From a football perspective, when I put the names of Middlesbrough and Cardiff together in my head, only two games spring to mind.
Firstly, a day trip to the Welsh capital on 29th February 2004 - I recall a game against North West opponents and a 2-1 win. I’m sure a lot of you will smile whilst remembering that match - truly a day to remember.
My next memory is of 9th March 2008 and a rare trip back across the Pennines to the Riverside with my wife and two young step kids, to watch this game:
../guardian/football/2008/mar/09/minute-by-minute
I’d particularly draw your attention to a comment on the 40 minute mark, which appears devilishly prescient.
Elation and disappointment then - seemingly the themes of most seasons as a Boro supporter and definitely applicable to our current campaign.
On paper, with Cardiff flirting with relegation and Boro in the playoff places, this should be a home banker on the Pools coupon, although obviously no one does the Pools any more, but you get my drift. When I lived in Hett Village, just south of Durham City, in the mid-80s, an old chap used to go door to door, dropping off Vernons coupons and collecting them later in the week, together with the cash for each entry.
One week, I managed to get 7 draws and eagerly awaited my winnings, although there were lots of draws in the results and I wasn’t expecting very much. When I hadn’t received anything after a week of waiting, I contacted Vernons who said they’d investigate.
A week later, out of the blue, two men in suits called at our house one evening and asked to come in for a chat - it turned out the old chap had misplaced my coupon in his coat pocket and so my entry never got to Vernons and they weren’t prepared to pay out. They had records of all my previous entries, so it appeared to be a genuine error. I can’t remember how much was involved but it wasn’t a substantial amount, so I put it down to experience. They told me that they could take disciplinary action against him if I wanted to pursue things further, but I declined.
The old guy called round later in the week to apologise and it was obvious he wasn’t in a position to pay me my winnings, so, as it was almost Easter, I suggested that he bought my two girls an egg each instead. To be fair, he did do, although they were the cheapest eggs I’d ever seen - I suspect he’d made a trip to Spennymoor market to buy them. Whether I’d have been as forgiving if I’d had 8 draws out of 8 and a potential massive Pools win, I’ll leave to your imagination.
So, will Boro win the jackpot on Saturday or will it be another fruitless check of the coupon?
Cardiff are currently in the relegation zone and have only won one game away from home so far this season, having managed to draw 6 and lose 5. They’ve scored 12 goals and conceded 22 on their travels so far. In total this season in the Championship, they’ve won 5, drawn 7 and lost 12.
Unsurprisingly , the Cardiff fans are still unhappy with the club’s owner, Vincent Tam, who bought into the club in 2010. At least they’re back playing in blue, after he insisted on a “lucky” red strip when he first arrived. Seats at their stadium remain red though, although to be fair to him, he’s twice overseen promotion to the Premier League in 2012/13 and 2017/18.
Their current manager, Omer Riza, was appointed by Tam in September on an interim basis, then given a contract in December until the end of the season. He’s been in charge for 18 games with a win ratio of 30%.
To add to their woes, Callum Robinson, their Irish international and leading goal scorer, was sent off on Wednesday, so he’s not going to be available up front on Saturday, although Riza has said Cardiff are going to lodge an appeal.
A straightforward win for the Boro, then? Let’s hope so, but Cardiff did manage to beat Watford when they were last on the road at the end of December, and we all know about Typical Boro, don’t we?
After leaving it (very) late against Hull on Wednesday, I’d prefer an early goal or two to settle our nerves. As for the full time score, and despite our issues conjuring up a goal at the MKM Stadium, I’m going to pre-empt Diasboro’s own Mother Shipton and predict a 3-1 win.
PS The games come so thick and fast at this time of year, that I’ll be back with a preview of the Preston game later this month. Let’s hope PNE Dave is available to help.
Thank you Martin for another informative and enjoyable piece.
I was fascinated by your pools story and whilst you sadly suffered a modest loss it was of the accidental kind rather than a deliberate attempt to defraud you.
I also enjoyed your reminder of games against Cardiff of yesteryear but prefer the memory of the former to the latter which still haunts many of us.
Saturday is another must win game if Boro are to maintain their top six aspirations. They need to start putting teams at the bottom of the league to the sword more easily.
I am not expecting the team to regularly score 4/5/6 goals as they are capable of doing, but to more easily win games as they should be capable of doing and finding ways to win games when they need to; the teams above them have been doing it more often and have been less prone to losing so we need to adopt that mantra.
