Notts County 0-1 Cardiff City

BTTB MOM
By Chris O'Brien
September 21 2002

The Bluebirds have made it 4 straight wins after a 1-0 victory over Notts County this afternoon. Gary Croft was on target for the Bluebirds.

The Bluebirds have won their 4th successive match after a 1-0 victory against Notts County today. Gary Croft got the goal for the Bluebirds.

Report by IPABlue:
Well what can I say 3 points gained is better than 3 points lost

The lovely referee did his best to give poor lowly Notts County the points as the generous gentleman he is.

The mighty Bluebirds started off a little slowly but soon came into there own and started passing the ball around nicely, it wasn't difficult as Notts County were a very, very poor side.

The large travelling faithful Bluebirds support of 2-2500 were loud and vociferous throughout the 95 minutes of play backing the boys all the way.

The game itself was not the most pretty game Cardiff City have played but most of that was due to the referee obviously not knowing the rules of football and giving every decision to our Nottinghamshire friends whether it was our player or there's player that went down.

The game livened after 20 minutes when Gary Croft belted the ball from 25 yards and there was only one place that ball was going and that was the back of the net.

This started the City faithful singing the old favourite of cheer up, Swansea are worse than you.

The Bluebirds were playing in their change strip of yellow so regular chants of its just like watching Brazil were heard throughout even though the game was nothing like that.

Five minutes after the goal the City fans were celebrating again as King Kav took a free kick, which was pushed away by the County keeper, and Thorne was there to follow up with a side footed shot into the net. The City players had celebrated and were running back to the half way line when suddenly everyone realised the goal had somehow been disallowed for offside which left everyone in the blue corner scratching there heads in disbelief.

The last 15 minutes of the first half were played out with a total lack of excitement.



Half-time County 0 City 1

The 2nd half started as the 1st half finished with the referee on a different planet. His decisions were unbelievably bad and all myself and Claude Blue could do was smile at his antics as he played his own rules. (i.e. give every decision to the home side whether it was Leggy taken out with a two-footed tackle or little Earnie wrestled to the floor like a rag doll!)

There were a few close chances in the 2nd half but nothing to write home about.

Prior, Kav, Earnie and Thorne went close but if they had scored the referee would have probably disallowed it anyway.

A comment from an older supporter you know the type strawberry blonde hair, beer belly normally nicknamed Wills, gave the best comment of the referee will give this game to County. Gladly he was wrong as they were so poor they could not score even with the help of the official.

The game petered out into a non entity, on 77 minutes Earnie was given a standing ovation as he was replaced by Andy Campbell and then on 89 minutes there was another standing ovation as Andy Legg was replaced by Chris Barker as a time wasting ploy.

The end of the game came after 3 minutes of added time and the travelling Bluebirds faithful came into there own again.

It was even better to see other results going our way which leaves us level on points with three other teams with all four joint top. We also have a game in hand which is to be played on Tuesday and hopefully by 9.30pm on that evening we will be top of the division by rights but we will need to play a lot better than our performance today.

James the Bluebird did hear a County fan as we walked back to the car saying that City should have won 4-0.

Hopefully Sam's cat will return from his scouting mission for Lennie for the game on Tuesday so a better report will be on here on Tuesday night when the BTTB crew return from the west country.

Final score: Notts County 0, Cardiff City 1.