Dial M for Merthyr

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 ...

The recent financial issues at our beloved club have certainly focussed many of us on the realities of running a semi-professional football team in a leisure market saturated by live TV sport, Vue cinema and the many retail parks in the borough laying siege to what little expendable money we have in our Merthyr Tydfil pockets. We’ve ploughed a lone furrow for decades in the grass is greener English non-league pyramid but with a new dawn of football austerity on the horizon perhaps we need to cross the rubicon and consider plying our wares in Wales. The idea will be emotive and will almost certainly find few in agreement around Penydarren Park but this decision must be taken with the head and not the heart and be based on a sustainable future for the club and not be set due to the comfort of what we know. So how do we sustain a semi-professional football team to represent our town? And what is the purpose of our football club? You can argue that the current policy of m...