We are currently five games unbeaten and need to maintain that run; I will be happy with another 1-0 if that is what it takes but hope it will be more comfortable. CoB 😎
Ps. Note to self need to proof read more closely before posting - doh! 🤬
Thank you ,Martin, I enjoyed your piece recalling what were the most contrasting high and low experiences of our association with Cardiff. I particularly appreciated your excellent link to an event that was as dire as any other Boro performance I can remember. When you look at the Cardiff line-up that day, however, you can see that in retrospect they had players like 17 yo Aaron Ramsey and Whittingham (as well as veteran Jimmy-Floyd) who would make their mark upon the game, but were completely unknown quantities at the time. Interesting too that Mike Dean was the ref.
I remember going to a Christmas game at Ayresome Park many years ago, expecting us to easily win against Carlisle- because we always did. Unaccountably, we comfortably lost. They had a midfielder designated on the programme as S Bowles. It was only a few years later that I fully realised why we had been played off the park that freezing cold afternoon. It was less to do with our own limitations than the talent of an unknown kid who went on to become one of the great natural stars of his day. It was really no mystery why we lost.
Thank you Martin. Another great openi g piece to start us off. Like you, I cannot think about us playing against Cardiff without still wincing at that appalling performance the year the FA Cup run in opened up for us and the cup as good as had our name on it. Cardiff do appear to have found a bit of form recently and playing to get out of trouble could give us a stern test at the weekend.
We should be too good for them and hopefully the boost that last minute winner has given everyone will inspire them to a convincing home win.
Talking of home wins, I too have a story about the pools. Back in the day I lived in Leighton Buzzard and religiously did the football pools every week, sitting in front of the TV to check the results against my perm any 8 from 10 selections.
One Saturday I could barely contain myself as each score draw that came up matched one of my selections. After six score draws had come up, I had all six of them. There were no more score draws. I had successfully picked out every one. I can still recall the growing excitement as I ticked off each one. I had to win. Surely.... But no, all of my other 4 picks ended as home wins, so the best I could manage was 20 points, not even enough for the smallest dividend on the day. "Close, but no cigar" as Mrs P-N likes to say on such occasions.
I must say, I miss the pools. There was so much more to be genuinely engaged with than simply picking six numbers as for the lottery.
...
Just editing this. I think my memory is faulty. I think I must have been going through a phase of doing one of those clever plans rather than a full perm. It was cheaper to enter, but thatvis most likely why I never managed to get even a bottom dividend. Still. It didn't detract from the excitement I felt at the time.
Thanks Martin for a great piece at a time when everyone is busy during the festive period and time is short !
Really appreciated and like your eggscrutiating story about the old guy who had to shell out after misplacing your pools coupon. No yolk was it? Wonder how many times he had done it before?
We shall be there on Saturday despite the forecast snow! Ice chill and sub zero temperatures ! I feel the cold these days and I’m quite a softie for a guy who worked in countries with -40 degree and +40 degree temperatures!
Hopefully Boro will put Cardiff to bed with Johnny Howson singing us on from the stands ! I must admit I’ve never seen the Boro bench celebrate a goal so much since Carrick was appointed our manager.
Sorry for the late response to your post Martin but as you pointed out you have priorities as we all must have over this period. My own tardiness is due to initially attending a 100th birthday party for a friends mother then dashing up to Newcastle to see LES MIS the start of the world tour with Alfie Boe etc.
Im going to unsurprisingly go for my favourite
Boro3
OFB
Many thanks for the very interesting opener Martin, which incidentally brought back a nervous memory for me as a 17-year old pools agent - I did exactly the same thing as your pools agent when one Saturday I put on my combat jacket (trendy at the time), which was the one I wore on my Wednesday pools round as it had loads of big pockets for the coupons and money.
Anyway, to my horror I discovered a coupon that had got squashed down in the chest pocket - thankfully I checked it after the final scores and I think they only had a couple of draws so no winnings lost. After that I always diligently checked every pocket - easily done and it probably happened more often than you think but possibly not with winning entries.
It was quite a lucrative job as a teenager as it only took around 2 hours or so and I used to collect around £100 - from which I took one-eighth commission - back in 1980 that was decent money as some of my friends worked Saturday jobs for about the same. Having said that the dark cold wet winters were horrible as your hands froze and you could barely handle the coupons and money.
Still let's hope Boro hit the jackpot on Saturday and don't end up with another draw!
