Originally Posted by
the other bob wilson
Last season has to be right up there, but, for me, it's a season that I don't think has been mentioned yet - 75/76.
Having watched my first game thirteen year earlier, I'd begun to think that City didn't do promotions, so it was great to finally experience one and it didn't disappoint in the slightest.
So many great games - beating Wrexham 3-0 early in the campaign was good, but it was on Halloween night that the season really began to click into gear. That was the night, the superb (at Third Division level at least) Alston/Evans partnership was launched with the former making his debut in a 4-3 win over Chesterfield.
Within about six weeks of that, there was a 3-0 thumping of an impressive and in form Shrewsbury team and a fantastic 6-2 triumph over Exeter in the FA Cup in which Alston scored a hat trick, but the real star was Willie Anderson who tore whoever was marking him (Exeter had two or three right backs in the ninety minutes) to shreds.
Christmas brought a 4-0 hammering at lowly Swindon on Boxing Day and when high riding Peterborough scored at Ninian Park the following day in the first few minutes, it seemed that the promotion bubble was about to burst, but City's response was to turn on probably their best performance so far as Phil Dwyer scored a beauty in a 5-2 victory. There was an FA Cup win at Second Division Orient and a case of daylight robbery shown on Match of the Day as Brighton won 1-0 at Ninian Park in early January and for a while City's form suffered - curiously, their best performance in that time was probably in a 1-1 home draw with Rotherham when they were foiled time and again by Tom McAllister with the best goalkeeping display I've seen in one of our matches.
The goals weren't as plentiful as the season came to an end, but a defence, which could be quite dodgy at times, tightened up considerably in sight of the finishing line with a series of clean sheets. One of them came at Selhurst Park where we absolutely battered Palace but only won by another Alston goal to nil as we proved we could cope on the big occasion. Palace manager Malcolm Allison was reduced to claiming that there wouldn't be 25,000 at Ninian Park in a few days time when they entertained Champions elect Hereford like there had been in the match his team had just been thoroughly outplayed in and he was right - the official attendance was 35,549 (there are those who were there who swear it was really a lot more than that)! Once again, City ended up convincing winners, this time by 2-0, with the goals coming from unusual sources as midfielders Doug Livermore and new signing Alan Campbell scored in the second half.
Palace still had a chance of overhauling us on the night of our final game, but promotion was clinched when we won 1-0 at Bury (thanks to probably the most scruffy goal Alston scored for us) and Palace were beaten at Chester - we then capped things off by beating Hereford to win the Welsh Cup.
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