MARTYRS TO THE CAUSE

Printed in the Southern League Premier Division game v Merthyr Town Saturday 18th February 2017. We won 1-0 in front of 757.
  
I'll hold my hands up and say that I’ve got a soft spot for Merthyr Tydfil. Or maybe that should read a soft spot for Welsh cakes. One of my earliest memories is the smell of them wafting around my Welsh grannies house on the Wexham estate and I’ve loved them ever since.

My dads family arrived in Slough from the Valleys looking for work – and to escape disapproval with his mum pregnant and unmarried. My politics were fired up by the Miners Strike and I was part of a Slough delegation that spent a weekend in the Valleys listening to their stories. Two of my mates even moved back to the Valleys in the 1990's and we always seemed to be heading up the M4 to South Wales for a visit.

In 2006, a TV series ranked Merthyr Tydfil as the United Kingdom's third-worst place to live and after the miners strike South Wales definitely struggled with the closure of not just the pits but a way of life that had sewn the community together for generations.

So when I visited Merthyr on our last game of the 2015/16 season I must admit I was presently surprised. As we soaked up the towns history in the old Town Hall now the Redhouse arts centre I learnt of a town at the forefront of industrial revolution with iron then coal. About the 1831 Merthyr uprising where thousands of workers marching under a red flag which was later adopted internationally as the symbol of communists and socialists. For four days, magistrates and ironmasters were under siege in the Castle Hotel with the workers controlling the town. Described by one historian as “the most ferocious and bloody event in the history of industrialised Britain” the uprising was eventually crushed and led to the hanging of the first working class martyr Dic Penderyn. We of course had to have a pint in the pub named after him – and the football club are nicknamed the Martyrs.

The football club has also had a chequered past even appearing in the football league for 10 years. Now supporters owned, fans campaigned to get rid of their old chairman who at one point seemed to be offering to sell their Southern league place to another club! After they were liquidated, the fans began again as Merthyr Town in the Toolstation Western League Division One playing home games 20 miles away in Taffs Well. But it took them just three seasons to regain their Southern League status. A league they have won more than any other club in its history. Thanks to a £500,000 grant they installed a 3G pitch and are doing up their ground. Company secretary John Strand said: "The club sees this development as a springboard for the club to become a hub for football development in Merthyr Tydfil and the surrounding areas." More matches on the pitch, more income, more people involved in the club. In 2015 they were named as the UEFA grassroots club of the year.

There's not much that keeps me out of the pub on an away day, but stumbling across a market stall packed to the rafters with Welsh cakes is definitely one of them.

Just seven years after being liquidated, the new Merthyr Town are fighting for promotion to the Conference South. And while we might be sick of the sight of each other in the FA Trophy, I will never get sick of the sight and smell of a good old Welsh cake.