How fast can a Fiat Punto do Brighton to Cardiff for a League Cup game?
“I’m up for a bit of Cardiff v Brighton in the League Cup, but I don’t finish work in Lewes until 4pm. Do you think we can make it?”
No should have been the answer to this question. A 194 mile journey encompassing the M25 and M4 in rush hour that, according to even the most generous satellite navigation system, would take at least three hours and 25 minutes without any unexpected delays thrown in.
Soon to be crowned 2007 Formula One World Champion Kimi Räikkönen driving his Scuderia Ferrari would have struggled to get to Ninian Park in time for a 7.45pm kick off. Let alone three blokes crammed inti a tiny P-registration Fiat Punto.
Everything screamed it would be impossible and so needless to say at 4pm on Tuesday 14th August 2007, said Fiat Punto pulled out of Lewes bound for South Wales carrying three of the 87 fans who were brave/stupid enough to go to Cardiff for a League Cup first round tie that had defeat written all over it.
Disaster soon struck when the radio started bleating out that there was a crash on the M25. Suddenly, the Punto was having to divert across to the A24, along to Guildford and then up the M3 to miss out the problems on the world’s biggest carpark. There was even the drama of driving into a wall on a tiny country road somewhere outside Guilford thrown in for good measure.
Top Gear would never have contemplated this sort of challenge because it was so stupid and yet remarkably, the Punto having hit speeds that no 1.1 litre car carrying the best part of 40 stone of human should be subjected to was parking up outside Ninian Park at 7.40pm.
We were at the turnstiles by 7.45pm and in position on the sparsely populated terrace only a couple of minutes after kick off. Mission accomplished.
There were several reasons why Cardiff away had attracted a mere 87 Brighton supporters. The first was that it was the League Cup. The second was that, as already eluded to, it was a game Brighton were never likely to win having finished 18th in League One the previous season whilst the Bluebirds were 12th in the Championship.
The third was that Ninian Park used to be the most horrible experience in the Football League. A package holiday to Kabul would have guaranteed a more friendly welcome than that offered by the Cardiff locals.
Previous experiences included hot coffee being thrown into the fence which separated home and away fans on the the Grange End terrace so that boiling liquid ended up flying into the visiting section.
Bottles of human urine were not uncommon missiles, although these thankfully came with a lid and you were always guaranteed a guard of honour at full time.
Cardiff fans would line both sides of the road from the exit to the car park to bombard you with anti-English rhetoric whilst held back by a line of police. No matter which club you supported, you were locked in afterwards for your own safety.
It said much about the lack of interest surrounding Cardiff v Brighton in the League Cup that the Bluebirds’ louts were even willing to pass up the opportunity to hurl abuse; in fact, only 3,649 home fans turned up. The drive in the Punto may have been stressful, but the experience at Ninian Park was an absolute breeze compared to normal.
If you are in any doubt what difference a new stadium can make, six years later and Cardiff were named Football League Family Club of the Season once safely ensconced in the imaginatively named Cardiff City Stadium in the park opposite.
The Bluebirds’ new home was being built at the time of our visit and so this was the last occasion the Albion ever went to Ninian Park. It was a proper football stadium of the sort which do not really exist anymore, but no Brighton fan would claim to miss it.
Not only were the home fans hostile, but Brighton hardly ever won at Cardiff. You had to go back to 1984 to find a last Seagulls win in the Welsh capital, a 4-2 victory delivered by goals from Frank Worthington, Terry Connor, Steve Penney and Gary Howlett. It was one of only seven successes from 32 previous visits.
So, was this trip worth it and did it justify the ridiculous journey to get there? No is of course the answer as Cardiff won 1-0 to dump Brighton out of the League Cup.
Not only did the Albion suffer defeat, but the game was duller than Prince Charles and in the ultimate piss take, it went all the way to extra time necessitating an even later departure for the journey home.
Cardiff included played such as Roger Johnson, Peter Whittingham and Warren Feeney in their starting line up and a couple of young players by the name of Aaron Ramsey and Joe Ledley came off the Bluebirds’ bench, so perhaps the Albion deserved some credit for taking the game to an extra half hour even if it was about as welcome as drilling a rusty nail through an erect penis.
The main reason that Cardiff were unable to find a way to beat Brighton in normal time was because of Tommy Elphick. Dean Wilkins handed the defender his first start of the 2007-08 season, a rare opportunity for a man who had only made his full debut in the final month of the previous campaign, unlike most of his former youth team colleagues who had had been thrown into senior football from the start of the Wilkins era.
Elphick’s claims of becoming a Brighton regular were impossible to ignore following his performance at Cardiff in the League Cup. He kept Feeney extremely quiet and even came close to scoring at the other end, putting a towering header just off target.
By the end of the 2007-08 season, Elphick would be crowned Player of the Year and well on his way towards becoming one of the best homegrown defenders the Albion have ever produced.
Joel Lynch was unlucky with a similar effort to Elphick as the Albion’s only two chances of note came from defenders getting on the end of set pieces.
It was a similar story for Cardiff, for whom Roger Johnson scored the winner in the 110th minute. Losing so late was frustrating for the Albion, with Dean Wilkins saying afterwards: “It was an excellent defensive performance and if it had been a league game, we would have come away after 90 minutes with a satisfying point against a top Championship side.”
This was not a league game however and so we arrived back in Brighton at 2.30am in the morning with nothing to show for the Albion’s efforts, other than the new land-speed record set by the WAB Mobile in making it to Ninian Park for kick off.
Worse was to come a month later when the Fiat Punto made a free transfer to the car scrapyard in the sky. A warning light began flashing before we had even made it out of Cardiff on the way home.
This eventually led to a catastrophic failure and a sudden and unexpected repair bill far in excess of what the car was worth. Her efforts in getting from Sussex to Cardiff had managed to knock years off her life, and what for?
A 1-0 defeat in the League Cup when the Seagulls managed to get the ball near the Cardiff only twice in 120 minutes. The things we do for Brighton & Hove Albion.
