I don't have a particularly good memory when it comes to remembering football matches, I wish I did, but I don't. I don't know why I haven't, perhaps it's because I've been going to watch Cardiff City now for over 20 years and having seen them hundreds of times a lot of the matches have gotten mixed up in my brain and are lost, they are there somewhere but will never be pieced back together. I wish it was different, I wish I could remember each and every match, who scored in each game and who got sent off and how many corners there were etc. It doesn't seem a problem for some people, I have friends who seem to be a walking 'soccerbase' who are seemingly able to remember almost anything from any match they have been to -and how I envy them.
But there are some matches that will stick with me forever and for different reasons, some stick due to a particularly good or bad City performance, some because of a memorable goal or sending off or some simply because I sat somewhere different in the ground, giving the game a unique feel. Some, however are awful, so awful in fact that they just will not budge from my memory. The particular match I'm referring to on this occasion is - as you already know from the title in bold above - Cardiff City v Maidstone United, a division 4 league match in 1992. I had been a Cardiff fan for less than two years when I went to see this match on a cold (probably, it always seemed freezing as a kid didn't it?) New Years Day and as far as I can think back, it is my first memory of an actual match.
I don't remember it all, of course I don't, I was only 7 and more to the point I had been drinking cans of lager since 10am. But I remember it being cold; I remember being sat in the Lower Grandstand family enclosure with my dad, granddad and uncle; I remember it being the home début for our new centre half hard man John Williams; I remember him hand balling on the line and giving away a penalty resulting in him being sent off and most of all I remembering them hammering us by 5 goals to 0. Williams only ever played for us on two more occasions after this match and a total of six times in all, but at least he embedded himself in the memory of all who were there that day, well, in mine anyway.
I also remember leaving the game early that day, something that I had never done before and haven't done since at a home game. In fact it was to be another 17 years until I would leave a game early again, when Cardiff got stuffed 6-0 away at Preston during the 2008-2009 season, another game that for all the wrong reasons, will stay in my memory as long as it is in tact.
This was to be the last time we were to ever play Maidstone United, for the Kent club were to go into liquidation before the start of the following season after being declared bankrupt, but every time I see or hear the place of Maidstone being mentioned I always think about that match. Days after going into liquidation 'The Stones' reformed, however they were forced to start again not only financially but on the pitch too as they were forced to play at the bottom of the English football league pyramid system. Despite the goalscoring exploits of Carl Dale and Chris Pike that season Cardiff only managed to finish 9th, however they were promoted as champions the following season.
So there it is, my first memory of an actual match at Ninian Park, I have seen many more since, some I can remember, some I can't, but that one, for sure, will stick.
City team that day:
Gavin Ward, Neil Matthews, Damon Searle, Roger Gibbons (captain), John Williams, Jason Perry, Paul Ramsey, Cohen Griffiths, Chris Pike, Carl Dale, Nathan Blake
Attendance: 8,023
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