Ninian Park and the Cardiff City Stadium 

Our record at Ninian Park – Played 18, Won 2, Drawn 7, Lost 9, Goals for 19, Goals against 36. 

Our record at the Cardiff City Stadium – Played 4, Won 1, Drawn 2, Lost 1, Goals for 5, Goals against 4. 

Bournemouth and Cardiff City’s early years have a few things in common – both clubs were founded in 1899 under different names (as Boscombe FC and Riverside AFC), and both moved in 1910 to grounds named after a club benefactor. As the Cherries settled into Dean Court, on land granted to them by local businessman Mr J. E. Cooper-Dean, Cardiff moved from Sophia Gardens (the park containing Glamorgan’s county cricket ground) to a site on Sloper Road, thanks to the financial support of Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Ninian Crichton-Stuart, son of the Marquess of Bute – it was named Ninian Park. 

Joining the Football League in 1920 (whereupon Bournemouth were one of the clubs who replaced them in the Southern League), Cardiff did not meet the Cherries in league football until two relegations in three seasons left them in the Third Division (South) in 1931/32. 

And the Welsh side enjoyed a long unbeaten home run against Bournemouth for much of the 20^th century, picking up seven wins (including a 5-0 success in 1939) and three draws between 1932 and 1983. 

Harry Redknapp was the manager when Bournemouth finally won at Ninian Park at the 11^th attempt – thanks to a single Chris Shaw goal in October 1985. The clubs met three times in cup competitions in the early 1990s, including an unusual “dead rubber” tie. 

For a time, the Autoglass Trophy (as it was known in 1991/92) was organised with teams in round-robin mini-leagues of three in a preliminary round, with two teams progressing to the knock-out phase. Bournemouth beat Swansea 3-0 in the first game, before the Swans drew 0-0 with rivals Cardiff – so by the time Redknapp’s men visited Cardiff on 10 December, they were already through, whatever the result – while Cardiff would progress unless they lost by three or more goals. 

But although the game had absolutely nothing riding on it for the visitors, Redknapp’s men managed to come back from 3-0 down for an exciting 3-3 draw – though they would lose in the first round proper to a third Welsh side, Wrexham. 

Bournemouth would visit Ninian Park four more times in league football – but only collected one more win, with Mark Stein and Richard Hughes securing a 2-1 success in March 2000, while a battling 2-2 draw in 2001 proved to be the Cherries’ last visit before the Bluebirds moved across Sloper Road to the newly built Cardiff City Stadium in 2009, and Ninian Park became the site for a new housing development. 

The new ground was originally planned to be the home of the Cardiff Blues rugby union side as well as Cardiff City, but the Blues returned to Cardiff Arms Park in 2012. However, it has also hosted Welsh football internationals, the Uefa Super Cup in 2014, and the Uefa Women’s Champions League final in 2017. 

Bournemouth visited twice in 2014/15 with a 3-0 win in the League Cup (see “Classic Match” below) and a 1-1 Championship draw, while Cardiff prevailed 2-0 in a Premier League meeting in 2019, and the sides drew 1-1 in the Championship last October. 

A visiting stat 

John Friar’s brace in 1934 made him the first Bournemouth player to score at Ninian Park, while Steve Fletcher (in 1994 and 1995) was the only other Cherries marksman to net more than once at the ground. Dan Gosling’s two-goal haul in the League Cup (see “Classic Match” below) makes him the leading Cherries scorer so far at the Cardiff City Stadium. 

Getting shirty

In 2014/15, Bournemouth had the unusual occurrence of playing two games in Cardiff with both sides wearing completely different strips across the two games. 

Two years earlier, Cardiff’s Malaysian owners had controversially changed their home colours from blue to red, as part of a rebrand designed to give the club wider appeal to “international markets”. So for the League Cup third-round tie in September 2014 (see “Classic Match” below), Bournemouth’s first visit to Cardiff since 2001, the Bluebirds wore all-red, while the Cherries donned their third kit – blue shirts, darkening towards black, with black shorts and socks. 

After continued protests from Cardiff fans, owner Vincent Tan agreed to restore the club’s traditional colours in January 2015, with the Football League agreeing a mid-season change, so Cardiff’s blue 2014/15 away strip became their home kit, which was worn for the rest of the season, including Bournemouth’s 1-1 league draw in March – when the Cherries were back in their red and black home shirts, paired (as they had been for some away games that season) with alternate red shorts. 

