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Adrian Mariappa’s late own goal gave Cardiff City a point as former Watford boss Malky Mackay returned to his former club.

And for most of the first half, there was an awful lot that was familiar about the visiting side.  It’s never a good idea to successively read two novels by the same author I find;  however impressive the first I begin to get irritated by an author’s habits and style when they begin to emerge in the second.  And lo… here was a visiting team paying expansive football across the full width of the pitch, rendered get-attable at the back by their refusal to sit back but leaving us chasing shadows for the most part.  And Don Cowie at the centre of everything, scurrying this way and that, on the end of crosses as well as providing them and coming close more than once, most memorably a diving header to a right-wing cross that brought a fine save from Loach. The riposte to the fist-chewingly tedious chorus of boos that greeted the Scot’s every touch seemed inevitable.  It didn’t come, but to say that we were rather fortunate to be on level terms at the break would be something of an understatement.