In search of Cardiff City’s iconic 1992/93 team: the new life of Carl Dale the electrician – Wales Online

They were the Cardiff City team that defined a generation. A group of players who sparked something within the Bluebirds fanbase few others have been able to replicate since.

In 1993, Eddie May's side delivered promotion for his barmy army at the end of a season those who were there will never forget.

This was the team of Dale, Stant, Blake, Searle, Pike and the rest. It was the year of that glorious, iconic kit.

Over the coming weeks, WalesOnline will be tracking down the men who became heroes 27 years ago to hear their stories of yesteryear and discover what became of them.

Today, we begin with 53-year-old Carl Dale - the diminutive striker who would become a club legend.

Carl Dale's road to the Cardiff City hall of fame is one less travelled.

He remains many supporters' favourite player from that golden period at the start of the 1990s and with good reason.

The striker sits fifth on the list of the Bluebirds' all-time top goalscorers, an instinctive sharp shooter whose assassin-like eye for goal was honed in the rough and tumble of the North Wales football leagues.

It could have been different, though. Dale was scouted by Arsenal as a schoolboy and headed down to the English capital in hope of carving out a career in the big leagues, but it wasn't to be.

"Being down there in London was new," Dale, who hails from Colwyn Bay, says, "all the bright lights and all that, it was a learning curve, but probably a little too soon for me at that age, 16, a schoolboy."

He was released after 18 months and his confidence was rocked. Was football going to be for him?

"Anyone who is released by anyone goes through a stage of thinking, 'Are you good enough? Do you want to do it?'," he says.

"Sometimes you have a bit of a spell where you're a bit negative and then you get back on the positive trail and want to prove a point."

Dale headed back up to North Wales and decided to take the pragmatic approach of undertaking an apprenticeship at his father's electrical business.

"Instead of being an apprentice at Arsenal, I was an apprentice with my father's electrical contractors'!," he laughs.

"It's different avenues that you can go down. You can learn your trade in the lower leagues and progress.

"When the likes of Man United came through with Beckham, Scholes etc, at a similar time, that was against the norm.

"For me, it was a different route into professional football."

One look at Dale's figures, though, tells you that it was a matter of when, not if, a Football League side came in for him.

For Conwy, he scored 47 goals during the 1984/85 season which remained a club record until 1996.

Next he moved to Rhyl before heading to Bangor in the Northern Premier League, eventually earning a 12,000 move to Football League Division Three club Chester City in 1988.

He took to league football like he'd belonged there all his life, ending the club's top scorer in his first season there.

Two years later he earned a call-up to Terry Yorath's Wales squad for that famous game against West Germany, in which Ian Rush scored the winner.

Though he never earned a cap, that remains a hugely proud moment for him and, with Rush, Mark Hughes and Dean Saunders ahead of him, he understood.

"The competition for forwards was something else," he says.

"People ask me why I didn't get in the squad and I just name the names!

"Where would you put me alongside those forwards?

"But I was named in the squad so that's an achievement in itself."

Dale thought the contract Chester offered him wasn't fair and sought a move away in 1991. It looked as thought he would be moving to Maidstone United, but it collapsed at the tribunal stage.

As a result, Cardiff swooped and snapped him up for 82,000. It's fair to say Bluebirds fans will forever be grateful that Maidstone move fell through.

City offered Dale an initial short-term deal of three months and he ended up staying in a guest house on Cathedral Road, which was run by Eddie May's partner Marlene.

Northern Irish duo Paul Ramsey and Paul 'Windy' Millar were in there, too, and Dale struck up a good friendship with the two of them.

"They were different characters," he laughs. "Windy and Paul, who ended up being the captain, would put you in your place.

"We were fortunate to be friendly. Most of the lads were friends off the pitch. Paul Ramsay would shout at me and I wouldn't understand what he was saying!

"There were a couple of heated moments throughout the years I was there with a few different players.

"But, in general, especially for a couple of seasons, I think things went well on and off the pitch.

"That helped the atmosphere and the club."

In that 1992/93 campaign, Dale lined up alongside the likes of Chris Pike, Nathan Blake and Phil Stant in one of the most terrifying forward lines that old Division Three would ever have seen.

The Dale and Stant partnership has gone down in folklore for many Cardiff fans, synonymous with that glorious team of the early 1990s.

Both prolific goalscorers, but, in that title-winning season, Dale was so plagued by injury that he didn't really feel on top of his game.

"I felt a little bit like I wasn't quite there," he recalls. "I was quite happy to gradually get my fitness back while playing a slightly different role.

"Stanty kept himself to himself. He stayed down in Cardiff in a caravan for a while! A bit of a different character, but I got on well with him.

"Stanty was about scoring goals and being that leader up front. He was a very strong character."

Another strong character, of course, was the gaffer, Eddie May, and he was someone with whom Dale certainly got on with, even if he admits he had a bit of a Marmite personality.

"He was great for me," he says, "I enjoyed working with Eddie.

"Yeah, he did lose his temper at times, but probably justifiably so!

"There were other managers who were there who I didn't enjoy as much... but I won't name names!"

