Cardiff’s return to the Championship saw us start brightly, to match our tag in many people’s eyes to win the title again, but in the end we somewhat held on against Blackburn Rovers.
Ewood Park’s Friday night Sky Sports encounter ended in a 1-1 draw.
Former Bluebird Rudy Gestede, who caused us some problems throughout the game, almost played a part in giving Blackburn an early penalty as his flicked header hit Mark Hudson’s arm on the edge of the area but Andrew Madley eventually decided it was a freekick and not a penalty.
Tom Cairney’s effort was straight into the wall.
Cardiff’s early set piece delivery was causing problems in the Blackburn defence, Kenwyne Jones almost getting onto the end of one to be denied by Paul Robinson but Jones beat the Blackburn goalkeeper to another to give us the lead as his perfectly timed run saw him head home Hudson’s knock on from Peter Whittingham’s freekick delivery.
Will this goal finally get Jones up and running as a Cardiff player? It’s certainly a good way for the striker to start the season but it’s only his second goal for us to follow up a debut goal that had us rubbing our hands together with glee at the time.
Gestede and another former player of ours Craig Conway, who OGS admitted he might have made a mistake in letting go, both had chances to level things up but it was left to Cairney to power home from 25 yards to equalise for Blackburn just before the break after Jordan Rhodes had robbed Whittingham in midfield.
Blackburn took control for much of the second half with most of the possession, most of the time in our defensive half, but they didn’t really threaten too much.
David Marshall had one moment of worry when he came and flapped at a cross but he got away with it with Gestede and Conway combining again but from the wingers cross the striker headed wide.
Looking to repeat the efforts of Cairney an effort from Conway from range was about as close as either side came to winning the contest with OGS still having to do some work to win over some people I feel.
Too much pressure was being invited at times without the look of a side that was going to spring too much of a counter attack with ideas on how to change the pattern of the game not really seen, but this was the first game of the season and a point at Ewood Park against a side unbeaten in a dozen Championship games prior to this isn’t a bad result at all.
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