Cardiff City go looking for their first league win of the season at the fourth attempt tomorrow when a Sheffield Wednesday side without a point to show from their first three matches come to Cardiff City Stadium.
It takes some doing given the competition, but, from the outside at least, I reckon Wednesday made the maddest football decision of the summer when they decided to part company with Darren Moore the manager who took them to promotion via the Play Offs in May.
Last season, the top sides in League One seemed to be a lot stronger than the others in the division. This explains why Wednesday finished with a points total which would have guaranteed them the title most seasons and yet still had to go through the trauma of the Play Offs (including a 4-0 loss in the first leg of their Semi Final!) in 22/23.
Given that the top three sides finished with 101, 98 and 96 (fourth placed Barnsley had a very healthy 86), it was generally predicted that the three promoted sides would help to make this season’s Championship the highest standard one in some time. Now, following the decision to sack Moore, Wednesday have been transformed into relegation picks by many and these pundits will already be congratulating themselves on their judgement given the start they’ve made.
All of this helps to make Wednesday dangerous opponents, especially given our home record (I wasn’t supposed to be mentioning that this week!). Suffice it to say, City cannot afford complacency against anyone these days.
Anyway, let’s get on to the quiz, I’ll post the answers to the seven questions below on Sunday.
60s. When you think of the era he played in, the position he played and his surname, this long serving Wednesday player is not the first person who springs to mind for anyone who has a knowledge of the football of fifty and sixty years ago. However, he was no mean performer in his own right , he didn’t quite make it to a full England cap, but it might be said that he did everything else but win one. When he eventually moved on, he stayed in Yorkshire to play for a side that have already endured a painful trip to Wales this season – who am I describing?
70s. A Wednesday fan who turned down transfers to bigger clubs (Eric Morecambe rang him once to try to persuade him to join Luton and he turned down planned moves to Chelsea and Palace) because of his love of the team he was representing, this forward had the dubious honour of scoring Wednesday’s first goal in the old Third Division (now League One) during this decade. His career was blighted by serious injuries and, after a season which saw him representing two more Yorkshire clubs with little success, he quit at the end of the decade at the age of twenty nine. If his career had been an unlucky one with with a tinge of sadness to it, his life after football was even more so as, plagued by the effects of his football injuries and financial worries, he died an alcohol related death at the age of only fifty nine, can you name him?
80s. A chink of light in a dark meeting room perhaps?
90s. First right back to say “tara treble” after the opening race maybe? (4,7)
00s. In a career, with a strong Cardiff City connection, which started in 2004 and ended in 2021, it only happened twice, at Hillsborough and at Tynecastle – who is the player and what am I describing?
.10s. This left sided player signed for Wednesday around the middle of this decade after having been loaned by his first club to Darlington, Shrewsbury, Bradford and Preston and has spent the last seven years wearing blue and white stripes, who is he?
20. Make shared Inland Revenue contributions come back from Ukraine? (6,6)
Answers
60s. Winger Alan Finney played over four hundred and fifty league games for Sheffield Wednesday between 1951 and 1966 and won caps for England at Under 23 and B level before moving on to Doncaster to end his tin full time football.
70s. Mick Prendergast scored over fifty league goals in around one hundred and eighty games for Sheffield Wednesday in a decade’s service to the club, with the relatively low number of matches he played giving a clue to the number of bad injuries he suffered – he was a first choice when fit for the large majority of his time at Hillsborough. In 1978, Prendergast signed for Barnsley, but, again, injuries held him back and he was briefly loaned to Halifax before deciding to call it a day at the end of the 78/79 season.
80s. Ray Blackhall.
90s. Earl Barrett.
00s. Joe Ledley was only ever sent off twice in his seventeen year career, the first time was in City’s 3-1 defeat Sheffield Wednesday in September 2009 and that was followed a year later by a straight red card while playing for Celtic at Hearts.
10s. Adam Reach was loaned out four times by his first club, Middlesbrough. Since then he’s played for Sheffield Wednesday and West Brom.
20s. Kadeem Harris’ spell at Ukraine side Metalist Kharkiv was cut short by the Russian invasion last year.