Norwich City V Cardiff City; The ACN Preview

On Saturday, Norwich travel to South Wales to take on Vincent’s Red Dragons, Colin’s Bluebirds, or whatever the hell they’re called nowadays.Here’s your latest trip through the ages, detailing some of our more interesting encounters with Cardiff City.

This is a fixture, where Norwich hold the upper hand, having won 30 of the 58 games between the sides, compared to Cardiff’s 17. We have done the double over the Bluebirds 6 times and could make it 7 Saturday, whereas they have never beaten us twice in the same campaign.

The first fixture between the sides took place over a century ago, coming on 18th October 1913 in a 2-2 draw at the Nest.
Norwich and Cardiff, along with the rest of the Southern League joined the Football League in 1920. Cardiff were elected straight into the Second Division while City and the rest joined Division Three South. Seems fair.
It would be another 11 years until the clubs would meet again in the league, following Cardiff’s relegation. Norwich won both games that season and again 2 seasons later on route to their first title and promotion to Division Two.

Norwich were soon relegated and back in Division a Three South where their first game was at home to Cardiff. The Bluebirds won 2-1. A week later Germany’s invasion into Poland, saw war declared and the football authorities immediately cancelled all league results which included the game at Carrow Road and our other two already played fixtures against Bristol City and Ipswich.
Once fascism had been defeated (at least until 2016), league football commenced again in August 1946, in effect picking up where they left off 7 years earlier, keeping the fixtures but replaying the games. Again Norwich entertained Cardiff at Carrow Road but this time Norwich won 2-1. Cardiff got revenge later on in the season when en route to their own title, spanking us 6-1.

Cardiff survived at the higher level for almost 20 years, meaning the next meeting would be in January 1959. After knocking Manchester United out of the FA Cup, Division Three South Norwich were awarded with a Fourth Round tie against Second Division Cardiff. Norwich won 3-2 and continued on the path to a famous FA Cup semi-final.

Cardiff’s relegation in 1962 brought the clubs back together for another decade before we left them in winning promotion to the top flight in 1972. Cardiff became a good omen for City and on each of the next 3 occasions we would meet them, we would end the season winning promotion (’75, ’82, ’04), despite Cardiff winning all three games at Ninian Park those years.

In December 2003, Darren Huckerby signed off his exceptional three month loan spell at Carrow Road with a magical performance in a 4-1 Norwich win. Hucks opened the scoring after a jinking run left three Cardiff defenders for dead before coolly slotting home. In the second half Hucks set Iwan Roberts for the second before causing Cardiff’s defender Tony Vidmar to deflect his shot into his net. The final whistle went and the crowd just rose not to applaud the team but one man; Darren Huckerby. It wasn’t to be a final farewell however as two weeks later Norwich signed him up permanently, announcing his signing on the pitch during the Boxing Day win over Nottingham Forest.

In September 2007, Cardiff won 2-1 at Carrow Road, in what was their first win in the Fine City since April 1971 and only their second overall. Cardiff’s 1971 win was the last home league defeat City suffered until December 1972, going a club record 31 home league games without losing.

It was Cardiff who City would pip to Premier League promotion in 2010/11. Simeon Jackson’s late winner v Derby and header at Fratton Park, condemned Cardiff to the play offs where Reading stopped them in the semi finals.

Our last visit to Cardiff was in September 2014, when we came from 2-0 down to win 4-2. In the return fixture at Carrow Road, Alex Neil recorded his first win as manager at Carrow Road as a John ruddy penalty save helped us to a 3-2 win.

• 5-1 – Norwich biggest win, 14 December 1963
• 6-1 – Cardiff’s biggest win, 28 December 1946
• 6 – Ron Davies, City’s top scorer v Cardiff