Sunday, October 20, 2024

Bony to Piroe – The story of Swansea’s old boy curse

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Swansea head to the Steel City on Tuesday looking to bounce back from a loss against Blackburn.

The Swans make the 450 mile round trip to Hillsborough and are likely to see a familiar face among the Owls line-up in Jamaican striker Jamal Lowe.

Lowe, who has not scored since Wednesday’s opening game of the season against Plymouth Argyle, will be looking to double his tally for the season.

Should he find the net, it would not be the first time Lowe has scored against Swansea, having opened the scoring for Queens Park Rangers in a 1-1 draw in January 2023.

Lowe is one of many ex-Swansea players to score against his former club; BBC Sport Wales recalls some of the other times the ghosts of Swansea came back to haunt them.

Despite never scoring during his loan spell at Swansea, Steven Caulker headed home the winner in the Premier League’s first taste of the south Wales derby, in a 1-0 victory for Cardiff City.

Former striker Wilfried Bony holds a perfect record against the Swans, scoring four goals in three games, including his only two goals for Stoke City. The pick of the bunch a right-footed shot from a Joe Allen assist.

Two years later and Allen would continue to haunt the Swans, this time scoring the only goal in a 1-0 victory for Stoke at the Bet365 Stadium.

Once a club record signing, Sam Clucas left Swansea after just one season in south Wales, scoring only three goals as the Swans were relegated to the Championship.

However, Clucas is a name that Swans fans will not forget any time soon. After joining Stoke City, the midfielder found the net three times in three consecutive starts against the Swans, infamously celebrating by holding his shirt up to the home crowd, in a 3-1 Potters victory in Swansea.

This made him the third ex-Swansea player to score against their former club whilst playing for the Potters.

No Swansea player has scored a league hat trick since Scott Sinclair completed the feat in the 2011 Championship play-off final. Sinclair’s next goal in the division would come nine years later for Preston North End in a 1-1 draw against the Swans in February 2020.

Despite the Swans not scoring a league hat trick in more than 13 years, former Swansea loanee Sam Surridge scored three times in a 5-1 win for Steve Cooper’s Nottingham Forest over the Swans in 2022.

And Swansea fans must have been fearing the worst as three former Swans lined up for Leeds United in November last year. Welsh internationals Joe Rodon, Dan James and Dutch striker Joel Piroe started in a 3-1 victory for the Yorkshire side.

It will have come as no surprise when Piroe calmly slotted the ball past oncoming goalkeeper Carl Rushworth, before Dan James capped off the win at Elland Road, making it a double for the former Swansea pair.

The ex-player curse has haunted the Swans for nearly 70 years. Swansea’s all-time top scorer Ivor Allchurch left the black and white of south Wales for the black and white of Newcastle in 1958 for a fee of £28,000.

In Allchurch’s first appearance against his former side he scored the opener in a 2-2 draw. And this would not be the last time the Swansea legend scored against the Swans, also bagging a hat trick for Cardiff City in a 5-0 win in 1965, a season which saw Swansea relegated to the Third Division.

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