Wed May 09, 2012 2:57 pm
Following the cruel and entirely unnecessary fifth goal scored by West Ham I managed to navigate through the 5 stages of grief pretty quickly. Our players gave it everything (the minimum and maximum a City fan should ask for), a technically inferior squad to last year’s (in hindsight) mercenaries. This season we played more games, got to a cup final and were younger and hungrier. I was generally offensive about East London for a bit, how I’m glad we’re not a bunch of coked-up ex-National Front 40 year olds lauding a Sam Allardyce team and his Luddite Gerritout! ‘philosophy’. I didn’t even need a beer, consoled with the fact that I wouldn’t want to support any other team. Born minutes from the stadium, and I’m not talking about the one bowl between a KFC on one side, and another KFC on the other, it was more than geography at play. Now I may be projecting a lot onto a professional sporting institution, but to me the City came to represent a gallows’ optimism, handy for any Welshman (or at least denial at finishing 88th out of 92 clubs) a rejection of the then growing commercialism and sanitisation of the game, socialism (I’ve never heard another team sing about 20 year old strikes), a rejection of the status quo (the queen, the FA) and the best aspects of tribalism; uncultivated passion (before the word became an ironic meme for the lower leagues poor ability), a shared and organic sense of purpose, humour, anger and anarchy all with a Welsh accent. We Were Different.
This started to change when we lost Ninian Park. Or, more accurately, it was taken away from us. Suddenly we could no longer take the piss out of Reading for having a soulless indentikit yawnodrome. We had one too. No standing, no smoking, no double thought. No intimidation, no politics and only a glimpse of atmosphere in a big game. Nobody seems to realise that when you lose history, like a dead language or a first romance, it’s gone forever. No upturn in our fortunes (3/4 higher league places in the new stadium) can make up for that. And now this.
If we as a club and set of fans haven’t got our principles and tradition then what in the living f**k have we got? Nobody else likes us, we don’t win anything, we’re not known for particularly attractive football. They’re some of my favourite things about us. Is changing the shirt colour going to convince anyone, even those who’d say it’s their favourite part of the Visible Colour Spectrum, to support us over Liverpool/Man Utd (who I assume will change kit colour as well to allow us a free run at the, Ach a Fi, lucrative Asian market). It will have no positive impact whatsoever. And if it does (it won’t)? Some guy in Kuala Lumpur will illegally stream a game at 4am and that’s about it. And he won’t even do that, because he doesn’t exist and never will. All at the expensive of a life long City fan buying a ticket, and continuing to do so regardless of what division we lose in, and will sing and fight for his club. This is the vacuous and fake sound of ‘progress’. This is a disastrous decision in terms of our preparation for the new season, PR, the fans and the club’s image, be it Bluebird, Dragon or an artist’s impression of Charlotte Church’s left tit surrounded by the insignia YOUR NAME HERE FC. What have they done to my song, Ma?
This is the thin end of the wedge. What won’t we prostitute? Relocation, our name, or even worse, goal music? All in the vain hope of finish 15th in the Premier hype train. Remember that warm glow you felt despite agonisingly losing a penalty shoot-out at Wembley last month? It was because we had played the East Lancs branch of the EDL and had fought the good fight. We made Victory (and the millions they spent at the sacrifice of club ideals) seem hollow. We won without actually winning. What moral leg do we stand on now? What am I supposed to say to may estranged cousin to convince him to follow the club? We’re just lie the corporate ego maniacs his mates support, but instead of Rooney we’ve got Kenny Miller and have more chance of playing Manfield than Madrid. Just £300 a season to watch a shit Man U, or a quite good MK Dons, see you down there!
