Kav opens scoring on new City era

Last updated : 05 July 2009 By Michael Morris
Lennie 3 - 1 Eddie

The first goal scored in the Cardiff City Stadium was by Graham Kavanagh. He played a man of the match role in the centre of Lennie Lawrence's first half XI. The side also included Leo Fortune West, Andy Legg, Kevin Nugent and Danny Gabbidon.

Kavanagh's goal came on 30 mins after he ran most of the length of the pitch before firing home an exquisite shot from 18 yards.

Earlier Leo FW missed a couple of great oportunities and at the other end Carl Dale, playing up front with Nathan Blake for Eddie May's side, missed the chance of the match when through on goal.

Eddie's starting XI included Phil Dwyer, Cohen Griffith, Jason Perry and the aforementioned Dale and Blake.

Half time 1 - 0

A crowd of 4,916 witnessed the unofficial opening of the stadium which ses the Current Cardiff City side play Chasetown on Friday (ko 7:45pm) before the official opening on July 22nd against Celtic.

The vast amount of space on the concourse, the toilet facilities, the comfortable legroom and the fantastic views were high on the list of plus points for those seeing the ground for the first time. The cost of refreshments was by far the biggest gripe. Other things never change, the programmes had all sold out prior to kick off, but I understand they will be printing more.

The second half saw a totaly different dynamic. Off went the stronger players to be replaced by old timers lke Jimmy Mullen and Jimmy Goodfellow and on came celebrities like BBC Wales' Jason Mohammed, boxer Nicky Piper and Dainton and Pritchard from Dirty Sanchez. Even City director and former Chairman Steve Borley got a game. Steve went in goal and had the honour of conceding the last goal of the game when John Williams skipped the ball past him to make it 3 - 1 to Lennie's side.

Before that Paul Sanderson had levelled the game with a glancing header before a Derek Brazil o.g. made it 2 - 1 to Lennie's side. Williams' goal wrapped up the win.

The crowd made a decent effort at times to generate an atmosphere (will be much better when we have 20,000+ fans in there) and most pepole seemed to get through the automatic entry system easy enough.

An enjoyable afternoon, nice to get back to watching live football again and this time in our own lovely new stadium.

Don't forget, this Friday, Cardiff City v Chasetown.