How Sean Morrison and Aron Gunnarsson have reacted to big Joe Ralls, Cardiff City exit news | OneFootball

An emotional "thank you" post on Instagram from Cardiff City as Joe Ralls leaves the club has brought touching responses from two of his team-mates.

Cardiff City have said their thank you to former captain Joe Ralls as he leaves the club after 14 years, and two of his former team-mates have left emotional goodbyes to him there.

Cardiff ended the 2024-25 Championship season bottom of the table and relegated into League One, and of the biggest changes to the team ahead of the new season will be the absence of long-time club stalwart Joe Ralls.

Ralls made his Bluebirds debut 14 years ago, but he's been unable to agree terms on a new contract with the club and will be leaving the club at the end of June.

Cardiff tribute to Joe Ralls prompts touching tributes from teammates

Upon the confirmation that Ralls was to leave Cardiff City Stadium, the club posted a picture to their Instagram account entitled "Thank you Rallsy", and underneath it were a huge number of comments thanking him for his service over the years.

Two of these replies particularly stood out, and both were from Ralls' former teammates. Sean Morrison commented, "proper club legend, unreal teammate and unbelievable man", while former teammate Aron Gunnarsson, who played with Ralls for eight years but now plies his trade in Qatar, said, "the boy🔥🔥 what a guy".

Ralls formed a particularly close bond with Morrison and succeeded him as Cardiff City captain in 2022 following his exit from the Welsh capital. Alongside Morrison and Gunnarsson, Ralls helped the Bluebirds to promotion in the 2017/18 season.

Cardiff were lucky to have three such servants as Ralls, Morrison and Gunnarsson

Cardiff City have been fortunate to have some outstanding club servants over the years, and Morrison and Gunnarsson are definitely among them. They both played almost 300 times for the Bluebirds themselves.

But neither of them can match the service that Joe Ralls put into the club. Between 2011 and the end of the 2024-25 season, he made over 400 appearances for the club and would have been a one-club man had he not been loaned out to Yeovil for the 2013-14 season, which was Cardiff's first in the Premier League.

Between the three of them, these three players have made 990 appearances for the Bluebirds.

Relations between the club's fans and owner Vincent Tan have been strained for years, and following on from relegation at the end of the 2024-25 season, Ralls' departure from the club may be interpreted by some supporters as another sign of the club's recent decline.

And both of the tributes paid to him by his former teammates touch on an important detail about players, that their character can be just as important as their skills on the pitch.

Both the tribute paid by Morrison and that paid by Gunnarsson specifically refer to his qualities as a person as well as his abilities as a player, and this influence around the club may be what Cardiff miss more than anything else next season.