Burnley 1 Cardiff City 1

By Longsider
November 1 2003

Burnley were held to a 1-1 draw this afternoon as the visitors came from behind to deny the Clarets the 3 points. The game kicked off at the unusual time of 1 o'clock today however

there was nothing unusual about the atmosphere at the Turf it was dire(again).

In a fairly uninspiring first half both sides had a couple of half chances with Chaplow and a Robbie Blake free kick probably our best efforts. The visitors only real chance came when Gordon beat Jenson to a cross but headed over. As most fans were looking forward to half time Cardiff came the closest to breaking the deadlock when a Graham Kavanagh free kick was tipped onto the post by Jenson, with the ball actually rebounding onto Jenson's forehead before going out for a corner.

The Second half started much brighter for the Clarets with Blake and Little in particular starting to cause the City defence problems. The goal came via Little after he beat his man on the right hand side before delivering a low cross for Richard Chaplow to clip past keeper Alexander into the right corner of the goal. Amazingly Cardiff City fans continued the recent trend of celebrating the other teams goals by joining in the annoying Tom Hark.

The visitors had a couple of chances with one long range effort brilliantly pushed out for a corner by Jenson but in truth the visitors offered little until in the 76th minute Graham Branch gifted them an undeserved equalizer. For some reason and only he'll know he casually passed the ball to Graham Kavanagh who in turn slipped the ball to the quiet Earnshaw, who took it well, and scored his 17th goal of the season in front of the thousand or so City fans who responded with their own version of Tom Hark.

Branch has picked up a reputation as of late for pointing the fingers at his fellow defenders. Just in case he's not sure i can confirm that there were 10,000 people pointing the finger at the skip.

Nothing of any real note happened after the goal and the honours were shared. Stan Ternent has tonight called it a 'smash and grab', sorry Stan but that's rubbish. If we'd have won at Upton Park a fortnight ago that would have been a smash and grab,surely in order for sides to obtain a smash and grab result one side has to pummel the other, that certainly didn't happen today.

What of our visitors? They were very poor today and if they are serious about getting into the play offs, they'll have to play a hell of a lot better.

For Burnley there's no doubting it was dropped points, we won't play many poorer teams at home yet we still failed to win, and we now need to go to Bramall Lane next week to try and improve on a terrible record there.

Burnley:- Brian Jensen, Dean West, Graham Branch, Arthur Gnohere, Mo Camara, Glen Little (Farrelly 83), Richard Chaplow, Tony Grant, Ian Moore, Robbie Blake (Chadwick 78), Delroy Facey. Subs not used: Lee Roche, Joel Pilkington, Matt O’Neill.

Cardiff:- Neil Alexander, Spencer Prior(Collins 90), Danny Gabbidon, Chris Barker, Tony Vidmar, Graham Kavanagh, Mark Bonner, Willie Boland (Gray 72), John Robinson, Gavin Gordon, Robert Earnshaw. Subs not used: Martyn Margetson, Andy Campbell, Stuart Fleetwood.

Referee: Howard Webb (Rotherham).