A Summer of Football by Chairman Mao

By -
Wales will not be in Russia this summer. There’s plenty of people who probably think that it’s a good thing as they didn’t fancy being chased by some Neanderthal thugs around St Petersburg just because they’re bedecked head to toe in Spirit of 58 clobber. Of course that is nonsense as we would love to be there. The Russians will be great hosts and their vodka is very good. So what are we going to do in the summer?

France 2016 has set the bar high and can we really sit back and watch from afar again as a Finals tournament meanders through June into July? We’ve been at the heart of a tournament and now I want more, there’s a song lyric by some obscure band that notes “If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor” and that’s it really we’ve been to the top table and now we can’t watch on.

So what to do? No amount of big screen action in the Red Flag Bar is going to cut it really so we need a distraction, something that we can get behind and support through to the end. It’s not Glamorgan as the cricket fixtures are so fucked up it’s like watching three teams playing three different seasons for the same club. Who can keep up with that? Plus of course it rains in Wales so unless your idea of a good time is sheltering under the stand at Sophia Gardens with an expensive gassy lager in your hand then we need to find something else.

We may just have the solution even if it is only for seven days but what a week! 

Wales let us down for Russia and it’s probably the fault of the Gogs or the Jacks or even the Cardis so we need to look closer to home for our summer allegiance and maybe even further into the future.

The FAW is hosting the qualifying mini-tournament for the UEFA Regions Cup this year and who is representing our nation? It’s South Wales. It’s our very own mini-National team playing for glory but just closer to home.

The South Wales team has come through the qualifying rounds to reach the Regions Cup tournament for the first time. The team is also well represented by players from Merthyr Tydfil such as Chris Colvin-Owens and Asa Lloyd from Penydarren BGC so another great reason to get behind South Wales.

The mini-tournament will probably be played around Cardiff between 4th and 10th June and our local heroes will go up against teams from Greece, Macedonia and Sweden.

So dust off that SO58 bucket hat and try to relive Lille all over again with South Wales. And who knows where this journey may end? If Yorkshire can enter the CONIFA Alternative World Cup then why not South Wales? I just hope there’s no snakes in the team.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

25 years of Dial M For Merthyr Fanzine

By Chairman Mao -
I was actually there when he came up with the name. It was Walsall v's Sunderland in '88 and we were talking with the Editor of the new Sunderland Fanzine, Wise Men Say.. 'So, what's your called then?' Asked the Mackem... 'Dial M for Merthyr' replied Wolvesy. The guy laughed. I laughed. He turned to me and said, 'I just made that up'. 'It's good mate. Not sure how many people on the Wank Bank will be aware of Hitchcock's brilliant suspense masterpiece but it's better than my idea for the name'. (I was all for 'You sexy Merthyr F*ckers' as Prince was big with the song at the time). And so that was it, 'Dial M for Merthyr' was born. The rest, as they say, is a mystery...   The one thing about Mark Evans is that he's a born leader. It's true. He may get 'all shucks' about it but his legacy is astonishing. I'd never be doing what I'm doing now if it wasn't for
Read more

Showing your support by Wolvesy

By -
Image
“Badges, we don’t need no stinking badges!” is one of the best lines in the classic Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles but we all need badges, don’t we? Something personal that shows both who or what we support and what our values are to the outside world. I wore this Merthyr Tydfil AFC badge on the lapel of my Vaynor & Penderyn school blazer every day I was in that fine establishment of learning. I probably wore it firstly because the chance of getting any MTFC merchandise in that era was virtually nil. The club shop operated out of the tea hut at the end of the grandstand and it was never open in the seventies and when those wooden boards were ever open then every kid in the ground would flock there to buy anything available but it was always the same stuff – key-rings, rosettes and badges. So even a badge was a rarity and such a rare item could never be allowed to rest somewhere in a drawer to be lost in some clear out years later. It had to be shown off, it was a family heirloom
Read more

Great Expectations by Guardy

By -
I’m probably being a bit harsh with the title, as at the beginning of the 2022/23 I would have taken a mid table spot. Unfortunately, due to this new manager in charge, a certain Mr Paul Michael, he has definitely changed supporters expectations, and not making the play offs seemed strangely disappointing. Something I don’t think any of us were thinking about in August 2022. I’ll let you into a little secret, after the year when the club mothballed due to the pandemic, I was thinking of jacking it in. The message came from nowhere, and as an owner, at the time I was really narked that no one had given me the chance to have a say, what is the point of being an owner? Looking back, it was obviously the right decision, at the time being stuck in, no pubs open and Pingus zoom quizzes had an adverse impact on my mental health, and looking forward to watching a bit of football was a light at the end of the tunnel. So, no football for a few months, well albeit there are some international gam
Read more