By Craig Muncey, Penydarren Park, Photo via Merthyr Town FC Facebook Page
The high profile purchase of Wrexham football club by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney has caught the world’s attention. Underneath the headlines, however, is another story about the fate of Welsh football in the pandemic, and how so many clubs are struggling just to keep afloat. One team which epitomises this story is Merthyr Town FC.
The club has had to make some huge decisions in order to survive. Just before the new season was about to start, Merthyr Town FC mothballed itself for a year. The decision had a palpable effect on the team, staff, fans and the whole community.
Merthyr Tydfil can be considered the capital of Non-League football in Wales, thanks to the rich history associated with Merthyr Tydfil & Merthyr Town, with their promotion to the Football League in 1920-21, where they spent 10 years.
The Martyrs, as they are known, had a spell in the late 1980s which saw Conference Football at Penydarren Park. Probably their most famous victory in that period was their fabulous European Cup Winners Cup win over the Italian side, Atalanta Bergamo in 1987. This victory led to players such as David Webley, Gary Wager and Kevin Rogers becoming household names throughout the Welsh valleys. Their attraction of internationals and legends of the game also contributed to the prestigious and proud history, which remains intact today.
In more recent times, the re-birth of Merthyr Town Football Club in 2010 resulted in a drop in the English pyramid system. But a period of successful promotions led the Martyrs back to Southern Premier, the seventh tier of English football, in 2015/16. The popularity of the bigger clubs within the game has undoubtedly resulted in a drop in supporters since the glory days of the 1980s. However, it is still undisputed that Merthyr is most certainly a football town.
The club has played in the Southern Premier League for the last five seasons and are the only Welsh team in that division.
But the pandemic has brought considerable challenges. The Martyrs did receive grants from the Football Foundation and the Premier League, but these totalled just £12,000, a drop in the ocean compared to the money in the top echelons of the game. Ironically they included the Pitch Preparation Fund and the COVID Maintenance Grant, both of which the club used to ensure that the ground was ready to host fixtures. In the end however, no games have been played on the pitch since Saturday 29th February, when the home side drew 0-0 with Beaconsfield.
Jack Hodgkins is the Club Secretary, and told me that just 36 hours before the 2020-21 season was due to start, a decision was made by the board to mothball the club for a whole season to protect its long term future.
The club is fan-owned, however, and some fans were angry with the lack of consultation over the decision. Speaking to Louis Moore, a long time Merthyr fan, he expressed his frustration at the club for not giving the fans a say when the decision was made. Moore feels that considering the fact that the fans had raised a lot of money for the club through sponsorship and donations, they deserved to have a voice.
But in the end Moore says the majority of fans agreed it was the correct decision to make, as under the Welsh Government regulations at the time, no spectators would have been allowed in Penydarren Park.
The frustration was compounded, however, by the fact that in England at the time, up to 600 fans could attend home games in the Southern Premier League. In some cases clubs that were just 40 miles away were welcoming fans to their grounds for the start of a new season.
Those associated with the club who spoke to voice.wales say that matters were made worse by the lack of communication from Welsh Government and the Football Association of Wales over new guidelines coming in.
From a financial perspective, the club averages 450-500 fans at home games. Ultimately, the income from the fans coming into Penydarren Park, plus money spent in the clubhouse, club shop, cafe etc, pays a significant proportion of the budget. If the season had gone underway with nobody attending their games, The Martyr’s only would have had enough money to survive until October 2020. By then, they say all cash reserves would have dried up. Given its previous financial scares as recently as the 2017-18 season, this became an impossible prospect.
In the end many in the community rallied behind the club and its workers especially kept things going. Bar and hospitality staff in the clubhouse ensured revenue kept coming in over the summer and provided a place for people to see each other after months of lockdown.
Like so many of Wales’ smaller clubs, Merthyr Town FC is about far more than just football. But just as the pandemic has exposed deep inequalities in our society, so too has it shown a gaping divide in the sporting world. On the one hand there’s the major teams with eye-watering revenue, but on the other stands the far greater number of smaller clubs which make up the grassroots game.
Everyone at the Martyr’s is determined to see this period through and come out the other side intact, which in all likelihood they will. But the threat of closure for any club the size of Merthyr Town FC is never as far away as people may think. Everything needs to be done to ensure their survival.
