Dial M for Merthyr

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,