Phil Yelland takes a look through the archives to discover how The Bluebirds have fared on previous trips to Leyton Orient ahead of Saturday's encounter.
Saturday’s game at what older supporters will know at Brisbane Road will be our sixth visit to the ground. There have been three trips when the clubs were in Division Three, two in the National League and last season’s visit in League Two.
Our first and only win to date came in April 1969, when two goals from George Mclean gave us a 2-1 Easter Saturday win on our way to securing safety in the third tier. The victory also gave us our first and only double over Orient, having won 3-1 at Holker Street earlier in the campaign.
We have also secured a draw at Brisbane Road as recently as August 2018 in the National League in what was Ian Evatt’s third game in charge. We took an early lead through Jack Hindle (who is now back in the UK with Radcliffe after a spell in Malaysia) but were 2-1 down late in the game when Raul Correia struck the equaliser with his only goal for the club.
The previous season in April 2018 when we were fighting relegation, we lost despite taking an early lead through a Luke James goal. Things went wrong as the game progressed and we were on the wrong end of a 4-1 defeat, finishing with ten men following Dan Jones’ dismissal for two yellow cards.
Our first ever trip in Division Three came in November 1967 when we lost 4-2 with Bobby Knox and Dave Storf scoring the goals. In early April 1970 we lost 2-0 at the ground in our second last game of the season – we were already relegated, and Orient were about to be crowned champions.
Last April we went down 2-0 to end a run of four games without defeat.
Let’s hope that on Saturday we can collect our second win at the venue and go one better than the 1-1 draw at home earlier in the season in which Robbie Gotts struck his first goal for the Club.