The 26th day of March in 2022 was a Saturday. The kind of Saturday that makes you want to listen to dumb, happy music, something like Madness, and make you reckon that the Dalai Lama is probably right about all that happiness and spiritualism and peace stuff. It was a beautiful day. The sun was out in a way that it only is when it’s a sunny day in March. She was hot but she also felt like being nice to you so it wasn’t too hot. In the shade it was perfectly cool, in the sun it was perfectly, skin nourishingly hot.
On a day so perfect every Briton is compelled to venture outside and I was no different. In the early afternoon, I scrambled out of bed and, after observing how glorious it was, decided to do the only sensible thing to do on such a perfect day- go to a football match.
As a foreigner to Cardiff, I hadn’t much knowledge of the state of local football. My English perspective gave me just scant knowledge of the Cymru Premier League apart from the obvious Welsh teams spending their days in the English system. But with enough Google searches I found the fixture I was looking for: Taff’s Well FC versus Carmarthen Town AFC.
Taff’s Well FC obviously play in Taff’s Well, a little village just down from Pontypridd and only very slightly up from Cardiff. It’s only a few stops on the train and their stadium, Rhiw’r Ddar, (which is also called the Gentles Construction Stadium due to sponsorship reasons which I think is better than Rhiw’r Ddar because, to be frank, it is unpronounceable to my uncultured and brutish English tongue) is only a fifteen-minute walk from Taff’s Well station.
The club was founded in 1946 and plays in the Cymru South division, one step down from the Premiership. Now, the football elitists among you may already be rolling your eyes and snobbishly scoffing. Yes, the Cymru South League is not the English Premier League, its grounds don’t even equate to the stadia found in the Vanarama National League, the 5th tier of English football (something I regrettably know far too much about being a lifelong Chesterfield FC fan). But the Cymru South is a football league that contains, what my Dad and most middle-aged men amongst him would call, “Proper Football”.
I would argue that ‘Proper Football’ doesn’t necessarily always concern the style of play on a football pitch, I have a more holistic philosophy. ‘Proper Football’ comes with the whole package, a characterful ground, cheap alcohol, cheap admission, somewhere to sit and somewhere to stand depending on your preference, and 22 real people, not superstars, playing a game of football in the middle of it all.
What we got at Taff’s Well on 26th March was a perfect example of grassroots, muddy-kneed, cheap cans and dandelions, sun-in-your-eyes, ‘proper’ football.
Rhiw’r Ddar is certainly a characterful ground. Two small stands lie on either side of the pitch, both straddling the halfway line while being elevated a few steps up from the pitch to give a better view of the game below. The view from one of these stands is the imposing Garth Hill, not quite a mountain but still 307 meters in elevation. Around the rest of the ground there’s some grass, perfectly suited for sitting on, especially on such a glorious day as 26th March. At one end of the pitch there’s the clubhouse, a small building with a pool table, a bar, assorted tables and chairs, old trophies, assorted memorabilia and commemorative plaques exalting the past triumphs of Taff’s Well. It was the perfect destination to buy refreshments and to escape the sun when she decided to be a bit too hot on occasion.
To cut to the chase, the Wellmen (that’s Taff’s well if you couldn’t work it out) prevailed over Carmarthen two goals to nil. Two very convincing goals at that.
The first was an emphatic goal, scored near the end of the first half. The scorer, Taff’s Well’s number 7 David Lyon. Lyon is a young-looking and (to choose my words carefully as to not offend) unassumingly short right-winger and he dominated the right side of the pitch for the whole game. He saw his hard work pay off when the ball came to him just inside Carmarthen Town’s penalty area. Lyon used his low centre of gravity to wrap his left foot around the ball, sending it careening off to the far post to then bounce into the net.
The second was scored by, get this, a German. Finally, the representation for ‘Die Mannschaft’ in the Welsh second division that we’ve all been calling out for. Jan Maertins’ goal came in the second half when he slotted home with a well-placed shot into the bottom right-hand corner from close range. The build-up to the goal was more impressive however, it was a counterattack initiated by none other than, that man again, David Lyon. The player used his pace to dribble from his own penalty box to the halfway line before expertly passing the ball to Maertins with the outside of the boot. Visions of Xabi Alonso, Andreas Pirlo and Ronaldinho were evoked. Honestly, you should go onto Taff’s Well’s YouTube and see it for yourself, it’s a thing of beauty. That pass had no place in the Cymru South, it was teetering on the edge of what could still be classified as ‘proper football’ but none of that mattered, it was glorious.
It was a memorable day, a decent game of football and a fantastic example of why football is so important to so many people. In the sun, watching two football teams I knew hardly anything about, in a place I’d never been before, sitting on a grass verge with a can of Strongbow in my hand basking in the mid-March sun I was reminded what football really meant to me. It’s more than just a game (I know I’m meandering into the realms of cliché and waffle but at this point, I don’t care) it’s a feeling of community, it’s watching 22 human beings dance in a ritualised ceremony simulating the hardships and struggle of battle. It’s grassroots football. It’s something to do on a sunny Saturday in March.
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