Always nice to have a new club to set a quiz for. Off the top of my head, I think the Boxing Day game at Oxford United is the first time we’ve played them in the league since I took my nephew to his first game of football back in 2000.
Oxford have certainly been on a journey since then, but Luton have shown that it’s possible to drop out of the EFL and get all of the way back to the Premier League, so they will be hoping for the same for themselves.
Mind you, it’s hard to imagine Oxford United in the Premier League right now – just as it us. Both clubs are among the favourites for the drop and, although the season is not yet half way completed, my feeling is that at least one of us will be going down come May.
As to a prediction for Thursday, all I’ll say is that, in terms of not losing, we’ve been doing okay on the road lately. However, we really do need that first away win and I would have been fairly confident of us getting it if Oxford, in complete contrast to us, had not acted decisively in appointing a new manager following the harsh looking sacking of Des Buckingham.
Can I wish all readers a Happy Christmas and Boxing Day, with the latter made all the better with a, very rare, post Christmas win! Here’s the normal seven questions.
60s. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that this stalwart Oxford defender had a relative who played for City at the same time as he was establishing himself as a regular at the old Manor Ground, but I’ve been unable to confirm it this morning. Whatever the truth, he started off in the First Division a long way from home and only made a senior debut after he’d been released and joined Oxford. When he did eventually move on, it was to keep the company of central Americans in a place named after angels for a while before he turned up in the third tier with a team that will be hoping to stay up at City or Oxford’s expense this season. A three year stint playing for and managing distinctive non league flowers took his career into a third decade, but can you name him?
70s. Shitepoke takes to the wing!
80s. The effect of mist on rims may produce a footballer! (3,8)
90s. Apart from a brief spell in Sweden, this defender with a surname like a sidekick, capped seventy eight times by his country, only left his native continent on three occasions during his seventeen year playing career and each time it was to play for an English club – the first two of them played in yellow/amber and the second two both began with the letter “O”. Who is he?
00s. The shunt turns up in midfield!
10s. I watched a one off event in a City’s player’s career in the flesh while we were playing Oxford, but I was not at that game – can you explain how this happened and what the one off event was?
20s. Somehow in hock to a valley by the sound of it!
Answers:
60s. Colin Clarke was released by Arsenal before going on to play over 400 league games for Oxford United. Clarke then signed for Los Angeles Aztecs before returning to England to play for Plymouth before becoming manager of Kettering Town (the Poppies) from 1979 until 1982 – I’m sure I read back in the sixties that Clarke was a cousin of City’s Malcolm Clarke who played for us in midfield for a couple of seasons.
70s. Brian Heron – “shitepoke” is an old slang name for a heron, apparently it emanates from the birds habit of defecating when they are flushed!
80s. Tim Smithers.
90s. Canadian centreback Mark Watson signed for Oxford United in 1998 from Swedish team Osters IF. He also played for Watford and Oldham.
99s. Hunt the shunt was a nickname given to former World F1 Champion James Hunt. James Hunt was a midfield player for Oxford during the noughties.
10s. On 10 August 2011, City won 3-1 at Oxford United in the first game in our run to the 2012 League Cup Final. On the same night, I was watching Wales play Australia at Cardiff City Stadium, a game in which Darcy Blake scored the only goal of his senior career in a 2-1 defeat.
20s. Owen Dale.