History can repeat itself. Half a century ago this week Cardiff City won promotion to the old second division of the Football League after just one season in the third division. It is a pleasing coincidence that the club has repeated the trick this season.

That 1970s season turned me into a Bluebirds fan. Relegation in 1975 had come as a bitter blow, despite a narrow escape from the drop the year before. Just four years earlier, in 1971, Cardiff just missed promotion to the old first division, finishing third in the days when only the top two clubs went up. Now we were in the third division for the first time since 1947. Those first post-relegation games emphasised our lowly status, including a grim 0-0 draw against Halifax Town. I wasn’t sure which were more dispiriting: the joyless games or playing unglamorous clubs like Halifax and Port Vale just months after sharing a division with Manchester United and Aston Villa. My Latin teacher at Cardiff High School, Mr Dale, joked that the Latin word nihil (nothing) should be familiar to all Cardiff City fans given that nil was the team’s usual score. (Even during that promotion year, we failed to score in 11 games.)

My birthday that autumn changed everything. That evening we had an extended family outing (with my uncles, and cousin Wendy) to witness Cardiff defeating Chesterfield 4-3 at Ninian Park. Australia’s World Cup star Adrian Alston scored two goals on his Bluebirds debut to create a perfect birthday celebration. The year before West Germany manager Helmut Schoen said ‘we have nothing to fear from Australia apart from Adrian Alston’, and that magical night we saw what he meant. Our shabby old ground seemed transformed under the floodlights, adding to the drama of the seven goal contest and the Alston magic. I was hooked. In December we beat non league Wycombe Wanderers in my first FA Cup game. I had no idea then where Wycombe was, but curiously my son Owen had his first driving lesson in the Buckinghamshire club’s car park 47 years later.

On Boxing Day 1975 Dad took me to Swindon, for my first ever away game. We watched in horror as the relegation-threatened Wiltshire club hammered us 4-0. It was a miserable drive back to Wales that evening, and I was quick to decline Dad’s offer to join him for the following day’s home contest against Peterborough. (Two games in two days – football was very different 50 years ago!) After the Swindon disaster I was in no mood to give up another Christmas holiday afternoon, but regretted it as I missed seeing City bouncing back with an imperious 5-2 win to move into the third promotion place.

Above: the Hereford game programme

I never experienced any of City’s famous European nights – such as the evening the Bluebirds beat Real Madrid in the European Cup Winners Cup in 1971 – but a thrilling evening game against Hereford United gave me a glimpse of what it would have been like. Just days earlier City had humbled Crystal Palace boss Malcolm Allison by stealing a win in front of 25,000 at Selhurst Park. Arrogant Allison mocked Cardiff, bragging that City would never attract as many fans. He was wrong. I had the extraordinary experience of joining 35,546 other supporters at Ninian Park for a Wednesday night game against Hereford United. The border club were top of the division, but City triumphed to go second.

Above: the Swindon programme notes celebrate the win against Hereford

Dad and I took our seats in the grandstand three days later for the return game against our Boxing Day tormentors, Swindon Town. We expected fireworks after the midweek triumph against the league leaders. Instead we got a damp squib, as City failed to find the net in a frustrating goalless draw, allowing the chasing Millwall to draw level on points. However, we held on to second place as we had a better ‘goal average’ than the London club. (Dad tried to explain goal average to me without success. Fortunately that archaic system was replaced with goal difference from the following season, rewarding attacking football and making things simpler.)

Above: that signed programme…

City finally secured promotion in Lancashire on Tuesday 4 May with a 1-0 win over Bury, appropriately secured by Adrian Alston’s early goal. Dad gave me a Martini to toast our promotion – a typically 1970s treat for a schoolboy who’d not yet savoured wine or beer.

Above: Dad’s directors’ box pass for the previous season

I was very fortunate to witness most of that promotion season from the Ninian Park directors’ box, as Dad had a season ticket there and could buy a second ticket for me. We enjoyed a wonderful buffet at half time before returning to our seats. South Glamorgan county council held a dinner in honour of the club’s success – I wonder if that was Dad’s idea as the county’s PR officer? – and that evening my mother persuaded many of the players to sign the back of my Hereford game programme. Welsh comedian Stan Stennett also added his autograph. Stennett was a Bluebirds director, and his ‘laugh in’ column appeared in matchday programmes during that promotion season. Half a century on the gags seem embarrassing rather than funny: ‘Have you heard about the new men’s perfume that sends women crazy? Smells like money’… In the Swindon programme he noted that he loved the repartee from the terraces that drifted up to the directors’ box. I’d never come across the word repartee, and assumed it was tobacco smoke, which definitely drifted our way…

Cardiff City survived for six seasons in the second division before another relegation in May 1982, the month I left school. I recorded that night in my diary that the reaction was ‘one of relief, almost – very different from 1975!’ It came during an extraordinary spring when I was revising for A levels while Britain was at war with Argentina. Just two weeks earlier HMS Sheffield had been lost in an Argentinian missile attack, becoming the first Royal Navy warship sunk since the second world war. Football suddenly seemed trivial. I should record that Welsh rivals Wrexham were also relegated that season, and would not return to the second tier of English football until 2025 under the Reynolds/McElhenney renaissance.

The Bluebirds repeated their 1976 trick of bouncing right back in 1983, and I travelled to several away games that season, including a defeat at Lincoln City in November. I travelled there from Leicester, where I was in my second month at university, and kept my allegiance secret as I sat amongst the Lincoln fans in the stand. It was an intimidating experience. Two months later I took three trains from the Midlands to Wrexham to watch Cardiff draw 0-0 with our old rivals on a bleak winter’s day. My old Latin teacher would have laughed at that nihil -nihil result…

Another promotion – at the home of Welsh rugby!

Above: kick off in the playoff; Rob and Karen at the Millennium Stadium as the game unfolds

In May 2003, I was lucky enough to watch City win promotion to the Championship – the Premier League era equivalent of the old second division. City had spent 18 long years in the third and fourth tiers, something that would have been unthinkable even during the struggles of the 1970s. Karen was working for Nationwide Building Society, sponsors of the Football League, and as I was a Cardiff fan we secured tickets for the play off final. As England’s national stadium at Wembley was being rebuilt, Cardiff’s Millennium (now Principality) Stadium hosted the game between City and QPR. It was a tense experience, and we only prevailed when Andy Campbell showed enormous cool in lobbing the ball over QPR’s keeper with six minutes of extra time remaining. The relief was enormous, even if the game didn’t match the excitement of that long-ago school night triumph over Hereford.