CARDIFF CITY 3 TAFFS WELL 0
CARDIFF City got their pre-season campaign off to a victorious start, even if the subdued circumstances taught us precious little about what is to come in the next 10 months, writes Dominic Booth.
Taffs Well were accommodating hosts in every sense of the word and a Cardiff team including mainly Under23 players were barely tested, running out 3-0 winners thanks to a Rhys Healey brace either side of half time plus triallist Scott McLean’s late strike.
More stringent tests and bigger stages are to come, especially in the Premier League. But even taking on Tavistock, Bodmin Town and Torquay with the first team squad, you feel, will tell us more about how this Bluebirds side are gelling ahead of their biggest season in years.
The positives were that Rhwr Dda’r stadium was packed to the rafters with more than 2,500 buoyant fans; the coffers of charities raising funds for Rookwood Hospital and Velindre Cancer Centre were nicely boosted and, most pertinently, the good feeling around this Cardiff team continued.
Many Bluebirds fans might have hoped to see the big names play, but such was the dry and bobbly state of the Taffs Well pitch that Neil Warnock felt obliged only to take them merely as selfie and autograph fodder, happy to mingle with fans, not wanting to risk injury.
Still it was good to hear strains of ‘Allez, Allez, Allez’ in Taffs Well, that infectious Cardiff fan song that will always take minds back to promotion on that final day of 2017/18 against Reading.
It was good to see a first glimpse of Bobby Reid and Alex Smithies, even if they were off duty.
And it was good to see Sean Morrison, Junior Hoilett and Sol Bamba, who were among the familiar faces posing for pictures in the crowd.
Talk about the calm before the storm, though. It was as if Cardiff’s players were being paraded in the paddock before the big race. An anticipation-building process.
Warnock, though, was in his ele-
ment: chatting affably to supporters and even saying a few words on a microphone before kick off.
As has been the case for a good 18 months now, he is the main event.
A phrase perhaps overused the other side of the Seven Bridge recently has been ‘it’s coming home.’ But it really did feel as though Warnock was bringing football back to its roots here, a youthful homegrown Cardiff team locking horns with the Wellmen, a Welsh League Division One outfit. What about the game? Well, Healey was the best on display by a distance, opening the scoring with a tap-in before winning – and missing – a penalty brilliantly saved by Wellmen goalkeeper Stephen Hall.
Hall then denied headers from both Cardiff centre-backs, Ciaron Brown and Jack McKay to ensure Taffs Well trailed 1-0 at the break. You had to give the hosts’ shotstopper a lot of credit.
But Healey was always good for another goal and converted after the break, before it became a procession. McLean added a third late on.
But there wasn’t much to complain about here. There is so much more to come, we all know that.