Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
Still won't work on two I pads I have, but it does on my laptop. Firstly, thanks to Monkfish for posting that link, it's a great watch.
I see they were hoping someone could identify the teams we were playing - it seems to me that the opposition were playing in red and white for the majority of the games, so, by using a great City database I have access to, I can take what I'd call an educated guess at some of them.
Given that the pitch looks in good condition in all of the matches , I'd say the games were played in the first half of the season and in all bar one of the games, the conditions look dry and sunny. Monkfish may be right when he says he thinks we were playing Swansea in the first game because we played them at Ninian Park on 27 August in our second home game of 49/50, beating them 1-0 in front of a crowd of 61,000! However, Swansea played in all white that season and, given the dark shorts the opposition are wearing, I'd say it's more likely that the pictures come from our next home match, played on 5 September in which we were beaten 1-0 by Spurs in front of 43,000.
In the next month, two sides wearing red and white would visit Ninian Park, Leicester won 4-2 in front of 32,000 and Chesterfield being beaten 2-0 in front of 29,000 - one of these games may be the one played in the rain in which you can see gaps on the Enclosure terracing. Another candidate for the game in the wet might be West Ham's 1-0 win in November when I suppose their claret and blue kit might look like a red and white one in black and white - the crowd that day was down to 21,000.
There's also a game where we're playing a team in stripes, that might be Grimsby, but this match took place in December and I would have thought that the pitch would have been showing more signs of wear and tear by then - we won 1-0 that day in front of 23,000.
There's also a match where one of the teams have a kit with while sleeves - that may have been City. The historical kits website has us wearing blue with white sleeves that season and I have a photo of a team group from that campaign with us having white sleeves and another one in which we didn't. What's clear from the film though is that our "official" colours might have been blue with white sleeves that season, but it seems, more often than not, we wore something different.
As can be guessed from the results in the matches I've mentioned, City were pretty inconsistent in 49/50 and ended up in tenth position in the Second Division - gates fell away from the 40,000 plus attendances of early season, but our average gate on just short of 29,000 was the seventh highest in the second tier - interestingly, Spurs with 54,111 were the best supported side in the country by over five thousand per game despite not being in the First Division.