CARDIFF CITY

‘The scariest place I ever played’

RIO FERDINAND

‘Ground’s down that way, you Cockney twats.’

‘Mae’r stadiwm i lawr y ffordd rydych chi’n twt cocni.’

Police officer at Cardiff Railway Station

That cheery welcome to Wales was met with an equally cheery response:

‘South London twats actually, Sherlock.’

‘Is Tom Jones still shagging your mum?’

‘Nice helmet, mate.’

‘Baa-aah.’

All hilarious stuff, but indicative of the attitude of the travelling London football fan, which is basically bemusement that anyone would actually want to live anywhere else in the country.

Roy, however, was puzzled: ‘How did he know we’re from London?’

‘Because our clothes match and we smell nice,’ said Gaz. ‘And,’ I said, ‘because we’ve just got off the train from Paddington.’

Following a high-level midweek planning session during a pub lock-in, we had decided to get a normal real-people scheduled train to Cardiff rather than a special, mainly because the game had ‘tasty’ written all over it. This was a pleasant change because it meant we could use an actual toilet and visit an actual buffet bar. And because it was the eighties, and everyone was terrified of football fans, we’d been left with an entire compartment to ourselves – even though we were the nicest boys you could actually wish to meet.* Loud, yes. Drunk, yes. Flash and cocky, a little. But nice. If you wanted a kitten rescued from a tree or an old lady escorted across a road, we were the lads for the job.

But it meant we were running late, and we were in the middle of Cardiff, which was home to a group of fans with a reputation for trouble and violence that was right up there with Leeds and Millwall, and trust me, that is right up there.

Hence my good-natured enquiry to young PC Friendly: ‘Any chance of a lift?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Walk it. And I hope you get your fucking head kicked in.’†

Now, I’m not going to let one copper’s attitude tarnish my approach to this book, so of course I will give you the usual potted history, but I’ll keep it very potted because I’m sure you’ll want to know we all got home safely. They were formed as Riverside FC in 1899, mainly as a way to keep the grass on the cricket pitch flat during the winter. When Cardiff got upgraded from a town to a city, so did Riverside FC, becoming Cardiff City in 1908.

The Bluebirds, of course, are the only club ever to take the FA Cup out of England, beating Arsenal 1-0 in 1927 and thus earning the thanks of the rest of Britain ever since. They are nicknamed the Bluebirds because, in 1911, a play called The Blue Bird was a roaring success in Cardiff’s New Theatre and the team had just changed their shirts from orange and chocolate brown to plain old blue.

I checked that, by the way, and it seems to be true, which is a shame because Fanny’s First Play by George Bernard Shaw was also on tour that year. What a nickname that would have made!

A more recent kit change was met with less approval. If by ‘less approval’ you mean a series of angry confrontations. In 2012 their new Malaysian owner, Vincent Tan, decided he would change their kit from blue to red, because in his culture red was a strong and lucky colour. Vincent was a strong and lucky man to survive that mistake, because itbrought howls of protest from Cardiff fans until he rectified the error a season later. To be fair to Vincent, he probably hadn’t been there long enough to realise that ‘howls of protest’ is pretty much the resting face for most Cardiff fans.

Which brings us back to that fateful day in the eighties. It was a vital relegation match for Cardiff. If we beat them, they were going down to the Third Division (now League One). Games like that are impossible to enjoy. Not because the football was so bad, we were used to that, but because of the gathering tension and the sense that thousands of young Welshmen were watching you rather than the game. And they were just the ones you could see. We were convinced there were many more of them concealed somewhere, creeping silently to a vantage point ready to attack. We’d probably all seen Zulu too many times.

Unfortunately, we won. Which meant some very angry fans were angrier than usual and looking to vent that anger on someone else, preferably English, and if they wore matching clothes and smelt nice then so much the better.

We were kept in the ground, as usual, till long after the final whistle (which just gave Cardiff fans more time to fashion rudimentary weapons), but then, not as usual, a senior police officer announced with a megaphone that the expected police escort to the station had been called away, or, more likely, had checked the numbers and legged it.

But, not to worry. They had laid on buses to get us to the station. Which they had. And very kindly they had actually put home-made placards saying ‘Crystal Palace’ on the actual side of the actual bloody bus. Trust me, promising the NHS £350 million a week is only the second most idiotic thing written on a bus in recent years. The kindest thing I can say about the journey is that it was ‘interesting’. But I’ll say one thing for Welsh buses. They make them sturdy. It was hit by everything from a brick to a dustbin, but it kept going.

And so did the driver. Fair play to him, the ‘code of the bus’* had obviously kicked in and his honour seemed to rest on getting us to the station. If we hadn’t been so keen to get on the train we may have stopped to shake his hand and give him a tip.

The station was eerily quiet. And as we’d had the common sense to be wearing civilian clothes, we styled it out and headed for the buffet. We had just started playing the fruit machine when we heard an almighty roar. Followed by the unsettling sight of 200 Palace fans running down the railway line. Not alongside the railway line. On it.

This was followed by the even more unsettling sight of 500 Cardiff fans chasing them. On the railway line. After a brief discussion, we decided that six of us joining in wasn’t going to affect the odds either way, so we shrugged, offered up a brief prayer and nudged the melon to win a tenner.

Thirty-odd seconds later there was another roar. Followed by the 500 Cardiff fans running back along the railway line. They were then followed by the 200 Palace fans. This looked like a resounding and unexpected victory until we noticed that the Palace fans were being followed by a train. A real train. Just like in the cartoons, except, did I mention this was a REAL TRAIN!

Luckily, it was our real train. A real, human, bought-a-normal-ticket train, not a travelling pig-pen special, and glory be, the bar was open. So we stocked up and had quite a pleasant journey home, during which we were polite and friendly to everyone and helped an old lady off the train after we’d rescued a kitten stuck in a suitcase.

There was also a last stroke of luck. One of the coppers now sulkily guarding the Palace fans waiting for the special was our old friend PC Friendly. So, as the train pulled away, we leaned out of the window, waved him goodbye and sent our best wishes to his family.

Why You Shouldn’t Support Them

■ It seems funnier now than it was then.

■ How can they sing so nicely and be so aggressive?

■ PC Friendly could have been 99% of coppers at football matches in those days.