Dial M for Merthyr

So here we go again. Football is evidently considered as low-hanging fruit by our government so once again it’s up to us to ensure that our club gets through another period of empty terraces, no hospitality and absent friends. You don’t need us to tell you that this decision is absurd when we can drink in Roman’s or Webley’s bars at the ground but not outside on our, let’s be honest, sparsely populated terraces but there’s a bigger picture here that has nothing to do with either Delta or Omicron.   The underlying issue for every Covid restriction to our normal way of live is that we must protect the NHS and its staff from being overwhelmed. This reality underpins every law created in Wales to delay or destroy the virus. A noble aim which everyone will support of course but are we masking the fact that the NHS having been neglected by the Tories for over a decade now is seriously under resourced? Many would say that the NHS is heading the same way as British Rail. Starved of resour...

France, five years ago  presented most of us in Wales with the best football experience ever, arguably for some the best experience of their entire life. Fortunate to be at 4 of those games including the semi final, the highlight was obviously the night in Lille and I was even able to take my son Shaun, wheelchair and all who still describes it as the best day of his life by a country mile. This time around UEFA, along with Brexit, and the completely horrendous format of the 2020 European championships denied most of us any hope of a replay so for me, the chance to get to any games was too good a chance to miss, even if it meant mostly England games. Have to say, the English FA has been more than good to me, and with some great people who have become great friends so I had no hesitation in telling them I was up for any tickets they could offer. Starting with a boiling afternoon and England v Croatia, I watched Wales' game against Switzerland in the White Hart pub in Holborn wi...

This was a mantra from my old man. It was always what he said. He couldn’t get his head around people not planning. If I was stuck somewhere (Brecon Jazz one year...in a phone box...desperate) How did you get there? Uhhh....I don’t know. You don’t know? Uhhh....I thought that....ummm You thought what? I don’t know. Exactly! Get a bus or thumb a lift. It’ll teach you.   (And I did...I thumbed a lift and arrived home freezing and damp...and it did teach me). One time I’m at the table....I’m about 8 years old. I’m gonna be a footballer!   Are you now? Yes! (If this was a Hollywood film the music would start and there’d be a montage of me trying hard and scoring goal and him shouting from the touchline...instead it was Merthyr Tydfil) And what’s the back up? I don’t need one. Don’t you? Nope! I’m gonna be the new Pele.   Pele? Yes! And what if you’re not. I will be.   But what I you don’t get past 5 foot? (I was below average...

Cast your mind back to around 5pm on Saturday 30th November 2019. Can you remember where you were, who you were with and what you were doing? You can’t? Understandable, it was well over 18 months ago. I can though, in fact I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was sat in Gareth Bale’s boozer opposite Cardiff Castle, I was with some work colleagues for a pre Xmas do meet up and I was watching a television nervously waiting for the draw for the finals of Euro 2020 to commence. Seeing as, in 40 years of watching Wales at home and 25 years of watching them away I’ve only ever been in that position once before (4 years previously), events like that are burned in my memory. Four years previously. I was a little slow of the mark booking accommodation for the 2016 finals and ended up with some, er, right ropey joints. So this time I, along with my two regular Wales Away travelling pals, Ritchie Question and Mackie, took it serious. We knew that we could only play in two groups, Baku/Rom...

I’m writing this on the eve of the Euro final. The Saes face the Italian’s tomorrow for all the marbles. I hope the Tifosi are celebrating in 24 hours time – PLEASE!!!!. If you are asking WHY I say that, then that’s great as England lost the game. Cos if they did win it, then you will already know the answer to “why?” having lived weeks of cliches, triumphalism and full-on nationalism. Anyway – I haven’t even started this article and I have digressed in another direction. I qualified the time of writing this article so you understand the statement that follows. “Other than Wales being there”…. This was the terrible tournament. It seemed good as it was being compared to the previous 15 months of Covid hell, but in reality, it was a tournament of poor organization that denied the supporter the chance to see their team play. It had drab games, played by many unadventurous teams, that lacked any star performance – Spinazolla, Chiellini, Sterling, Pogba, Xhaka, Roberts and Orlo aside. ...

