With Wednesday's fiftieth anniversary of the Real Madrid win almost upon us, it is also half a century to the day since another memorable game from the 70/71 season - here's the chapter on our big win over Carlisle United on 6 March 1971 from my book Real Madrid and all that;-
Early March 1971.
Warboys stuns Carlisle and wins himself a fiver!
It would appear Jimmy Scoular saw how his team had performed after the introduction of Bobby Woodruff for Brian Clark as an improvement on what had gone before at Hull, because the team that had finished the previous weekend became the one which started seven days later in front of a crowd of 22,731 at Ninian Park for the visit of an in form Carlisle United team.
The Cumbrians were definite contenders for a top two finish and all of the indications were that it would be a tight affair with little between two sides perhaps more interested in not losing than risking no points as they chased two.
In some ways, that’s how it was for long stretches of the game, but the fact of the matter was that this only occurred after a truly sensational opening ten minutes in which one man had effectively ended the match as any sort of contest!
Alan Warboys took to the pitch still looking like he had just come from an accident and emergency ward – his left leg was still as heavily strapped as it had been when he scored the equaliser at Hull and his right wrist was still bandaged as it had been after a home defender had stood on it seven days earlier.
However, it made no difference to the striker as he took what Clive Phillips in the Western Mail timed as seven minutes and fourteen seconds to score one of Cardiff City’s more memorable hat tricks.
The routing of Carlisle began in the third minute when Warboys met an Ian Gibson free kick with his head. Warboys’ initial scoring attempt was foiled as it was blocked by a defender, but the ball went straight back to the striker who despatched it into the net with his trusty left foot.
There had been barely five minutes played when the man who was unable to stop scoring found Nigel Rees on the half way line, the teenage winger then made ground down the left before crossing to Gibson, who was able to find Warboys and, once again, his left foot did the rest, this time from a bit further out.
The third soon arrived when Peter King spotted Woodruff’s perceptive run and found him with a long diagonal pass. The ball was then transferred quickly to Rees who crossed to the far post where Warboys was in just enough room to be able to score easily – this time with his right foot.
Attachment 4343
The ball is virtually obscured by an upright as Alan Warboys completes his sensational hat trick against Carlisle with all of his goals coming between the third and tenth minutes.
Even though he had not been at the club very long, Warboys had been doing enough scoring for supporters to have become aware of his ritual celebration of a goal whereby he slid to his knees and ended up in what was almost a position of prayer. The first two goals had seen a repeat of that, but there was a bit of a change for the third as, with his hat trick completed, the striker raced to the City dug out with his hand held out open towards Jimmy Scoular as if asking for the £5 from his own pocket the manager had said he’d give any of his players who scored three in a game!
Often when a match is effectively over before it had begun because of a scoring burst in the opening minutes, what follows is tame stuff indeed by comparison. This can hardly be viewed as a surprise because the team on the receiving end, besides being devastated, are realistic enough to know that there is only a very small chance that the match can turn out as anything but a defeat. Similarly, the team with the big lead knows that, although there is still an awfully long time left to go in the game, a professional, no undue risks taken attitude will see them end up with maximum points.
Little wonder then that, after the initial fireworks, Carlisle were more set on keeping things as respectable as they could and Cardiff had no great desire to go hunting a fourth goal. The visitors’ midfield man Frank Barton landed an acrobat overhead kick on the top of City’s net to give them a bit of a fright, but little else of note happened in the next half an hour or so until Warboys moved on to Jim Eadie’s long punt forward and would have had a great chance for a fourth if he had not been brought down by the sort of foul that might have earned visiting centreback Graham Winstanley a red card these days.
Whether it was this that got Warboys going again is not certain, but two minutes before half time, he was celebrating a fourth goal after what was probably the best of the quartet. Again, Rees was involved as he got by visiting right back Joe Davis and rolled a cross over from the bye line, the ball reached Mel Sutton who teed up Warboys for a bullet of a right footed shot from fifteen yards that left Carlisle keeper Alan Ross helpless.
City, and Warboys in particular, left the pitch at half time to a rousing ovation from a crowd who may have had Wednesday’s upcoming encounter with Real Madrid on their minds more when the match began, but were now fully absorbed by what they had watched in the previous forty five minutes.
The early stages of the second period saw Carlisle’s future Cardiff striker Bob Hatton mounting an almost one man bid to get his side on the scoresheet. First, he was foiled by a vigilant King who got back to hammer the ball out for a corner as the Carlisle man moved in to exploit a Don Murray error, then he beat a couple of players in a run down the wing which ended when he crossed to his unmarked strike partner Bobby Owen who wastefully headed over.
Hatton was then thwarted by a diving Eadie save, but Warboys had also served a reminder that he was still around in between times when he nodded a Dave Carver cross just over the bar and Carlisle’s suffering would have increased but for a bad miss by Sutton when Gibson found him in yards of space in front of goal, only for the midfield man to send his hurried effort yards wide..
With twenty minutes left Warboys, his work done, was substituted by Clark who would, surely, replace the ineligible Yorkshireman in the team for the mid week Cup Winners’ Cup game. It was Clark who came closest to scoring for City in the time which remained with a header which shaved the crossbar, but it was Owen who came nearest to the match’s fifth goal when his header came back off an upright, thereby proving once and for all that It just was not Carlisle’s day!
Match 40 Division Two Cardiff City (4) 4 Carlisle United (0) 0 6/3/71
Cardiff; Eadie, Carver, Bell, Sutton, Murray, Phillips, King, Gibson, Warboys 2,4,9,43 (Clark), Woodruff, Rees
Carlisle United; Ross, Davis, Gorman, Ternent, Winstanley, Sutton, Barton, Martin, Owen, Balderstone
Att. 22,502
