September Newsfile

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"With Saturday's draw City has now managed to get through an entire calendar year of league matches at Ninian without suffering a  single defeat. Seems almost impossible to believe in light of recent performances, but there it is! Twenty-two in a row and still counting.

Spent some time scouring my fave web site (www.soccerbase.com) during the last week and came up with some additional stats on unbeaten streaks at Ninian. If my research is right (and I'll recheck everything if City makes it worth my while with a result tonight), CCFC stands on the verge of another landmark achievement. A win or a draw against Stoke would City give 23 in a row and would match (I think) City's longest unbeaten run at home versus league opposition since the end of World War II. (If City gets through tonight, I'll check out the pre-war stuff.)

Here are the longest postwar unbeaten streaks in league action at Ninian since WWII (I think):

* 23 in a row -- September 7, 1946 to September 6, 1947. The club made it through the entire home schedule in 1946-47 without a  defeat. Eighteen wins and three draws. This is the side that finished 30-6-6, featured a 30-goal scorer in Stan Richards, and won promotion to the old second division by nine points. And a win was worth but two points then! The 1947-48 club got through its first two matches without defeat to extend the run to 23. Then came the September 6, 1947 loss, a 3-0 setback at the hands of Spurs.

* 22 in a row -- August 20, 1951 to September 17, 1952. The club won promotion to the old first division in 1951-52 and a great run at home to close the campaign had everything to do with that. City  rattled off 19 in a row without defeat at home (17 wins, 2 draws) to end the season. The next year the Bluebirds were back in the top flight of the English league for the first time since 1928-29 and there they extended their unbeaten string to 22 with a win and two draws in their first three at Ninian. Then came a 2-1 loss to West Brom on September 17, 1952.

In terms of the calendar this is City's longest postwar unbeaten run at home in league play. A total of 393 days without defeat. The most impressive of these streaks, too, in that all wins came against opponents from the top two divisions. (By the way, the info I sent Mike Morris this last weekend was a bit off, but I've caught the error. Should be 393 straight days without defeat, not 386 days. I'd reported the date of the loss as September 10, when City played at West Brom, instead of September 17 when City hosted West Brom.)

* 22 in a row -- September 11, 1982 to August 29, 1983. Another promotion-winning side, the 1982-83 outfit lost their home opener, then went the rest of the league season undefeated at home. Their run of 22 without defeat included a seven-game winning streak. Of the 22 straight, 17 were wins. The 1983-84 club lost its home opener, 1-0 to Blackburn Rovers.

* 22 in a row -- October 17, 1998 to date. Yet another promotion- winning bunch, the 1998-99 side astonished the football world by breaking out of the dungeon following a dreadful campaign the year before. The run began uneventfully enough, with a draw against Orient, but soon City was rolling. An eight game winning streak helped put City on top of the division for 96 straight days, and represented (I think, will need to doublecheck) the longest home win streak in the league since a nine game run in 1951-52. The last five wins in this string featured an explosion of 18 goals, the most in a five-game stretch of league matches at Ninian since 1959-60. Then something happened. Wins turned into draws. Goals got scarce. But, in spite of mounting frustrations and Jerry Taihuttu flirations the streak lives on. It goes on and on. And go on it must. For Bluebirds everywhere, it has become the one constant in an unstable and everchanging universe."