retro look back

Found this great image from 1988/89 Beazer homes league clincher and the Penydarren park from 1960's a great site for some nostalgia >

the site is http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/penydarren_park.htm

Wow how I would love to see that many people up the Park! Is that Sunshine?

MattMartyr87 wrote:Wow how I would love to see that many people up the Park! Is that Sunshine?

Yes incredible sunshine at a home game and I noticed that Ginger chap looks a bit like Mark Pembridge lol

Is that Les Barlow in the 1912 team?

Good picture of the old white tip

Very interesting image....I am sure I would have been behind the goal somewhere...interesting how times have changed...1988 no sky football...and Merthyr s blot on the landscape the whitey looming large in the distance....as a child I remember collecting uky tyres for bonfire and pushing and wheeling them with three fellow rascals to the bont in penydarren now the boys club pitch to be burnt.....the tyres not the other children....nostalgia is a great thing but looking back there was high unemployment in the town and my personal favourite Margaret thatcher busy dividing our country....boz

I think the reported crowd for the Crawley game, when the old club Merthyr Tydfil clinched promotion to the then Vauxhall Conference, was 3,500 or so. The average gate in the first season in the Conference was 1,600 odd so it seems like lots of the crowd at the Crawley game didn't bother to return.
A one-off important game generates excitement at Merthyr but afterwards the champagne feeling seems to turn to dregs of stale cider in a can left on the terraces.
This is the problem; people don't seem to be attracted by the bread and butter league games. And after three good seasons in the "Conference" Merthyr Tydfil, gates plunged with the average about 400 in the final season before relegation.
As far as I am concerned, EVERY game is important; that's the only attitude to adopt for a club to progress.

I think the photo of PP, described as taken in the 1960's is much later, as the terraces on the Theatre end were added by 'JR', in preparation for our European Glory! I remember it as a grass bank with just a few metal crush barriers in the 1960's. How they ever got away with those large post war crowds in the 1940's and 50's without a major crowd control incident is a wonder; especially with just wooden steps, and an ash path down to the promenade!