Cardiff City's game plan on Tuesday was to turn the Addickted against the team. In fact Charlton fans reacted with great spirit, keeping up a barrage of noise in support of Chris Powell and the players, later supplemented by chants of 'Enger-land'.
Cardiff defender Matthew Connolly said: 'We knew Charlton had had a bad result against Boro on the weekend and that their home form had not been that good. We wanted to try to score early and get their fans turning against them. We knew they were short of confidence.'
He continued, 'And we scored two and at that stage, not that I was being over confident, but I thought, we’ve got this now. It didn’t happen, we made too many mistakes. Fair play to Charlton I thought they worked very hard. But we gave away bad goals at bad times.'
It can be a strange place, Wales. My oldest Welsh-speaking nephew (all this arises from his mum taking a pony trekking holiday in Wales) visited when he was very young and started shouting in great alarm 'Cwn Ytar' (at least that's what it sounded like to me). I wondered if there was a fire. Then I realised he was pointing at the dog and what he was saying was 'Dog in the house'. The only dogs he knew were sheepdogs who had to live outside. I suppose that explains the self-deprecatory chant of 'sheep shaggers' by the Cardiff fans early in the game.
He has left Wales as an adult, but continues to support Aberystwyth and prefers football to egg chasing. I did think of taking him to Charlton when he got older, but he was terrified by the tube.
At the station after the game, a Cardiff fan was getting some banter about his long journey home. 'I only live down the road,' he declared in the accent of the valleys (which makes a change from Manchester United supporters who have never been near Manchester). 'Well you **** off back there,' came the reply.
BTW, Lord Kinnock was at the match.
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