Dial M for Merthyr

We've updated our unofficial away fans guide. Please feel free to share the link and use the information. Be a pleasure to see you visit our Club and Town. AWAY FAN GUIDE

Number One - Bernard Price's newsagents -By Moppy I can remember it well. The look on my Father's face after I had asked him for a slight increase in pocket money. And I can remember his kind words too, "If you want more money get a part time job you lazy bastard". Wise words indeed. Weeks of looking proved fruitless. Then, my luck changed. The local newsagent was looking for a paperboy. I had to get this job. Not only was the shop a 2 minute walk from my home, not only was he paying a tenner a week (big money in 1983) but he sold the finest collection of porno mags a 14 year old Catholic boy had ever seen. And no plastic covers either. In fact he could have kept the money, a few back issues of Razzle would have done. I got the job, and started work for the best employer I've ever had. Fair play to old Bernard, after I'd finished my round he would let me go into the back room to "have a browse". And there was no struggling to reach the top shelf, th

I suppose that as you get older you notice more anniversaries on the horizon. One of the more high profile events to be remembered this year is the Miners’ Strike of 1984 and its obvious legacy on the communities across South Wales but what of its impact on Merthyr Tydfil FC at that time?   Well I was just 17 years old in ’84 and the strike seemed at first a distant conflict, there weren’t many if any miners in Trefechan, I recall the bucket collections in the town centre to support the miners’ families but without today’s 24/7 blanket coverage of the news there was only the now obviously heavily edited news programmes to find out what was happening around the country.   The strike came home to me during an away match to the Midlands, it could have been to Willenhall (they won the title in the Southern League Midland division that season), Bridgnorth or even Oldbury. The coach was taking the usual route and was climbing out of Monmouth only to be pulled into a lay-b

The tale of the Umbrella - by "Jonny the Thespian" Merthyr and the Umbrella.....a short (absolutely true) tale that sums up life itself. This week I was caught short. It was hammering down in Nottingham as I was leaving the studios. Proper storm. The dear lady on the reception said to me...Jonny, have a lend of the umbrella here duck but make sure you bring it back as we haven't many okay? I actually thought as she handed it to me..I won't let you down cheery looking Nottingham lady! I will return your umbrella! On Friday as I'm leaving to go to Merthyr the umbrella is in the passage way and I know the weather is going to be bad and as I pass I take a long look at it...now I know it's an inanimate object BUT I swear we had a moment...do I really want to take it to Merthyr with me?...hardier more robust instruments have withered and died in my home town and if it had of spoken it would have said (in a quivering voice) please don't take me to the Vall

The Monk is a curious fella, we’re distantly related through my missus I’ll have you know. He can be very loud, is by far the most intellectual member of Dial M, he’s the “must have as a team-mate” if there’s a pub quiz. His vocabulary is amazing. I often need to stop our conversations to ask “what does that word mean Col?”.   His ability to intersperse sentences with swear words is legendary too – so I will take this opportunity to warn you that you should never ever trust The Monk to organise travel for you. Just don’t. I will explain….. Colin never saw any of the group games at the Euros, so when we drew Northern Ireland in the last 16 he was keen to get out there. He been hearing the stories of our campervan trip to Bordeaux for the group stages all week, so Colin wanted to get there and see what all the fuss was about. So it was now Tuesday and the game was Saturday evening, my bosses (one at home and the one at work) had both given me the green light, so I left it with C

The football fans bucket list. Let’s be honest, we all have one. Whether it’s Dortmund’s yellow wall, the El Classico or even somewhere a little more random that may not have much significance to many others like the Sarajevo derby for example (which is one of mine). I’ve made my list and I managed to tick one significant box in January by re-tracing the steps of our greatest ever team. Destination Bergamo. As some of you may know, I have a deep rooted interest in our European escapades and why not? It’s our history that can help our Club sustain a future fan base in generations to come so it’s certainly worth exploring it to the maximum. A visit was one way to satisfy my footballing needs and a huge tick off my bucket list. The journey to Bergamo all started many Months before with a Facebook conversation with the biggest Merthyr fan in Italy, Roberto Gionchillie. Rob is a phenomenally helpful guy and he casually mentioned to me that he works for Atalanta B.C., of which I did

So we go into another year with zero changes on the board of the Trust aka Club. I think we get one election every four years, it’s a bit like voting for the location of the Olympics. So what are the reasons for this? It could be seen as a loud endorsement of the work the current board are doing. In fairness we have heard no alarm bells about money for a few years. By all accounts the playing budget is higher than at any point in the new club’s short history. The Park (not heard anyone calling it The Loadlok yet) has never looked better. I came up here a few weeks back around noon for the early TV game and I was the only person in the ground – I got to appreciate how great the ground looks. And at the time of writing we are a point off the top of the league. So everything looks groovy on the surface. The board seem to be doing a good job and people seem happy to let them get on with running the good ship MTFC. There’s also a whiff of apathy setting in – it’s not a stench,

It was 3 weeks before the tournament and we’d been planning this since we beat Belgium the previous summer. I’m just gobsmacked. Someone had just written off the campervan we had hired. Sacre Cour Rodders!! Smashed to bits it was. I’m thinking of the best way to break this to the lads. The latest list in a cast of hundreds who were booked on the van were, Hulby, Bennett, Wingnut, Tim Dog and Maximus. There had been numerous sign ups and drop outs in the previous 12 months, but these five were committed to 10 days in France watching the Dragon roar. I shit out of telling them all day as I had booked it all, I needed a stroke of luck and 6 hours later a new van was found in Usk. It was available and was about 6 years newer than the doomed HMS titanic we were previously scheduled to sail on. Two days before the Slovakia game I drove into darkest Gwent and picked up our home for the next few weeks. It sure looked bigger on the internet. It was all kitted out mind… Cups, glasses,

Issue 53 is in the can and will be on the terraces next Saturday April 22nd, for our final home game of the season. The recent trip to Chips and Ham will be covered and we look at how our fans are dealing with the grim reaper. SHOCK NEWS - We've even gone up market and drafted in a REAL designer for this issue.

Please note the following link for the latest episode of Dial M For Merthyr TV; https://vimeo.com/212653410 The filming was mostly done in Corsham and Chippenham and we concentrate on our links with Queen's Park FC from Glasgow. Enjoy!

“All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football” Albert Camus It’s funny that of all the books I read whilst in Vaynor school the only one that meant anything to me was The Outsider written by that goalkeeper Albert Camus. It’s not exactly a book to take on holiday with you but it did inspire the Cure for one of their earliest songs. There is a narrative through it about what humanity means to us and from that the wider issue of values. We have listed one of his most famous quotes at the start of this article. So is it true that football can shape our values and even our political beliefs? My forty years plus at Penydarren Park must have provided me with some lessons in life even though I probably absorbed them without thought at the time. My dad brought me up supporting Merthyr from an early age and I learnt more about life watching the Martyrs then I ever did at Ysgol Y Graig or Vaynor & Penderyn. The ground was a safe haven to play