Firsts and lasts 

Full-backs Reg Parker and Jack Proctor made their Cherries debuts in Bournemouth’s first two visits to Ninian Park in 1932, as did Willie Smith in 1934 and Tommy Paton in 1939. 

Meanwhile, on-loan defender Ivan Golac made his last Bournemouth appearance at the same venue in 1983, while winger Wayne Fereday’s last game in a Cherries shirt was as a substitute in the Autoglass Trophy in 1991. 

Keith Rowland started his first Cherries game there in the League Cup in 1991, while Amos Foyewa made his only Bournemouth start on the final visit to Ninian Park in 2001. 

Bournemouth’s first trip to the Cardiff City Stadium in 2019 was also Dominic Solanke’s first game, while Rodrigo Riquelme debuted off the bench there last October. 

Classic match 

Tuesday 23 September 2014 – League Cup third round 

Cardiff City 0-3 Bournemouth 

Bournemouth’s biggest victory at Cardiff – indeed, their joint biggest victory in Wales – came when Cardiff had just been relegated from the Premier League after a single season, and had sacked manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer after a poor start to the Championship season, less than a week before facing the Cherries in the League Cup. Former defender Scott Young and player-coach Danny Gabbidon were in temporary charge. 

Bournemouth had never played at the Cardiff City Stadium before – their only visit to the Welsh capital since 2001 had been for the 2003 Division Three play-off final at the Millennium Stadium – and there was an extra sense of venturing into the unknown to see Bournemouth run out in Cardiff-esque blue shirts, with the hosts in red (see “Getting Shirty” above). 

Eddie Howe’s side had cruised past Exeter and Northampton in the first two rounds without conceding a goal, but despite making seven changes from their last league XI, the Cherries came speeding out of the blocks to hit Cardiff hard before the home side could find their feet. 

Marc Pugh had tested keeper Simon Moore early on from distance, but there were less than 10 minutes on the watch when Dan Gosling shook off his marker 35 yards out, and was allowed to run clear to the edge of the box before burying his shot past Moore to keep up his record of having scored in every round. 

With less than a quarter of the game gone, Charlie Daniels played a one-two with Eunan O’Kane, whose raking pass picked out left-back Daniels perfectly inside the box as his backtracking marker slipped, and Daniels made it 2-0 with a cool left-footed finish in the 22^nd minute. 

Gosling and Brett Pitman almost conjured a third after robbing Gabbidon, the former Wales defender making his first appearance of the season aged 35, but Gosling was flagged offside.  

However, Bournemouth poured forward down the left again as some Pugh trickery ended with a backheel to Pitman, whose shot was beaten away by Moore at the near post but the rebound fell kindly to Gosling who made it 3-0 as two defenders on the goal-line both failed to clear. 

Caretaker boss Young had seen enough, and made a double substitution in the 37^th minute, with Kim Bo-kyung and Javi Guerra having the humiliation of being withdrawn before the interval. 

The changes did pep Cardiff up a little, with Artur Boruc – making his second Cherries appearance on loan from Southampton – saving well from Nicky Maynard and Arron Gunnarsson. 

After the interval, the same linesman’s flag which had denied Gosling earlier, chalked off a Cardiff attempt as sub Federico Macheda headed home Declan John’s left-wing cross. 

But a fourth Bournemouth goal looked as likely as a Cardiff first, as future Cardiff loanee Harry Arter hit the bar, while Pitman and Junior Stanislas both had goalbound efforts hacked off the line. 

“We can’t start a game with eight or nine players like we did here. That wasn’t acceptable for this football club,” Young said. 

With Bournemouth into the fourth round for the first time in 51 years, Howe reflected: “The performance was right out of the top drawer. We beat a very good side comprehensively – everything we wanted to do, we did.” 

Cherries: Boruc, Smith (Francis 86), Elphick, Cargill, Daniels, Stanislas (Rantie 87), Gosling, MacDonald (Arter 75), O’Kane, Pugh, Pitman. Subs not used: McCarthy, Ritchie, Wilson, Camp. 

Verdict 

Only two wins from 19 visits make Ninian Park a ground for complaint – with results fairly even at the Cardiff City Stadium so far.