Gunter the super supporter...

CHRIS Gunter’s love for Cardiff City is well known.

As a trainee, Gunter used to travel with supporters to watch his beloved Bluebirds, before eventually going on to play for his boyhood team in 2006.

However, clearly the pull of going to watch his team proved difficult to overcome, with Gunter now admitting that he once bunked off a training session with Cardiff’s youth team to go and take in a massive Carling Cup clash with West Ham in 2003.

Speaking to Danny Gabbidon as part of a live Instagram broadcast, Gunter said: “I used to go everywhere with Cardiff when time allowed, obviously.

“There was one time, though. We had training one midweek. I think it was the first season we’d just got promoted back and we got West Ham in the cup. They were in Division One then, and Terry Moore, who was a coach at Cardiff at the time said: ‘I know the first team have got a big game, but you’re still training. You’re not going to that game. You’re coming to train.

“I got my dad to ring up just before to say ‘I can’t bring him because the car’s broken down.’ Then I went off to watch the game!

“Then when I was on my way back from the stadium to walk back to get the train home with a couple of my mates, the minibus that was up at training was driving back to park at the stadium overnight.

“So I was having to duck behind cars and that to make sure I couldn’t be seen. So yeah. I was a proper diehard at the time.”

The match itself was something of a thriller, with a Jermain Defoe hat-trick canceling out a first-half double from Robbie Earnshaw, handing the Hammers a 3-2 victory at Ninian Park.

One of Defoe’s goals actually deflected off Gabbidon that night, but Gunter insists he managed to resist any temptation to jeer his efforts.

“I never booed you Gabs. Never!”, he joked.

“I couldn’t. You got a move to the Premier League, so you must have been doing something right!”