Merthyrssippi Burning

Merthyrssippi Burning

Easter Bank Holiday Monday saw a crunch six pointer in the race for the final play off position at the newly Christened ‘Enoch Powell’ Stadium at Penydarren Park for a footballing encounter between Merthyr Town and near rivals Hungerford Town.

Both sides had recently seen a punishing run of fixtures with Merthyr last playing at Tiverton’s Aintree Racecourse where the Bookmakers had described the going as Heavy to Very Heavy.

Hungerford themselves were missing half a dozen regulars through illness and injury and had travelled three long hours to play the match.

Merthyr, after a disappointing run of form , were in desperate need of a morale booster and three points with a crowd of 800+ cheering them on.

It was somewhat ironic then that a team nicknamed the Crusaders were to allege a case of racial abuse from a section or an individual in the crowd from the Theatre End of the Stadium.

There was no doubt that the target was that of Hungerford full back, Ramani Medford-Smith and the booing started as soon as he touched the ball.

A remark was made behind me in the Main Stand that ‘they don’t like him that number 3 …what has he done to them?”

So clearly there was no ‘racism’ heard from our stand.

The booing continued every time he touched the ball and continued right up until the time Hungerford were two-nil down and the player complained to referee John Duffy about his situation.

Only the player can say exactly what he heard (or thought he heard) from behind the goal but if a comment was racist, I trust that the good fans of Merthyr would identify the alleged culprit or culprits as Merthyr Town has always prided itself on being a Cosmopolitan club (as evidenced by the the superior women’s fashion magazines in the hospitality boxes) with the Town populace has seen immigration from Portuguese, Polish, Spanish and other ethnicities over the decades.

The Club itself is a community club and I myself as a supporter for over four decades have never ever directly witnessed racist remarks directed at players, officials or rival fans in that time by ANY home fan.

As legendary reggae star, Bob Marley once said ‘until the colour of a man’s skin is no more significance than the colour of his eyes ….me say war’ unfortunately, not everyone is as colour blind when it comes to football or thuggery.

Various fans have taken to social media to explain that the abuse was not racially motivated but as a result of an incident in the Farnborough match two seasons ago when a Merthyr fan was struck over the head with a brick.

This is clearly is a reversal of the old saying ‘Sticks & Stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me’

Neither violence nor racism inside or outside a football stadium is acceptable and it sickens me to think that this behaviour prevalent in the 1970’s & 1980’s described by the World press as ‘the English Disease’ which culminated in the Taylor Report after the tragedies of Heysel Stadium and Hillsborough should make a comeback.

No genuine football fan or player wants a return to those dark days.

I myself however, have been subjected to racist issues a few seasons ago when in the Hitchen Clubhouse I was enjoying a single drink ( I was driving) only to hear anonymous bleating noises from the home fans.

Did I complain then?

I was in the baa after all.

I just took a view that the idiot that was perpetrating such an original joke to impress his friends was just plain stupid or had a chip on his shoulder about the privilege of being born Welsh.

How do we at fun-loving Merthyr respond?

By naming our old mascot Shaggy the Sheep!**

**Shaggy the Sheep appears with the kind permission of its inventor and Merthyr Fan Gareth Owens.

I sincerely hope that if a racist comment was in fact made then the fan or fans responsible should be man enough to own up and publicly apologise to the player, both Clubs and the hard working volunteers and managers first hand - as non-league football is about sport , with good humoured banter thrown in - and not House bricks in car parks either.

And in between there was a game of football played which to use a potentially misconstrued racist comment ‘overshadowed’ the match.

From the off, Hungerford didn’t look like had anything left in the tank ( they were starving?) after a gruelling fixture list than Non-League players have to face (even if they were afforded an extra 24 hours recovery time by the Southern Premier League) although the Merthyr players were so low on confidence an early goal from the Crusaders would have been devastating.

In the early exchanges, Merthyr players seemed to have put their boots on backwards in the changing rooms, as they seemed to be intent on shooting themselves in the foot by losing possession and misplacing their passes for the first twenty or so minutes.