Interesting to read about Plymouth having scrapped plans to continue filming a documentary about their fight for survival in the Championship. It is reported in the Guardian the whole project was actually driven by Rooney and his advisers and was meant to be sold to Amazon Prime and as way of raising the club's global profile. All of which begs the question of whether the appointment of Wayne Rooney was actually made on football grounds or under the pretext of being a vehicle for a commercial project first.
Incidentally, Wayne Rooney is certainly ageing badly - he must be one of the oldest looking thirty-somethings around in the public eye - though having watched the darts last night I was staggered to read that the grey and balding Stephen Bunting was only 39 too. I was going to suggest maybe Rooney could even consider a new career in darts having lost his athletic build and now unlikely to be offered any meaningful position as a football manager after another failure - though it appears that idea has become quite commonplace in the media already.
Anyway, I may even come out of darts retirement myself next season as a former district league player with a few 180s still left in me...
@werdermouth I had a similar experience of a pools round (Littlewoods with "Spot the Ball"). The fingerless gloves just about kept your hands warm enough to handle the coins and count out change.
Thanks to Martin for another interesting opener, hopefully no banana skin on Saturday. Talking of the pools, I started an 8 from 10 perm in the 70’s with Littlewoods and I still continue it today on direct debit with the same numbers. One time whilst I was stationed in Germany I received a letter from Littlewoods congratulating me on my win, with shaking hands I read down through the letter to the attached cheque for £18, which has been my only win in about 50 years 😂😂😂.
Come on BORO.
Great story exmil
The problem you've got, as you will know, is that you cannot stop doing those numbers now. The moment you do they will hit the jackpot. And that would be worse than not winning.
Have you calculated how much you have "invested" over the years ?
We won't get any players back from injury lay-off for the Cardiff game. And no, the Cardiff matches are never my favourites after the Cup exit.
Forss is back training but Saturday comes too early. Ayling and Morris might be available for the FA Cup match versus Blackburn, though.
Howson will be out "bit longer" with a calf injury and Tommy Conway is again expected to be missing this weekend with a hamstring problem.
Up the Boro!
Thanks for a great starter, Martin. It’s really interesting. Those two Cardiff games are etched in my memory, of course; the home loss in the Cup quarter final still hurts. The Guardian report you attached would be very funny were I a neutral or a Bluebird, but it’s painful to be reminded just how awful we were that day and how awful some of our performances under GS were. Oh, and how much money we wasted on Alves! And when you have to bring on Mido and Gary O’Neill to chase the game, you know you’re in trouble.
After years of losses against Cardiff we’ve started to register a few noteworthy wins at their place in recent years. They’re no longer a bogey team. Tomorrow, I expect us to build on that with a win. Despite our injuries, I think we’ll have too much for a poor Cardiff side. Everything crossed!
Yes I used the fingerless gloves too 🙂
There’s a piece in the Daily Telegraph today suggesting that Crystal Palace have made an offer to Liverpool for Ben Doak.
It’s very interesting to hear the stories of other people’s Pools experiences and it also brought to mind a brief period after my parents had retired to Guisborough, just round the corner from my first house.
My Dad and I had got into the habit of having a beer and a game of pool or snooker in the TA Social Club on Saturday lunchtime, when we also risked a tiny stake on what I think was called the ITV7 (or was it 5?), basically a horse racing accumulator.
I recall us having enough winners one day for me to make the trip across town to the Bookies afterwards, to collect our winnings and to be extremely embarrassed to collect …
…2p!
@martin-bellamy Another great Headliner Martin, and another talking point within it.
It looks as though the majority of us on here remember the “Pools”, Littlewoods and Vernon’s being the main ones if my memory serves me correctly.
My mother worked at British Homes Stores in the early sixties and a work colleague and neighbour, whose husband was blind, asked her if I would not mind helping in filling out his Littlewoods pools coupon.
So for many a year, every Friday evening, I would go to their house and together we would go through the matches, trying to predict the outcome of the following days games. I think we did an eight from ten and an eight from twelve??
If Boro were away I would also go round to their house and mark off the results as they were read out on the radio. I cannot remember ever winning anything.
I always remember that an 8 from 10 perm was equivalent to 45 lines of 8 - I actually remember I had one retired guy on my round who would do 5 lines of 5 selections where you could group any two line of 5 together to make ten possible 8 from 10's - which was equivalent to 450 lines of 8 - I only recall him ever winning anything once and he gave me a £5 tip. He used to also do Spot the Ball using stamp that placed a grid of 10x20 tiny crosses but he never won anything on that!
