John Toshack – Cardiff City’s favourite son who led Swansea to England’s top tier.
For a man born in Cardiff, who served the Bluebirds with such distinction across a five-year career in which he netted 74 league goals in just 162 games before moving to Liverpool, joining bitter rivals Swansea City as Player/Manager must have been looked on by fans from the Welsh capital as some kind of treachery. To deliver unheralded success with the club could hardly have helped salve the open wounds, and surely must have left those Cardiff supporters thinking about what might have been. Continue reading →
Jimmy Scoular and Cardiff City’s European adventures.
When at the top of his game in the fifties, to many, Jimmy Scoular was the type of hard-bitten Scottish footballer hewed from the toughest of rock north of the border that provided the bedrock of any successful team. He was the sort of player that would consider the likes of more modern-day ‘hard men’ of the north such as Billy Bremner, Graeme Souness or, bringing it up to date perhaps, Scott Brown, as possibly less than fully deserving of the description.
Born in Livingston, ten days after Hogmanay in 1925, he went on to become an engineer working on submarines during the Second World war, before signing as a professional football at the end of hostilities. His work in constructing things that would go into battles in distant places would serve him well when he turned his hand to club management. Continue reading →
The rise and fall of Roger Johnson
Johnson’s career at Wolves hit a downward spiral.
Football has a particular habit of throwing up matches that can highlight an otherwise forgotten situation, or player. Such a game occurred early afternoon on Saturday when Wolverhampton Wanderers entertained Birmingham City in a SkyBet Championship match. It was of course a Midlands derby, bur for one particular player, the significance wet much further than that.
Forgotten centre-back Roger Johnson has played for both clubs and statistically has almost mirrored records for them. He turned out 76 times for the St Andrews club and 69 times for Wolves, netting twice for each club. That however is where the similarity ends. Wherein Johnson’s time with the Blues saw a highlight of his career to date, ironically wearing gold and black has very much been a case of the blues as his prospects have nosedived to the point where it’s difficult to see where his next first team game will be. Continue reading →
Gary Thacker 