There is a nice tribute to Malcolm Allison, who died last week, on the Cardiff City website.
In essence back in the 1975/76 season both Cardiff City and Allison's Crystal Palace were challenging for promotion. The leaders at the time were Hereford United.
On April 10th 1976, Cardiff won 1-0 at Selhurst Park in front of 25,603 spectators. The win pushed Cardiff City into second place behind Hereford. Despite the defeat Palace were still in contention.
Malcolm Allison, whose trademarks were his fedora hat, attractive girl-friends, big cigars and champagne, said after out victory at Selhurst Park that we would never beat his club's attendance when we faced Hereford.
Since our previous home attendance on April 7th had been 12,447 for the visit of Preston, he might have felt confident that we would not get near the 25,000 at Selhurst Park.
But on the night there were 35,549 to see us defeat Hereford 2-0.
In a friendly reminder of Malcolm's comments, our directors sent him six bottles of his favourite champagne with the message - with love from Cardiff City.
We went up, Palace didn't.
And while we enjoyed our promotion, Allison enjoyed his champagne.
Footnote: That season Hereford finished top of what was then the Third Division with 63 points and Cardiff were second with 57 points.
And the average gate at Edgar Street was an incredible 8,273
Text at top (next game etc)
Next Game: Home Against Southport In The League On Saturday January 18th At 3.00pm ( assuming the floodlights are working )