In a team teeming with inexperience at that level, Dale says many of the players looked up to Kevin Ratcliffe, the legendary former Wales and Everton captain, and Robbie James, who had racked up hundreds of games, mostly for rivals Swansea City, up to that point.

The players turned to the supporters, too, with Ninian Park rocking and the away support unlike anything Dale had ever seen.

"We were getting more supporters coming to watch us, home and away, and you just got the atmosphere at the time that there was a good connection between the players and supporters," Dale says.

"That helped. Sometimes you gave a little bit extra. As players, you need geeing up a little bit.

"Cardiff always had a good following away from home and that helped, certainly in the run-in for that promotion season. We were followed by thousands of supporters."

That 12th man picked City up when they threatened to flag in the second half of the season, of course they were bolstered by the immediate impact Stant made when he moved to the club.

But, for Dale, it was all a little bittersweet, though, as injuries really bogged him down.

On the day the Bluebirds sealed the title, Dale was fit enough only for the substitutes bench, which meant he was listening out for results elsewhere to see if things were going Cardiff's way.

"It was a bit weird for me because I was injured," Dale remembers. "The first half of that season for me was great, because I was scoring goals and then got injured in the December.

"I sat on the bench and watched us win a number of games and did feel part of it.

"But the last game of the season, I was talking to the reporters to see what was happening in the other games and I knew the results were going our way at half-time.

"Eddie told me not to mention anything to the lads, but I had a big smile on my face!"

He remembers seeing swathes of coaches travelling back after that 3-0 win over Scunthorpe on the final day of the season, with supporters spilling into them, drinks in hand.

The players, of course, enjoyed their own celebration, with chairman Rick Wright paying for them to jet off to Kavos on a young lads holiday. Well, that was until the kitman went along!

"A good holiday together, paid for by the chairman," he says. "What more do you want?

"We went with the kitman Harry Parsons, too, believe it or not. It was supposed to be an 18-30 and it ended up 17-65!

"I'm not going to say much more than that... we caused a few problems over there, that's all I'm saying!"

He laughs about those times and it is clear the conversation and the memories are bringing a smile to his face.

In the subsequent seasons, Dale cemented legend status alongside Stant, with both players playing massive roles in keeping the club in Division Two before the dismantled squad was subsequently relegated back down into the fourth tier.

Dale remembers May asked him a number of times to bail the club out and he reluctantly agreed despite his injury woes. His goals eventually kept City in the Football League in 1995.

Key players left, Pike, Stant, Blake, Ratcliffe, the list was seemingly endless and Dale, who was the PFA representative at the time, remembers it all too vividly.

"You had players whose contracts were up, they were entitled to ask for more. I was in a similar situation," he says.

"The frustrations of the chairman, Rick Wright, other issues with bonus and incentive payments.

"You can't change the bonuses during the season and there was an issue with them being changed. Conflict between the players and the chairman.

"He felt a bit let down with some of the players and the players felt disappointed they weren't getting what they deserved.

"So, unfortunately, a number of people weren't happy with that, on both sides.

"That ended with a number of players moving on. Instead of keeping it together it all fell apart, which was unfortunate."

Dale played for the club until 1998, cementing legend status in doing so, before moving on to Yeovil.

He scored against Cardiff in the FA Cup and winces when he thinks about what he did that day.

"That was an experience in itself," he says. "I wouldn't say I enjoyed scoring against Cardiff.

"But I did celebrate, which I got a lot of stick for! But it was more an accident, someone kicked the ball against me and it went in.

"It was my testimonial year that year with Cardiff as well... So, as you can imagine, mixed feelings!"

He laughs it all off, it's water under the bridge now and his status as one of the club's greats is firmly intact.

He is still friendly with many from that time, including his long-time room-mate Jason Perry, Damon Searle and Cohen Griffith, with whom he would occasionally play golf, "We are both rubbish," he says.

Dale finished his career off at Newport in 2001 and reverted back to his trade, setting up his own electrical firm.

He still does that to this day, although last year he moved to North Devon and describes himself now as 'semi-retired'.

He thought about going down the coaching path a few years back. "I did do my coaching badges and contacted the PFA, but the only coaching they had locally was at Swansea... so I shied away from that a little bit!," he jokes.

Of course, being an electrician for almost 20 years in Newport, he worked for his fair share of admirers.

He worked for fans who had spent years watching him home, away and all around Europe during his seven-year stint as Cardiff's deadly striker.

But did he ever truly know just how much he was loved during those special times for Cardiff City?

"Meeting up with people in Cardiff, people say nice things," he remembers fondly.

"I meet people at Stereophonics concerts, for example, and they tell me they used to come and watch me play and when they started watching Cardiff I was their favourite player.

"I had a couple of years where, getting an injury at 27 really hit me. I wanted to prove myself again and get back scoring.

"I did manage to do that later on in my career.

"People say nice things, but, to me, it was just giving 100 percent when you play and that's what I always tried to do.

"Good times, bad times, but, thankfully for me, most of it was good and that's the way I look at it.

"It's a bit like that at Cardiff, isn't it? You always feel like you're on a rollercoaster."

View original post here:
In search of Cardiff City's iconic 1992/93 team: the new life of Carl Dale the electrician - Wales Online