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.

A review of the season.

There's plenty reviews of the season about at the moment. I felt I should write one myself. So here it goes...

It was a busy summer deep in the bowels of Ninian Park. Levels of expectation were at fever pitch, so high that they were actually tangiable. Unfortunately for experienced Ninian Park groundsman Wayne Nash the expectations became tangiable within the Grange End goalmouth! This forced the club to play its first three matches of the new Championship season away from home (Far from ideal for the club from the South Wales Valleys). Thankfully after losing 4-0 to eight-man Barnsley the expectation levels had dropped significantly leading to the Ninian Park pitch becoming playable once more.

The season began with Dave Jones very busy scouring the loan market after a terrible case of knotweed had decimated the Cardiff City dressing room. The Ninian Park trouser press in particular had taken heavy damage with Roger Johnson refusing to conduct interviews with the South Wales press while his trousers were in such a poor crumpled state.

Relations with the press were further damaged later in the month when a freak radioactive waste accident in Dinas Powys left City winger Willo Flood with half human-half rat DNA. The resulting media storm was instant with South Wales Echo chiefs doctoring pictures of the tenacious Irish midfielder by combining images of Flood with famous rats. A picture of Willo Flood in full Manchester City kit merged with 80's Breakfast TV star Roland Rat proved to be the final straw with Cardiff bosses who quickly released another "Stadium goes unconditional" story to divert attention away from the rattish Irish starlet.

The resounding defeat to the Tykes shocked the Ninian Park bigwigs who had invested millions of pounds during the summer months on actual big wigs to cement their place as bigwigs at the Ninian Park club. Steve Borley's wig (a light puse and electric blue combo) was the most impressive. It really caught the imagination of the South Wales public with the Western Mail releasing a limited edition "Steve Borley wig Commemerative Egg Cup and Spoon set" that sold out within hours of going on sale. However an S4C documentary on the wig was later cancelled before being shown after public interest in the wigs plummeted after Gavin Henson was seen wearing a cheap knock off version all to easy to get hold of west of Port Talbot.

Stay tuned for Part Two....

Actually don't. I'm rubbish at this.

I've designed a few Cardiff City kits, one based on the famous late 1970s, early 1980s yellow and white stripe.

In a day and age when footballers cost so much to run and football nostalgia is at its peak surely someone with a bit of marketing nous at Ninian Park could develop a couple of classic football kits for the supporters to enjoy?

Unfortunately that IS asking too much, we will end up with another off the peg Joma job, available to buy in S and XS from the club shop around September time (away kit to arrive next March).

I have forwarded these kit ideas to messrs Borley and Ridsdale to no response. I'm sure they've got more important things on their mind (like running a football club and picking out some new tropical fish) but I haven't. This football kit stuff is important...

As a Cardiff City supporter I am bombarded by news stories from my own football club and the South Wales media underlining the importance of a new stadium for Cardiff City.

Our current ground Ninian Park can hold a decent 20000. However a lot of it is terracing and with the Taylor Report you're just not allowed to do things like that any more. In fact if the new stadium weren't "In the pipeline" I am pretty certain the FA would have stepped in and forced us to put seats on all the terraced areas. I should think that would leave us with a capacity of about 14000 or so.

So, "Pistol" Pete Ridsdale and before him Sam "The Man" Hammam have concucted a cunning plan to build a new stadium and retail park that will take Cardiff to the "Promised Land" where the land flows with milk and prawn sandwiches.

Anyway, I wanted to see what the facts were behind these new stadium builds and whether they actually improved performances on the pitch.

There are seventeen clubs in the Football League that have moved to new stadia since 1992.
These clubs are:

• Bolton Wanderers
• Reading
• Manchester City
• Wigan Athletic
• Middlesbrough
• Derby County
• Stoke City
• Southampton
• Leicester City
• Hull City
• Swansea City
• Huddersfield Town
• Millwall
• Darlington
• Oxford United

I tracked their league performances from the day their new stadium was built until the end of last season (2005/2006). Early indications are good! It seems as if a move to a new stadium actually does improve your league placings by an average of 2.7 places.

Of the 17 clubs that have moved:

• 12 have been relegated since moving to a new stadium.
• 9 are worse off than they were previously.
• Oxford United have dropped into non-league football, ending their 43 year stint in the football league.
  
• Leicester City have gone into administration
• Southampton are now playing second flight football for the first time since 1978.
• Sunderland have recorded the two worse Premier League records in history
• Huddersfield Town have gone into administration
• Derby County have amassed debts into tens of millions of pounds
• Darlington's chairman George Reynolds (who built Darlington's stadium) was arrested for financial irregularities.

So, not a completely happy story. The truth is, with good leadership and decent managerial appointments a new stadium can help as it often improves attendences. Clubs like Middlesbrough and Reading with clever chairmen in Steve Gibson and John Madejski have shown how it can be done.

Cardiff City's chairman is currently Peter Ridsdale.

I was looking through some of my old programmes the other day and stumbled across a game between Leyton Orient and Cardiff City from November 1994. Cardiff City had the likes of ex-serviceman Phil Stant up front and the Guyanan born Cohen Griffith on the wing. However, my eye was drawn to one name on the Leyton Orient teamsheet, their number 9, Darren Purse.

Now, I'm sure most of you will know that Darren Purse is a solid centre half. Ex-Albion and Birmingham City, scored for the Blues in a League Cup Final at the Millennium Stadium. So why was he playing number 9?

It seems as if during his youth he was asked to play as a "makeshift striker" and actually had some success up there scoring five goals in the process. It leads me on to thinking that you can only be a "makeshift striker", I'm not sure it is physically possible to be a "makeshift right winger" or a "makeshift libero".

The manager, John Sitton, later to be immortalised on a TV documentary about football management (search Youtube for Sitton), wrote about the centre-half-turned-striker

"already far exceeded expectations. Had an extra, possibly unfair, burden placed upon him when asked to play up front. It shows the feelings for the club and his team-mates by the way he has responded. Can play at a higher level if he keeps his head straight."

The final score of the Orient vs Bluebirds match was 2-0 to the O's with Darren Purse and Colin West (later of Swansea City) getting the goals. Not sure if our centre back pairing of Lee Baddeley and Jason Perry could cope with "makeshift strikers" any better than they could cope with "shift strikers".