By Rogero
October 16 2003

Two days holiday, a 720 mile round trip, hotel room in Newcastle upon Tyne and an empty wallet! All for ninety minutes of football and not even a hint of a goal! Cardiff City took a point from a dour contest at the Stadium of Light on Tuesday evening...... The Stadium of Light is one of the most impressive stadiums in the United Kingdom, and probably only bettered by Old Trafford, Parkhead and Ibrox, and whilst it was only half full for the visit of Cardiff a decent atmosphere was generated by both sets of fans during the game.

Having parked up in Newcastle, myself and Claude Blue braved the elements and took the Metro from the Central station to the Stadium of Light, but actually got off at the stop after the ground as it was better for the away fans section.

The ground didn't fill up until just before kick off with both sets of fans preferring to keep warm and drink the cold bottled beer in the bars, but plenty of noise greeted both teams at 7.58. Unfortunately there was not much else to shout about, unless you were a Sunderland fan who seemed to blame the referee for everything!

The consensus of opinion was that both teams would not have scored a goal if they had played until breakfast time! Conversations with Sunderland fans working in Newcastle this morning confirmed this!

Cardiff in all fairness defended very well and kept the Mackems at bay with some ease, but in turn the Bluebirds did not threaten to score at the other end either!

Cardiff lined up 4-4-2 - Alexander, Vidmar, Weston, Gabbidon, Barker, Kavanagh, Boland, Robinson, Langley, Campbell and Earnshaw.

On the plus side it was good to see Robinson back in the team, on the minus side Rhys Weston was taken off on a stretcher in the 36th minute to be replaced by Gary Croft. Peter Thorne was absent and his strength and guile was missed up front.

The attendance was 26,835 and the Bluebirds following numbered just over 1,300.

The referee was Mr Wiley from Staffordshire.