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'...bless Freddie Davies and bless Peter King, bless Barrie Jones as he streaks down the wing, bless 'em all...'
'We all agree, Davies is better than Yashin, Toshack is better than Eusebio, and Bristol are in for a thrashin'.
No sure when Peter King came along, probably slightly later, but basically that's my earliest team.
'If I had the wings of an eagle...' the good old days, the good old songs. Oh what fun we had.
Yes, my favourite City team too (with Peter King). The only weak link and probably the most derided player was Ronnie Bird but he had a great shot on him and was the best penalty taker we've ever had.
On their day, they were almost unplayable in our division. Toshack got on the end of every cross in the air and no opposing centre half could deal with him. With a little investment and retaining Toshack, the old First Division would have beckoned but alas we had to wait another 40 odd years for that 'privilege'.
I've got a great Dave Carver memory that is as clear today as it was then. At the time we used to stand in the bob bank, slightly lower down from the camera tower. An older guy was always in the same vicinity and he seemed to have a permanent scowl on his face. Poor old Dave Carver was not the most elegant or athletic of players and boy did he come in for some stick from Mr Happy if he was have a bit of a mare or generally under-performing. He would bellow the same thing week after week. "Carver, you are like a baby carthorse!" Poor Dave ! To be fair, he was a safe if unspectacular player but for all that he will still be part of my favourite ever City team.
Apart from making sure I didn't get filled in and seeing Ronnie Bird actually miss a penalty, the main memory I have of the Swansea v City Welsh Cup Semi Final replay at the Vetch in 1970 was the competition me and my mates set whereby we predicted how many times Dave Carver would boot the ball out of the ground during the ninety minutes. I said two, but had already lost by the time the match went into extra time - think it was five in the end .
Freddie Pethard and then Clive Charles. I can remember Gary Bell being talked of as an outside bet for a place in the England squad for the 1970 World Cup. That.was probably the local media going over the top, but it does give an idea of how well he was playing at one time, so for him to be leaving for a Fourth division club on a free at 27 a few years later shows how far his form must have dropped. City's early seventies decline coincided exactly with the thirty five year old Brian Harris leaving to become County's player manager in the summer of 1971 - Harris was a huge influence and Don Murray was never the same player after that and it seems the same applied to Bell as well, while Dave Carver only lasted another season or so before he was replaced by Phil Dwyer.
My clouded memory tells me that Gary Bell was originally signed as a winger, or am I imagining it?