It is advantage Crystal Palace going into the second leg of the Carling Cup semi-final following their 1-0 win over Cardiff on Tuesday night.
Former Tottenham defender Anthony Gardner was the hero for Palace as he scored his first goal in over a year to give his side a slender lead and put them on course for a first major Wembley final since 1990.
Palace stunned Manchester United in the quarter-final but they went into Tuesday's match with a large number of players struggling to overcome a virus that had swept through the club.
Despite the illness, it was Dougie Freeman's side who will be happier with the night's events, although Cardiff managed to control the early exchanges and went close to scoring with a controversial free-kick.
Both sides created plenty of chances but slowly Palace began to take control and they kept Cardiff's at bay with the Welsh side struggling to put together any decent attacks.
The first half looked set to end in a 0-0 draw but Gardner stepped up to head Darren Ambrose's free kick into an empty net, causing the Selhurst faithful to erupt into celebrations.
It was the home side who started the second half the brightest but Cardiff did create opportunities and they thought they had equalised when Kenny Miller put the ball into the back of the net but the effort was ruled out for a foul on Speroni.
The visitors threw everything at Palace and although they had chances, Freeman's side defended brilliantly and held off the onslaught to take a 1-0 lead back to Cardiff in two weeks.
"It might be the crucial goal," said Freeman.
"We have a team set up to win away from home. We'll go there quietly confident and it'll be a very interesting game.
"I'm very pleased with performance on such a wonderful occasion.
"A lot of questions were asked of us from Cardiff because they are a good team but I felt on tonight's performances we deserved the narrow 1-0 victory."