Category: Welsh football history

“Where is the media?” – a familiar modern refrain echoed from the 1890s

Those who care about the domestic football leagues in Wales are quick to fire off frustration at the poor level of mainstream media coverage for Welsh football. On those rare occasions the mainstream pick something up it often involves a clickbait story that wants to make viral something really awful about the league. Quite simply, mainstream media outlets do not afford Wales’s national league system, the Cymru Leagues, the respect it deserves as an independent national league. There is very little value given to the competitions and the clubs participating in it.

There are some independent media covering Welsh football very well but ultimately until the mainstream media start doing Welsh football justice the general ignorance of it and poor image will persist. It’s not perfect by any means but it is certainly no worse than some of English non-league, which too often gets mentioned by some Welsh football commentators as though it is essentially better because it is English. So much for the “independent football nation”.

This post isn’t a rant though; well at least not my rant. The problem of how much respect the media afford Welsh football is not a new one. While doing some newspaper archive research via newspapers.library.wales I came across a letter to the editor of the South Wales Daily News from April 1891.

The letter laments the lack of coverage of the newly formed South Wales League but it is also a useful source of information about some of the early developments of organised football in south Wales. It is almost certainly written by a player or club official (the pseudonym “half back” points to a player) from the League so it’s a polemic in favour of the new association competition. There are though, some interesting notes about how football enjoyed popularity in the Rhondda and Cynon valleys, areas usually associated with staunch support for rugby union, while sporting fans in the more metropolitan areas of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea were apparently lukewarm to “the dribbling art”.

There is also an undisguised barb at the lack of vigour on the part of the League’s organisers when it comes to promoting the product; a criticism that may remain pertinent to some observers when it comes to the contemporary administrators of football in Wales.

*

Letter to the editor, dated April 6th 1891 from “Half Back”. Printed in South Wales Daily News, 8th April 1891 edition.

“Sir – It was very gratifying to me, and probably many other lovers of Association Football, to see the South Wales League once more mentioned in your columns, but I cannot allow your notes to pass without comment.

The League is a new organisation, and as such should be given all possible assistance to make it a success. We all appreciate the power of the Press, and would have fair enlisted its services; but not until now, if we accept the one or two letters you inserted a couple of months ago, has been brought before your readers, though “Old Stager” must have been aware of its existence, and that the South Wales League endeavoured to carry out the various fixtures.

We know, unfortunately, that many of the clubs have ignominiously failed in the attempt, and match after match has been abandoned; yet some games have been played almost every week, and the longest report published barely exceeded half a dozen lines. If, as “Old Stager” asserts, he is anxious to help the infant cause, why has he not put out a hand to assist us before now?

Here we have arrived at the end of the season and have only been noticed a very few times. The county match played here certainly obtained a paragraph, but that was got by a reporter, who arrived after the match, from a member of the Mountain Ash team.

I may just mention a fact or two about the county engagements. Association has taken best so far in the Rhondda and Aberdare Valley[s]. Consequently, the officials decided to have one county match somewhere in this neighbourhood and Mountain Ash was the place selected, and, in my opinion, fully justified itself. Through the laxity of those in the management of affairs, the contest was but poorly advertised; notwithstanding that, we took a fair gate.

Cardiff possesses one club in the league, but for the number of engagements it has fulfilled they might just as well be out of it; if, therefore, the Cardiff Club has not enough interest to play the matches arranged in the competition, how could we expect the Cardiff public, who love nothing if not a rugby game, to patronise Association? Neither Newport nor Swansea can boast an Association Club that has come to any prominence, so it would be absurd to play a county match in either of those places – these should be played where there is most likelihood of popularising the game.

I am glad “Old Stager” has promised to insert a table of results when it is forwarded to him, and venture to express the hope this is but the beginning of good deeds on his part. I should be glad if he would have the goodness to devote a par[agraph] or so to the dribbling art in his notes next year.

Of course it is over for this season, but we hope to come out stronger and more successful next winter and I feel certain we shall with “Old Stager” fairly on our side.”

Long before Cardiff Met…there was Cardiff Teachers FC

This article, based on archived newspaper research, was originally published in a Cardiff Met Uni FC official matchday programme during phase two of the 2018/19 Welsh Premier League season.

*

Enthusiasts for Welsh football history will be aware of Cardiff Met FC’s (through many previous guises) long-standing participation in the football leagues of the south of Wales prior to the establishment of the national pyramid in 1992.

Cardiff College of Education joined the Welsh Football League in 1972 and the institution’s football team (through various name changes) have been ever present in the top four tiers of South Wales football ever since. Although Cardiff Met, in recent times, have blazed a trail through Welsh football that others might hope to follow, they weren’t the first education institution to participate in the Welsh Football League.

Swansea University may seem like a new name to modern Welsh football followers, but their Welsh League legacy extends back to the 1960s, pre-dating Cardiff College’s membership. You can go back even further and find another side representing education in Cardiff playing at the most competitive levels of Welsh football in the south; a team named Cardiff Teachers that played in the South Wales League for two seasons during the 1890s.

The South Wales League (SWL) was a forerunner to the Welsh Football League, set up in 1890 as the demand for more organised and competitive soccer grew in the final decade of the 19th Century. Until the 1890s, soccer was very much a niche, recreational sport in the southern counties where rugby was king.

Given the embryonic nature of soccer in the south in those days, records show the SWL to have suffered some turbulence early on. There was a high turnover of members with many teams joining and disbanding in the same season and it wasn’t until 1896 that some continuity and stability was reached.

Here is where the story of Cardiff Teachers begins, joining the SWL for the 1896/97 season. In an eight-team league they were representatives of Cardiff along with Roath-based side St. Margaret’s. Newspaper records from the time tell us Cardiff Teachers played their home matches at Sophia Gardens and an edition of the Barry Docks News in 1896 reported on a Cardiff Teachers success over Barry District at the ground, noting the Teachers’ “combined game” and the dribbling talent of left winger W.J. Davies.

Ultimately, in a league containing well-established valleys sides like Treharris, Aberdare and Porth, Cardiff Teachers struggled. Details of the 1896/97 final table are unclear but presumably performances justified another crack for the Teachers.

However, in their second season records show Cardiff Teachers finished bottom of the SWL with just a single point from 14 matches, conceding 72 goals (the next highest was 29 goals). A damning report in the Evening Express from February 1898 described Cardiff Teachers as “on a decisive downgrade”. This miserable season’s lowlights included 12-0 defeat to eventual league winners Rogerstone. To add insult to injury, when the Teachers did secure a rare win (against Aberdare), an appeal against the result (based on the poor condition of the Teachers’ ground) was upheld and the Teachers lost the replay at Mountain Ash.

It was probably of no surprise to anyone when the club wrote to the SWL management committee in August 1898 to inform them of their decision to withdraw from the league. Newspaper reports from the winter of 1898/9 show the team continued to play local matches, but the ultimate fate of the club and whether it ever returned to any competitive football is unclear.