Daniel Storey travels to Swansea to attend the South Wales derby, where he discovers it’s probably time to cut supporters some slack
hereStadium. Most of them have tinted windows, because there’s no benefit to letting anyone see the gestures those seated inside may be making in two hours’ time. Supporters are beginning to gather in bunches.
The bubble started as an idea in response to crowd violence in the 1980s and early 1990s. Swansea and Cardiff didn’t meet between 1965 and 1980, but that decade coincided with a rise in hooliganism in English football. In 1988, Swansea supporters infamously chased a group of Cardiff fans from the Vetch – their old ground – into the sea, where police finally managed to intervene.
“You could give us the best 11 players in world football and I’d still be nervous about Swansea playing against Cardiff. But that’s why, when you win them, it’s extra special versus a game against any other side.” “We usually have a bigger run of games to get excited about but we’re coming in off the back of two losses, one more crushing than the other, so the optimism is even more dampened than usual.
And yet they save their opprobrium for their own who aren’t their own today. Fans of both teams discuss friendships with old schoolmates, work colleagues and neighbours that are temporarily suspended twice a season. Bitterness built up due to Cardiff’s status as the Welsh capital and Swansea’s perceived frustration at being declassified as a secondary city.
“Part of me would like to think that if clubs like Rangers and Celtic can operate without a bubble, so can we. Away at places like Bristol City, we’ve been effectively kettled through the city after getting off the train, so there could be a way of doing it, but I wonder if the risk isn’t worth it at the current time. I know Cardiff was pushing for restrictions to be eased this time around, so maybe there will be a day in the future where it does change.
Sunday’s south Wales derby is everything I want it to be. The atmosphere in the stadium, albeit tempered following both clubs moving to new, slightly homogenous arenas, is febrile. Cardiff fans crow about being the capital city club. I see various Swansea supporters wearing swimming goggles and caps in reference to the events of 1988. Those inside the ground choose to focus on Swansea’s recent dominance in this fixture.
The celebrations are inevitably wild and bring with them danger. As Cardiff’s players congregate to celebrate behind the goal, away fans inevitably rush forward. The electronic hoardings, movable rather than permanently placed, give way and one topples over. It lands on the leg of Cardiff’s Ollie Tanner, who receives a nasty cut in the process. For all the measures in place, that is a safety issue everybody has overlooked in the name of advertising revenue.
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