Hull City 4 Cardiff City 1: Fagan provides twist in Cardiff tale

Alan Combes
Monday 18 December 2006 01:00 GMT
Comments

Not all of the best football stories are from the Premiership and a cracker of a match at the KC Stadium on Saturday left spectators aghast at the idea that the losers were the side vying for promotion and the winners were perched on the edge of a perilous descent.

At first the tale looked to be from A Christmas Carol: a brass band playing carols, collecting tins and wintry wind directly off the North Sea. However, the plot then changed as the Artful Dodger - in the person of Nick Barmby - tweaked the strings that caused calamity for the Welsh side. The ex-England midfielder - who it is rumoured had several run-ins with Phil Parkinson before the manager's departure this month - had a hand in three of the goals.

The superlative performance of the day though was Craig Fagan's; he picked Darren Purse's pocket on numerous occasions, ghosting in behind the big defender, flicking headers cunningly wide and running fearlessly at him when the occasion demanded.

"Only three players really performed," said Dave Jones, the Cardiff manager, "and the rest are sitting in the dressing room feeling sorry for themselves.

"From start to finish too many people didn't do their jobs. We're not communicating and I don't know why because I have tried to get back to what I thought was my best team."

The seeds of Hull's victory were sown in the first nine minutes by which time the home side were two goals up. . Damien Delaney got himself on the end of a Barmby corner via Dean Marney for the first, before Marney launched a sizzling drive past Neil Alexander.

A sweetly-timed Barmby pass found Fagan behind Cardiff's backline, leaving him with the simple task of clipping the ball over Alexander for the third goal. Cardiff rallied briefly after the interval with Michael Chopra's goal, but Michael Bridges added a fourth for Hull, who could even afford to fluff a late penalty.

"That was the performance I asked for last week [at Plymouth], but then we didn't get the quality in the last third of the pitch. Today we did," observed Phil Brown, the Hull caretaker-manager. Word has it that Brown's competition for the permanent position is made up of Peter Reid, Gary Megson, Nigel Worthington and Kevin Blackwell, but a sterling performance like Saturday's will have done his cause no harm.

Goals: Delaney (6) 1-0; Marney (9) 2-0; Fagan (36) 3-0; Chopra (55) 3-1; Bridges (71) 4-1.

Hull City (4-4-2): Myhill; Ricketts, Coles, Delaney, Dawson; Fagan, Ashbee, Marney, Livermore; Barmby (Bridges, 60), McPhee (Elliott, 83). Substitutes not used: Duke (gk), France, Turner.

Cardiff City (4-4-2): Alexander; Gunter, Purse, Loovens, McNaughton; Flood (Kamara, 42; Glombard 78), Ledley, Scimeca, Parry; Chopra, Thompson. Substitutes not used: Campbell, Johnson, Wright.

Referee: A D'Urso (Essex).

Booked: Hull Livermore, Ricketts; Cardiff Loovens, Chopra.

Man of the match: Fagan.

Attendance: 23,089

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in