CCC Team of the Week - Keith's Cardiff (guess what happened at wembley?)

So from top to bottom and Kelly to Keith. The only welsh team in the history of the CCC

Cardiff City play their home games at the Cardiff City Stadium where they moved to in 2009 after 99 years at nearby Ninian Park. The Club record attendance at Ninian Park was 57,893 against Arsenal whilst at Cardiff City Stadium it was 26,098 against Paula’s Palace.

Cardiff City  are the only club outside of England to win the FA Cup which they did on St George’s Day in 1927 beating Arsenal 1-0 in the first match to be broadcast nationwide by BBC Radio.  More recently they lost to Portsmouth J.  They have also been regular winners of the Welsh Cup and as the winner of the Cup in 1966-67 gained entry to the UEFA Cup Winner’s Cup, reaching the semi-finals in 1967-68.

Riverside A.F.C. was formed in 1899 as a way of keeping players from the Riverside Cricket Club together and in shape during the winter months. In 1905 Cardiff was granted city status by King Edward VII, but the club had to join the South Wales Amateur League in 1907 before they were deemed good enough to change the name of the club to include City.  They played their first Football League home match against Clapton Orient (who?) in August 1920. 

After a season long tussle (1923-24) they went into the last game of the season one point ahead of second-placed Andy’s Huddersfield. Andy’s team beat Mick’s Forest 3-0 but Cardiff missed a penalty and were held to a 0-0 draw by Chris’s Birmingham so they ended the season in second place on goal average. Although they had scored one more goal than Huddersfield during the season, Cardiff also conceded one more meaning they had a worse scoring-to-conceding ratio of 1.794 compared with Huddersfield's 1.818. If goal difference was used, Cardiff would have been champions.

In the 1950s the Cardiff chairman established close links with Torquay after regularly visiting the hotel owned by the Torquay chairman. In following seasons any players not thought to be good enough for Cardiff would be offered to Torquay and Cardiff had first pick of the good players from Torquay.  The relation lasted until 1954.  Between 1985 and 1993, Cardiff were continuously in the lower two divisions of the league and in 1996 finished they finished in their lowest-ever league position – 22nd of 24 in Division Three.

By 25 May 2003, Cardiff played QPR in the play-offs and the Bluebirds clinched a 1-0 win scoring on 114minutes to return to division one after 18years and they have remained at Championship level ever since, mostly mid-table.  Not one to miss out on the woes suffered by most of our teams, during that season the club were involved in a court case with financial backers Langston over the repayment of a £31m loan taken out by former chairman Sam Hammam in 2004. Years later, having staved off a winding up order from HMRC under a payment agreement, in November 2009, Ridsdale (ex_leeds) offered a "Golden Ticket" scheme to fans, buy the 2010/11 season ticket before 6 January 2010 and no price rise for 2 years and all monies raised would be spent on players in the January 2010 transfer window. However, late January Ridsdale admitted that in addition to the "Golden Ticket" money not being spent on players, club assets would be sold to fulfil a £2.7M tax bill, and avert another winding up order.

They have been in the Championship play-offs several times beating Pete’s Leicester  4–3 in a penalty shoot-out in semis but lost 3–2 to Lyn’s Blackpool and lost the following two season 3–0 and 5-0  on aggregate to Jane’s ex-Reading and Mick’s ex-West Ham in the semis.

In 2012, the club's Malaysian then-owners announced plans to re-brand the club including the change of the club's home colours and crest from blue to red. However, this was not the first attempted re-brand as shortly after purchasing the club in august 2000 Sam Hamman controversially pledged to get the entire Welsh nation to support Cardiff by renaming the club "The Cardiff Celts".  This was to involve changing the club colours to green, red and white. At that time lengthy talks with senior players and fans, convinced the new owner not to change the name of the club; however the club crest was redesigned to incorporated the Cardiff City bluebird in front of the Flag of Saint David. But if Keith is going to wear any Cardiff kit I hope he finds the retro purple and yellow kit of the 70s

There was much discussion on whether Cardiff could play in Europe if they qualified, it being the English League etc. Platini said they could although the FA weren’t sure but changed their stance to say Cardiff could play in Europe should they win the FA Cup Final but they lost to Portsmouth (did I mention that?).