Derby day

It’s not often I get to spend most of a day in town when there’s a big game on. It’s even less often this happens when the game doesn’t involve my team. But last Saturday I was in Cardiff for the South Wales Derby. And it made for a more engaging time than my previous trip to a match in Wales.

10am

It started early. In central Cardiff, just round the corner from the railway station, the first cries of ‘Bluebirds!’ went up. It turned out to be a lone 20-something, City scarf around his neck, giving every impression that he was eager for a reaction. But at 10am, the response was a mix of apathy and amusement that he’d got himself into such a state so early. The pre-game booking had him odds-on to lose a fight with some street furniture long before he got to the stadium.

11:30am

Pre-game, the talk was of protests. Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan has never exactly been popular. Even though he reversed some of his more instantly unpopular decisions, ditching the ‘lucky’ red shirts that never caught on at a team known as the Bluebirds, discontent rumbles on. The Cardiff City Stadium still feels like a billboard for his Berjaya Hotels and Resorts, coaching staff seem to be appointed on the kind of basis that your gran uses to pick a winner in the Grand National and the team is scraping along at the foot of the Championship. There’s a sense that Premier League riches were squandered, and pointed questions about where the money has gone.

Derby day tends to bring matters to a head. Cardiff has a poor record in games against Swansea and visiting fans enjoy taunting their hosts with chants of “four in a row”. Saturday saw more than 1,000 disgruntled Bluebirds march on the stadium calling on the board to quit. It all went off peacefully, with only a few placards outside the ground left as kick off approached.

12:30pm - kick off

Previously, I’d seen Cardiff at their old Ninian Park ground. The pre-game chorus of Men of Harlech has made the short journey over Sloper Road to the new stadium, but a lot of the venom has been lost. Back in the day, standing on the away terraces, you really could see those spear points gleaming. Cardiff remained an unremittingly hostile away day. For English clubs, there was a long-standing historical grievance. For other Welsh teams, there was local pride at stake. With primitive facilities for home and away fans, this was an authentic old bear pit of a ground.

The Cardiff City Stadium just isn’t the same. It’s another of those familiar bowls that sprung up around the Football League in the 2000s. It’s relatively comfortable and well-appointed, with a spacious concourse to maximise food and drink sales before the game. But it’s now too old to have that wow factor of a new ground, but not old enough to have that ingrained psychogeography that Ninian Park once held.

Worse, at least in terms of matchday atmosphere, it lacks the sense of confrontation that Cardiff used to provide. Even today, amid local rivalry and fan protest, it all felt a bit ‘sit down and clap your hands’. Clearly that’s a huge improvement on the bad old days of running battles in football grounds, but the ever-accelerating rush towards sport as a TV spectacle risks neutering the thrill of being there in person.

My seat was among the home fans, but close to the Swansea section. The biggest and noisiest turn-out of the season had a striking effect on two young supporters in the row in front of me. One, a girl still in primary school, was clearly a little overawed by the sheer scale of it all. Alternating between anxiety and excitement she would switch from clinging on to her dad and jumping on her seat to join in a chant as it rolled around the stadium.

Just along from them, the slightly older lad with his carefully faded hair was eager to be the big man. He spent much of the game flipping the bird at the Swansea fans (it’s easy to be brave when there’s a block of seating, plus a line of stewards and police between you and them). He would also join in chants, but generally only as a reaction to Swansea’s taunts. The ripostes were seldom imaginative; the same songs rattled back and forth with the name changed to match the prejudice of the singer. Somehow, it was less of a bear pit and more of a pet show.

1:20pm - half time

The first half was a disappointment. On the field, the play was disjointed and unimpressive. Two teams in poor form produced a predictably uninspiring game. In the stands, meanwhile, despite commentators talking up a febrile atmosphere, it all felt a bit flat as well.

That all changed in the second half. Cardiff grabbed an early goal, brilliantly taken by Callum Robinson. A few minutes later, he scored again, helped by a defensive howler. And the crowd came to life, relishing the opportunity to jib the Jacks and assert local supremacy.

By the time defender Dimitrios Goutas headed home a third, it was party time for Cardiff. Swansea, never a huge presence in the game, lapsed into petulance; visiting fans began to consider slipping away early. The closing stages brought a few bouts of push-and-shove, resulting in a red card for Cardiff manager Omer Riza and approving comments that ‘now it’s a derby’.

10:30pm - still going

The wildest scenes, perhaps unsurprisingly, came later. A 12:30 kick off meant that Cardiff celebrations were long and loud. Ten hours later, in the city centre, it was hard to find a pub that wasn’t jammed to the rafters. And, while the hen nights, the soundtrack still reverberated to the football. The visitors had left long ago, but cries of “dirty Jack bastards” rang into the early hours of Sunday morning. Derby day. There’s nothing quite like it.