A great piece in the NE with video of JH with the away fans:
@werdermouth Spot the Ball - I’d completely forgotten about that. I recall people with rulers drawing invisible lines from several player’s eye lines to try and find the ball. I was always a bit suspicious as to whether there’d ever been a ball in the photo in the first place.
I used to look at the results of Spot the Ball to see where the ball was actually supposed to be and it always looked completely random - apparently to win you had to also have your x in the dead centre of the ball - some weeks there wasn't a winner and I think the prize was carried over.
btw Regarding your missed win - I just read this regarding the legal position of not having your entry sent in - I think you were not the worst affected...
Many players [of the pools] were unaware that British law left them at the mercy of unscrupulous collectors who took their money but did not submit the coupons. This was because the Gaming Act 1845 made all forms of gambling a "debt of honour" which meant that any dispute about winnings was exempt from legal redress in a court of law. In 1995, a syndicate lost £2.3million when their collector stole their money and did not hand in their coupon. The group wanted to sue the Pools company but it made it clear it did not employ collectors, they were the punters' agents. The "debt of honour" exemption to taking legal action over unpaid winnings was eventually repealed in the Gambling Act 2005.
@werdermouth Crikey. How would you cope with that? A life changing opportunity snatched away and no redress?
Cardiff ,we won't mention the QF debacle
I was at the game when John Toshack made his debut , at Ayresome,
Remember Johnny Vincent signing , did ok for awhile
Alan Foggon from Cardiff £10,000 bargain,looking back, wasn't fit when he came in, but improved as time would tell..
I'm not sure if two Welsh Internationals Mel Nurse and Taffy Orrit signed from Cardiff, two characters .
It would be very tough to take - I think I recall a few similar instances of people leaving works syndicates only for them to win the jackpot a few weeks later and there was a woman who divorced her 'lazy' husband shortly before he won the lottery 😭
@martin-bellamy I had an uncle born in Grove Hill who after serving in tanks in the war lived in Marlborough in Wiltshire. He was employed in the horse racing industry ( I believe he was later head lad at Sir Gordon Richards stables). As an educated (and informed) gambler he laid an accumulator bet with the local bookie in the late 1950's. The bookie worked out of the local pub as high street betting shops were at that time prohibited. The bet came in and my uncle Bill came to collect. The bookie did not have the funds, but as the bookie was a local property investor he offered my uncle a row of terraced houses off Marlborough High Street in lieu. Alternatively my uncle could wait for the cash. He opted to wait for the cash, which was paid in full within 12 months. Having regard to property prices in Marlborough, he regretted the choice for the rest of his life. He would have made a million. The gambling debt concerned was never enforceable in law.
My mam and dad used to do spot the ball as well, carefully plotting where the ball was using rulers following the sight lines of all the players. Did you know, it wasn't judged on where the closest cross to where the ball was, but the closest to where a panel of experts judged where the ball should have been based on the same image (i.e. they were deciding where they thought the ball was from an image where the ball had been erased already). I'm sure the must be plenty of people who will have judged where the ball was correctly, only not where the experts decided it was !I used to look at the results of Spot the Ball to see where the ball was actually supposed to be and it always looked completely random - apparently to win you had to also have your x in the dead centre of the ball - some weeks there wasn't a winner and I think the prize was carried over.
Boro transfer news. True and maybe not
True. Zach Hemings has rejoined St. Mirren
Maybe or not. Liverpool have turned down offers for Ben Doak from Palace and Ipswich. The offers were not sufficient and they also believe Doak can eventually break into the Liverpool team.
Watch this space on this one.
Leicester, supposedly have made a bid for LL at around 12 million. That must be a joke?
As for Boro incomings. They will need to “deregister” before adding, as they are at 25 players at the moment.
Two are Smith and Lenihan. Surprised at Smith. And of course Doak, if he did leave.
I enjoyed reading another good Match Preview from Martin and then a host of replies which were fun, too. Fun if you don't mind losing money on the Pools, that is!
Gambling debts being "binding in honour only" used to be one of the first areas of Law you learned as a student. Market ouvert, gambling debts, double jeopardy, and another which I will not mention here: those areas of settled law being overturned, one by one, as time has passed over the last half-century.
That loss in the FA Cup against Cardiff City and a prococious Aaron Ramsey still rankles. Bearing in mind the teams left in the Cup that year...
They probably threw a dart at the photo to decide where the ball was 😉
@chris-from-barlby Image how much ANY property in Marlborough would be worth now, let alone a two of terraces. I’ve only been to the town once but it was dripping with wealth.