Dial M for Merthyr

It’s  June 2022,  I’m  standing in Singleton Park waiting for Gerry Cinnamon  to come  on stage .   It’s  the day before Wales take on Ukraine in the World Cup Play-Off final in Cardiff so you already know that this weekend  has got  the potential to be generational. Singleton Park is  heaving  and  there’s  a good few  of my  fellow Merthyr  Town  fans in the crowd too  –  I’m  even wearing my retro Merthyr shirt for the occasion  since football shirts at music events has become the in-thing !  My phone goes off, it’s Twitter (this is pre-Musk takeover), it’s pre-season and the Martyrs have announced another new signing..  “New club. New colours. New Beginnings. Merthyr Town Football Club are pleased to announce the signing of Ricardo Rees from Yate Town. Welcome, Ricardo.”   It’s another signing from Yate, it’s a forward and it’s another signing from our new gaf...

You may have heard somewhere that Merthyr Tydfil FC pulled off one of the all-time great European cup giant-killings in 1987. A team recently relegated from Serie A but also Coppa Italia finalists came to Penydarren Park to play little old us and ended up heading back to Bergamo pointless and with a greater respect of Welsh football, crowds and more importantly hospitality. The return visit two weeks later was another close game, but the hosts hung on to scrape through to play OFI Crete in the next round. Those of us who had the opportunity to follow the Martyrs into Europe will never forget those weeks when we were both the talk of football fans everywhere and unlikely ambassadors as the first British club to visit Italy since the Heysel disaster a couple of years earlier. We didn’t see a lot of the city when we arrived for the game, security was tight and the carabinieri were taking no risks, holding us on our buses inside a stable block and the stadium itself was an oval bowl of ter...

There has been a lot written and spoken of recently about the new security protocols when attending a game at PP. Most of which I wholeheartedly agree with. On Saturday I mingled with Macclesfield fans in town, and in Romans bar before the game. No problems, even discussing our young crew of boisterous young ones, who we both agreed on that every club has. Walking over to the turnstiles I noticed a young Macclesfield fan who was probably about 11 or 12, having a metal detector run over her coat. The steward was nice and said the girl and her parents to have a good day and enjoy themselves. I understand some games will need extra security but does a young girl need to be searched with a metal detector? Apart from their win, not doubt, the second thing they’ll take away from their day at PP is the overzealous stewarding. I noted a Merthyr fan on Facebook who sits in the main stand, when asked were they could get food, they would have to go to Holvey’s tea bar, but they then may not be al...

My dad, like many of his generation in the Valleys, also followed Cardiff City when he was a young man. It was the big club down the rail track from Merthyr Tydfil and in the sixties they had some great players  with John Toshack probably being his favourite. The trains from the Valleys would be packed with football fans for every home game, meanwhile he would also watch the Martyrs at Penydarren Park and as he settled down, married and had kids he stopped travelling to Ninian Park and instead drove the family Morris Oxford up Park Terrace, parking behind the Jubilee Club with me in tow. As I grew up, the Martyrs flirted a bit with Cup success; high-profile games with sides like Hendon, Tooting & Mitcham and Chesha m United were lost and the league form was indifferent to be honest so why didn’t he go back to following the Bluebirds during that bleak period? I was more than old enough to travel down to Ninian Park, and a lot of my friends were already going. Eventually my dad a...

Lots of my family and friends tell me every Sunday morning that they now buy the Times because of this column. Sales in the South Wales Valleys must have spiked dramatically (yes, yes, we’re all related etc etc). My Mother, as with all mothers, keeps everything I’ver ever done. She even has early copies of the now legendary football Fanzine ‘Dial M for Merthyr’ because I wrote some articles for it. That was over 30 years ago and I often think that the effect of fanzine culture on football during that time cannot be overestimated. You wouldn’t be reading this column if it wasn’t for them. It gave me the idea that maybe I could do something in football. My great friend, Mark Evans, who was the founding editor, is now in charge of International Football at the FAW. When he came up with the idea of starting the fanzine he was on the dole. I was still in college. We came down to two names. Dial M for Merthyr or You Sexy Merthyr F*ckers (Prince was massive at the time. Not in stature but in ...