Apologies for forgetting the quiz last week for the Blackburn game, but here it is back again for the local derby on Saturday at Ashton Gate.
Results in this fixture have been strange since our relegation in 2019. In saying that, perhaps it isn’t that surprising given our feeble home form in the last four seasons that Bristol City have won all three games played at Cardiff City Stadium. In 19/20 and 20/21 though we struck back with 1-0 and 2-0 wins respectively in the return fixtures and so I suppose we should be confident that we can make it three this Saturday lunchtime, although, clearly, it will need to be by something like two or three one given that we aren’t doing clean sheets this season.
60s. Born in a tough, hard city, this defender started off on the road to what was to become one of the powers in the game in the sixties, but never got there, clocking up around seventy appearances for near neighbours instead. Moving on to Bristol, he was a pretty regular pick during his seven years in the city, but, despite scoring twice in fixtures between the two clubs, he didn’t enjoy the best of times against Cardiff. Next, he joined a county set that is currently trying to recover its former position, before a few games close to the tracks brought his Football League career to an end, can you name him?
70s. Initially equine, he only lost once against us while at Bristol City.
80s. Any Eastern landing will do for shot stopper (4,7).
90s. With a healthy seven goals in eighteen appearances for his country (he was selected in the party for the 1996 Olympics, but never saw any game time), this forward had a decent, if not spectacular, career which was mostly played out thousands of miles away from his homeland. His domestic form earned him a move to a kids team on mainland Europe and then he stayed in the same country for a few games with a team which begins with a Y, before teaming up with Bristol City for a couple of seasons where he was a regular starter, scoring his goals at a rate of one every four games or so. When he moved, it was back to Europe to a team that were not the power they had been when they were contesting European Finals at Wembley a few decades earlier, but he gave them a decade’s service during which he scored over eighty times in all competitions – his career ended playing in the city of his birth, a city which has got into the habit of playing its test cricket under floodlights. Who am I describing?
00s. This forward played for nineteen different clubs if you include the ones he played for after dropping out of league football in his early thirties. However, he only really did his scoring for two clubs, one of which was Bristol City, while he had four separate spells for the other one (with an airport which featured in an advert and an awful song off the back of it), who were also his first club. In all, he scored one hundred and nineteen league goals for the two teams, with fifty one of them coming for the wurzels. Among the sides he was less successful for were Fulham, Reading and QPR – he failed to net in his two appearances for Bristol City against us, but he was on the winning side in one of the matches and the other one ended in a draw. Who is he?
10s. Bristol didn’t beat us too many times during this decade, but, on one of the occasions when they did, they had three players, all full internationals, who had played, or would go on to play, for City in their side, name the game and the players concerned.
20s. He’s only played in eleven senior games throughout this decade and all of them were for either us or Bristol City, who?
Answers:
60s. Aberdonian Gordon Low never played senior football in the country of his birth. His career started at Leeds Road, Huddersfield before a move to Bristol City in 1961. He had only a draw to show from his four encounters with City in 65/66 and 66/67 – he scored the wurzels’ goal in a 2-1 defeat at Ashton Gate in the latter season and put through his own net in a 5-1 loss at Ninian Park in the reverse fixture. Low’s next move took him to Stockport County for a couple of seasons, before he finished up with a few games for Crewe in 70/71.
70. Gerry Gow.
80s. Andy Leaning.
90s. Adelaide born Paul Agostino signed for Young Boys of Berne in 1992, but did not make much of an impact in his two years with them. He played for Yverdon Sport before signing for Bristol City in 1995 and then moved to the Bundesliga to play for Munich 1860 two years later. Agostino played close to two hundred and fifty times for the side beaten 2-0 at Wembley by West Ham in the Final of the 1965 Cup Winners Cup, before a return to Australia with Adelaide United.
00s. Tony Thorpe had four spells at Luton, scoring nearly seventy league goals for them and got fifty more for Bristol City in his four years with them – he played for the wurzels against us in a 1-1 draw at Ashton Gate in October 2001 and then in the “Scott Murray match” which they won two months later at Ninian Park 3-1.
10s. In our 4-2 defeat at Ashton Gate in August 2012, Tom Heaton, Greg Cunningham and Albert Adomah all started for Bristol City.
20s. Filip Benkovic.in loan spells from Leicester City.