Cardiff City have played their last regular league game at Ninian Park, the club's home for almost a century.
Ninian Park is hardly the most impressive ground in British football - and was looking shabby even 26 years ago (above) when I watched Wales draw 1-1 against mighty Brazil in a friendly. But many like me will have a stack of memories of the old place.
I went to my first ever football game at Ninian Park at when I was 10, on 3 November 1973. Dad took me to see Cardiff City against West Bromwich Albion, standing on the Bob Bank. It was a dreadful game, and we went to leave just before the end as a 0-0 draw looked inevitable. Suddenly, as we passed under the Grange End, we heard a roar from the away fans as West Brom scored a winner.
That game was forgettable. But as I became a regular, I learned to love Ninian Park, especially at night games under the floodlights. But the greatest night of all for me, unlikely as it will sound, was a game in the old third division. City were relegated in 1975 from the second division for the first time since the second world war. I was horrified: how could such a fate befall a club that snatched the FA Cup from England and come within a whisker of winning the league in 1924? But glory was the last thing on our minds in 1975 as we welcomed the likes of Halifax and Bury. At first, City struggled, but as 1976 arrived we were strong promotion candidates. One warm April night, Cardiff beat eventual champions Hereford United in front of a crowd of 35,000. As Max Boyce would say, I was there! My mother later got the autographs of most of the City players at a special celebratory dinner held by the county council.
I've seen just two competitive international games at City's ground, The first was Wales's narrow defeat to England in the 1976 British home internationals. (I got Lawrie McMenemie's autograph after the game: he managed Southampton team to a shock victory against Manchester United in the FA Cup Final just weeks earlier.) Soon after, I was disappointed to see Wales lose on aggregate to Yugoslavia in the second leg of the quarter finals of the European championships, in a game marred by crowd violence.
Ninian Park has featured a few times in this blog. Last year, I wrote nostalgically in Ertblog about City's wonderful FA Cup victories at the ground in 1977. I also wrote about my experiences as a Ninian Park programme seller the night Jock Stein died just minutes after his Scotland team secured a place at the 1986 World Cup finals at Wales's expense. And finally, an early post told how Wales nearly beat Brazil in that 1983 friendly.
I could talk about City's famous victory against Real Madrid, or the European Cup Winners Cup semi final against Hamburg - or even the Pope's visit to Ninian Park in 1982. (My friend Anthony was there!) But I couldn't claim to have been there on those special days!
Back in 1977, I took schoolboy pride in being able to name every Football League club's ground. Derby County? The Baseball Ground. Sunderland? Roker Park? Those grounds, like Ninian Park, were part of the furniture of the sport for half a century or more. Over 30 years on, dozens of clubs have moved home. Cardiff City are just the latest but it does feel more personal when your own club packs its bags.
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