But the young Martyrs suddenly rolled away the stone at Easter ( not the Joe Morrell one of course in the memorial garden) when on 24 minutes as ‘Grand Wizard’ Lewys Twamley and his magic wand took the match by the scruff of the neck and cut inside Medford-Smith sending a curling shot around the glove-hands of goalkeeper Ryan Clarke for the opener.

It is his trademark move and he has applied to Companies House in Cardiff to patent it.

1-0 soon turned to 2-0 after a hit and hope ball from midfield war-horse Alex John found itself in no-man’s land before the blitzkrieg boots of top scorer Ricardo Rees panicked the Hungerford keeper into dropping a ‘Klanger’ to double the lead.

Normally Merthyr would have been expecting a furious backlash from Conor McDonagh - the former Swindon Poet- who has been our nemesis in the past - and scored more goals against us than Pele, Maradona & Messi.*

*Boz note for Eugene Terreblanche of the Theatre End dressed in the off-white Dreams Pillowcase , bed sheet and burning vape cross- we have never played them but they were all world class players whatever club colours they wore.

And then came the stoppage.

The referee following the complaint from the player producing a third colour card from his pocket and pausing the game.

Merthyr striker Gethyn Hill going over to the Theatre End to request that the booing of the individual player cease for which he received a rapturous round of applause from the remaining 799 crowd.

2-0 at half time and Merthyr as usual was awash with rumours.

Including the story of the Merthyr Fan receiving a brick in the head at Farnborough for his troubles and further violence at the same ground with other visiting supporters.

Hungerford to their credit came out a different team second half, with the charge of the Light Brigade being led by the replacement 11 with a haircut that even outfrizzed our brilliant coiffured full back Noah Smerdon.

I nicknamed him ‘Vileda’ -as he mopped up every stray pass and thread more quality balls than a Harley Street vasectomy Doctor.

Why he wasn’t on earlier ….only the Hungerford Manager knows ….but he was the catalyst for most of the Crusader attacks as the Berkshire Knights Templar pressed towards Jerusalem ( a chapel in Dowlais) .

But the visitors found it hard to get passed the likes of no-nonsense Centre-half Liam Angel & Goalkeeper Cogman, who definitely deserved his clean sheet unlike the solitary idiot behind him.

And to put the icing on the Easter cake, our UN peacekeeper for the day, Gethyn Hill got on the scoresheet on seventy five minutes after another fine ‘burning cross’ from Twamley.

3-0 to the Martyrs and the Hungerford side looked well and truly beaten despite their number 9 unluckily hitting the post late on.

A resounding victory to lift up the tails of the players, Manager and fans of the Deep South Walian side.

I hope this unsavoury but isolated incident will not sour relations between our two clubs, as all fans and players are applauded off the pitch win, lose or draw after each game and Easter Monday was no exception.

But the burning issue is that fellow fans and players alike must call out the idiots who abuse or use house bricks- only then will football be the real winner.

Boz

Three young well-behaved supporters who I know looked in on me in the grandstand at the interval and told me they hadn't heard any racial abuse, and they were in the vicinity. But they did hear remarks which could be deemed racist.They didn't add anything further in explanation.
If there was abuse of some kind, (not necessarily racist) the person or persons responsible could still result in a fine for Merthyr Town FC from the FAW and possibly Warning notices posted at the ground. This did happen in the 1960s after an incident when an item was thrown and struck the referee.FAs even have the power to close down grounds.
Let's hope the inquiry and legal advice quickly solve the issue. Of course, the post-match interview with the Hungerford manager was one-sided, without any comment from the Merthyr club. He suggested he might have not sent the side out for the second half! As they were 2-0 down, this might have been a controversial decision!
The incident at Farnborough two years ago seemed to be an ugly one but two wrongs don't make a right so supporters need to bear this in mind. Football games often see banter but anything further can escalate.

I have heard that a supporter has owned up to making an "abusive" comment at the Hungerford player, but it wasn't a racist remark.

Glad to hear it.

Let’s hope the media who seized on the story get to hear both sides of the alleged incident and that Merthyr Town’s good reputation can be restored.

And that all supporters realise they have a duty to our Club as footballing ambassadors both home and away.

Boz