From
‘Building a National Team’
by Rhobat Bryn Jones, Planet 158

A strong August sun casts a grandstand shadow across the playing field. And the cut-price Echo on sale, the £2.00 beefburger that now comes in its carton and the sound of pop songs old and new blaring out from the tannoy all announce that this is Cardiff City’s first Saturday home game of the season.

Each click of the turnstile ratchets up the expectation that this will be the season when the Bluebirds make it to the First Division. In the words of the slogan, the Bluebirds are going up.

Whether they succeed in this ambition will be the subject of much speculation until the necessary points are finally achieved. However what is not in doubt is that Cardiff City sees itself first, last and foremost as a Welsh club. The programme covers are adorned every week with Welsh icons — the programme in the week in which I write this has a map of Wales on which is superimposed the flag of St David. At the centre of the flag is the Bluebirds logo, with the words “Cymru am byth” added in green. In marketing terms, this might be regarded as laying it on with a trowel. But the message is clear — be in no doubt, this club is Welsh.

For those engaged in the business of nation building, however, Cardiff has always been something of a problem. Since its development as an urban area resulting from the building of the Bute Docks, the city has been a home to cultural diversity. It cannot be said that this has been without its serious difficulties but a walk down Queen Street at any time of the day will verify that cultural diversity is a fact of Cardiff life. The city and its communities cannot be understood without reference to it.

This does not sit well with the models of nationality traditionally associated with Wales. The Nonconformist tradition of the Eisteddfod is one that celebrates certain indigenous white cultures of Wales. This is a perfectly laudable aim in itself except that the Eisteddfod makes the claim of being the “National” Eisteddfod. What is interesting however is those cultures that are not to be found on this particular cultural platform.

Equally the socialism of a militant working class most closely associated with the Valleys did not sit easily with the majority of Cardiff workers who were employed mainly in offices, the retail sector or the docks where the occasional nature of the work did not make a strong base for trade unionism.

The essential question posed by Cardiff to those attempting to construct an inclusive Welsh identity is this: how do you project one which is distinctive and yet includes the multicultural reality that underpins it? While academics and cultural policy makers may reflect on this, there is evidence that practical solutions are already emerging ahead of any serious theoretical discussion.

This is where our attention turns to Ninian Park and recent developments at Cardiff City Football Club in the wake of the arrival of Sam Hammam, the Lebanese businessman who has discovered a passion for all things Welsh to go with his longstanding passion for football.

At the heart of the club of course are the supporters and it is here that Cardiff’s distinctive culture is to be found at its most concentrated. The supporters’ club has been the focus of loyalty through four decades for a team that has, on the whole, bounced up and down off the bottom of the English league during that time.

Its role has long been one of helping to keep the club going by raising money additional to the club’s mainstream income. The purchase of a mower for the groundsman and the sponsorship of players’ kits are among the items that the club’s fundraising activities have helped to finance down the years. Sam Hammam’s arrival has changed all this.

I met up with Vince Alm — yes you’re right, it is a Swedish surname — in the Lansdowne, a landmark pub for Cardiff City supporters. We’re surrounded by Bluebirds memorabilia and we discuss the way in which Sam’s arrival has changed the club. Almost before we do, Vince receives a message on his mobile. I don’t know who it’s from but the tune alerting him is “Hen Wlad fy Nhadau”.

For the supporters, the money that Sam has brought with him has meant that fundraising has become much less of a necessity. Players still have their kit sponsored, but the financial resources that Sam has brought has meant a great deal of improvement. It ranges from the new roof on the Grange End to the mobile bars and food stalls at the back of the Bob Bank.

The focus of the supporters’ club has therefore shifted considerably and in several directions. Firstly they have embarked on a campaign to raise awareness of the club and its activities, which includes an hour long phone-in programme on the community radio station GTFM in Pontypridd. Social activities have also increased. Arranging trips to away games has always been a function of the supporters’ club but increasingly activities have been geared towards fundraising for charity rather than keeping the club financially afloat. The supporters are also beginning to organise politically, should they need to lobby for the new stadium or, more importantly, against local councillors who are opposed to it.

These then are good times to be a Cardiff City supporter. But you would be mistaken in thinking that the growing support for the Bluebirds is purely a Cardiff phenomenon. In the last two years, an independent supporters club has emerged in the Valleys, the Valleys Rams. There has always been support for the club in the Valleys as far back as the inter-war years but it is only recently that this has been put on a formal basis.

The Rams grew out of the principle that when travelling away, there is safety in numbers. Informal trips in minibuses from the Valleys have been active for some time, but fans found that when stopping at service stations and the like, they became the target of rival fans travelling in greater numbers. Now that travel is more formally organised, this is no longer a problem.

What surprised me however was hearing that the City supporters’ club had members from the Valleys and Valleys Rams had members from Cardiff in their midst. Assuming that it wasn’t the chairman’s particular brand of after-shave that was responsible for these defections, Vince explained to me that the Cardiff City’s supporters club tends to cater for the family whereas the Valleys Rams offer what might be called more of a lads’ environment. In other words two cultures on offer under the banner of one. It only reinforces the point that understanding culture in Wales is a many-layered thing.

And the support within Wales does not end there. For away games, a coach is regularly organised from Holyhead and picks up at various points along the A55 before heading into England. Support for Cardiff City therefore is a North-South phenomenon. It cannot yet be claimed that the club is fully national in its fan base since the old county of Dyfed is something of a wilderness as far as support is concerned. There is, nonetheless, a skeleton of national support which could well develop, depending on what success Cardiff City achieve on the pitch…