By Paul Jones
Joe Ralls has told his Cardiff City teammates it is time to draw the Mick McCarthy six-shooter in order to fire themselves towards promotion.
The Bluebirds’ 1-0 Welsh derby victory at Swansea City has re-ignited their play-off campaign, but Ralls says it must prove more than a one-off as they seek the momentum that can close a four-point gap between themselves and sixth place.
The midfielder – pressed into wing-back duty at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday night – knows it is vital Cardiff try and gain some sort of repeat of the momentum they enjoyed at the start of McCarthy’s stint as manager when he won an extraordinary six matches in succession.
“If we can replicate that run it would put us in a great position because momentum is massive in this league and when you put back-to-back wins together you can climb that table quickly as we’ve shown before,” said Ralls.
“There are eight games to go and hopefully we can win enough of them and get enough points to get us into those top six places.”
Ralls was sent off for a late tackle when the Swans won 2-0 in the Welsh capital back in December, but this time Cardiff’s discipline was textbook as they defended Aden Flint’s early goal.
“We have had disappointing performances and results in the last couple of seasons in the derbies and we wanted to put that right,” said Ralls.
“We would have had to wait a long time until the next game, so it was really important to get the win for our supporters and for ourselves.”
Ralls was already sat in the dressing room before the end of the December meeting so missed Swansea’s noisy on-field celebrations that day.
But that didn’t stop him joining in the tit-for-tat party fun Cardiff’s players enjoyed this time.
“Apparently, they (Swansea) celebrated that way and we just decided to do it ourselves. It was not just because of that, but it shows the togetherness of the group as well.”
Cardiff are four points behind sixth-placed Reading, their destination when the teams meet on April 17.
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The only other team in the top six McCarthy’s men have left to play are Brentford, while Reading face testing matches against promotion rivals Barnsley, Watford, Swansea and Norwich.
Third-place Swansea have fallen six points behind Watford following back-to-back defeats, but have a game in hand.
Swans midfielder Korey Smith admitted: “We’re just gutted for the fans. We wanted to be the first team to win the double, but sometimes it’s not meant to be.”
“We’ve got to try and continue to play how we did in this game. It was probably our best performance for a while, but the most important thing is getting results.”