Euro2020 in 2021 proved to be an interesting experience.   Having a cross-Europe (well for some) tournament never sounded like a good idea pre-pandemic, in the midst of a pandemic it seemed positively ludicrous.   Platini’s football legacy was always going to be tarnished, this simply added the cherry to the top of the cake.   I won’t dwell on our Baku excursions as another one of our intrepid correspondents is covering, but I will cover our weekend in Landan for the final.   We booked it early thinking we had an outside chance of getting a ticket, but the closer Ingerland got to the final our chances of tickets receded quicker than a middle-aged mans’ hairline.   3 of us left the Pearl on the Saturday staying in Euston.   The atmosphere was good on that day, the locals excited and expectant that it was going to “come home”.   A turn of phrase once ironic & self-effacing, but nowadays bastardised by Brexit loving, anti-immigration, anti-lockdown,...

In 1947 Merthyr Tydfil AFC found themselves with a spare Saturday in October due to English county cups taking precedence so as was the custom in those days they looked for a friendly match to keep the football hungry public of a post-war town happy. Therefore on the afternoon of 11 th October Merthyr Tydfil lined up to play The Carparthians in a friendly challenge match. The game itself seems to have been forgotten by history which is a shame as the background of the visiting team was a tribute to the new Britain emerging from a global conflict. It seems as if the Merthyr public also didn’t recognize the quality of the team visiting Penydarren Park as the match programme for the following week’s FA Cup match against Lovells’s Athletic bemoaned “ Those supporters who were deceived by the irresponsibility of the rumours spread regarding the composition of the Polish XI missed a treat and the “class” of our visitors gave the lie to the “touts” who spread the rumour that the team w...

We will be going live with our matchday video shows, pre and post match at most games this season. To watch live (or catch up later) drop into our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8tr_2zTegEf_NCGHbouZCA We usually start 45 minutes before kick off and 10 minutes after full time. 

The biggest threat to democracy is apathy. Merthyr Town FC is infected by apathy. The indifference of so many of our fans to how our club is governed is worrying but not unexpected as a decade has passed with little fan engagement and therefore no anticipation of responsibility for the future. The recent election to form a Board to run our club’s affairs resulted in only five nominations so we now must co-opt two unelected members in order to meet our constitution’s rules. The point of this article was to look at ways to move the supporter-owner franchise forward at Penydarren Park, to seek ideas to once again spark debate within the club and to make the survival of our fragile social enterprise a top priority for all fans of the Martyrs but to be honest what’s the point? We’ll never be able to overturn the conservative approach ingrained in this club’s DNA. Experiments to use the club’s unique selling point as a fan-owned club and to buy into the town’s socialist heritage have f...

I can hear bells. Its still dark outside. Just got back from Bergamo , I’ve got a day off so why is my alarm ringing at 5.45am. I know, let’s walk from Newport to Bristol to raise money for the football club. I am 42 years of age. Yes, why not? Come on, get dressed, have breakfast, can’t wait to get outside, get outside, realise that its absolutely pissing down with rain so burst into tears and grab my umbrella. Mikey D and his good lady wife treat me like the buffoon I have become. Never mind its just walking. In the rain. Its for a good cause. A few days earlier the M4 was shut so I missed my flight to Bergamo , maybe it will happen again so I won’t have to shuffle mile after mile across the border. The M4 is empty, we breeze into Newport . Soon we are at Spytty Park where my fellow walkers await in the darkness. They spent the previous day walking down to Newport from Merthyr, avoiding landslides along the way. We wave off our transport and head off down to the Coldra, ...

Congratulations to the  Labour  Party for winning the Senedd elections but how can their fresh mandate help the Martyrs?   Many of those  AS representatives, including Dawn Bowden, are also members of the Co-operative Party so  would be expected to  understand the challenges of running a community enterprise.   The additional trials of running a community-owned football club in a sustainable manner  whilst matching its  fans expectations for s uccess also need to be recognized if our model of good governance and transparent finances is to set the standard for the future of football in Wales.   Merthyr Town FC and it ’ s  principle  stakeholders, the fans, have set ambitious targets to be  a  hub of the football community  across the central Valleys.    The most immediate concern for Merthyr Town fans is when can we return to the terraces at  Penydarren Park?    Our elected directors made ...