes I do like the 1927 (just before half past seven) gag at the start but it goes downhill after the Call to Prayer. Awful. Although, in fairness it is only meant to be a bit of fun and not taken too seriously. However, they have massacred a perfectly bad song!

CARDIFF CITY SUPERSTARS (9/10)
Sitting head and shoulders above "Bluebirds Flying High" and "Do the Ayatollah" is the excellent "Cardiff City Superstar" by Helen Love and a few members of the Super Furry Animals. A previous version of this song (written to the music of 70s kids TV show Banana Splits) was written a decade or so ago. I like this, the lyrics are far more fan-centric than the other two songs and include the excellent lines: "Alan Green and the BBC, we're the team you didn't want to see" and "Ninian Park will always be my home, not the IKEA stadium across the road".

It also has the marvellous line "Directors leave and players go.", something that James Fox would do well to remember after featuring Publicity Pete in his song.