Maybe it’ll work in a purely financial sense. Maybe we’ll bus a load of mercenaries who weren’t good enough in the top division and up the football league we’ll go. Just like Doncaster (who were relegated, fact fans). Maybe the crowds will dip, then be replaced by families and tourists and locals who had previously taken the piss out of us for being in the 4th division. Whilst wearing a Liverpool shirt (red, see, that’s why the prick supported them) and a confused expression, internally trying to understand why I support my local team in a futile attempt at human understanding. If they do go head with this I wish them nothing but financial ruin and eventual demise. CPD Dinas Caerdydd anyone? Start again, old school.
It baffled me how many Malaysian flags I saw down the City before we knew anything of their intentions. Trust and respect have to be earned, not granted because they happened to pick Cardiff over the 6/7 other clubs they were looking at. The sooner football fans as a whole realise this and stop taking a joy at other clubs’ owner’s euthanasia (Darlo, Wimbledon, Wrexham, Luton) then we might actually save our game.
I thought this was an actual joke when I first heard it. A pastiche on how the working man’s game has jumped the shark. A jack on a wind up. A satirical comment on what can and can’t be bought. How do you parody this? If we let this go, what’s next? What won’t we sell? Bukowski advised that if you’re going to do something, go all the way. Let’s dress the Fred Keenor statue in natty threads from Matalan’s latest collection (500 notes a week, more if he’s wearing a hat). Melt down any remaining 1927 FA Cup medals to make cutlery in the executive lounges. Lets sell the Ayatollah to the New York Red Bulls. Lay down some of your hard earned pounds/dollars/ringgits and you too could be playing up front for you favourite company, I mean football club. No experience necessary, money down, step right up.
As is probably obvious, I fell out of love with football a long time ago. Not the City mind. I clung on to that because I thought (or convinced myself) that we were a beacon for the Different. The last old punk in what has become a Yates’ Wine Lodge, coughing up Old Rosie and syphilis, headbutting the jukebox when the Lighthouse Family starts playing. Then I saw Atheltic Bilbao, and hope sprang again. A team of only Basques (with a population just a million more than Wales), real tradition, a cause, a relationship with the fans, a great atmosphere at an old ground. Showing it’s possible to retain principles and compete in a league as unjust as La Liga. I hoped they’d be a model we’d follow. Instead we’ve become Malaga. For non Spanish-football fans, imagine leaving Katherine Jenkins for Jodie Marsh. Christ, I’ve just seen a vision and it’s Sven after we (or they, I suppose I should start saying) don’t go up automatically with Malky. How apt he would be.
This hurts because I thought we were more than a playdo club, a malleable shapeless form a tycoon could mould into a narcissistic image of his own harrowing sub-conscious. Not something than can be focus grouped and bent to fit the fashion of the times. We’re not f*cking JaJa Binks. A Welsh Milton Keynes. Although the more I write the more this view seems increasingly naïve.
So where does this leave us? Protests, pith invasions, infighting, morbid rubbernecking from the media, violence? I hope so. I hope we put a fight that lasts and won’t be compromised, however unsuccessful it ultimately is. Not like the half baked Man U fans wearing a coloured scarf for a few weeks until they reach a final or two and forget about it. I hope this means as much to other City fans. If it’s not already clear, I won’t be going again if they change the kit/name/badge. And if I do it’ll be to protest, in the stands or on the pitch. What can they do, ban me? From a football club I feel estranged from? From a football club that will no longer exist. I’ll still be a City fan, it’s just they’ll have died at the end of the 2011/2012 season. It our club, it’s our pitch, let’s at least fight on the way down.
Finally, to any City fans saying it doesn’t matter, that you don’t care as long as we win. Firstly, why are you a Cardiff fan in the first place? If you want unbridled success and something as vulgar and polystyrene as (bought) success, why support us anyway? Choose Man Utd. They’re a great team already, play in an aesthetically style and playing in God’s colour. They also actually have a chance at winning the Premiership, which we will never do, no matter how moderately successful we are, as the game is rigged. At the very best we’ll float around like Bolton without bothering anyone, soporifically dying inside like a dying star. Live the dream!
It’s not just a colour, it’s what it represents. Why should they stop there if we tolerate this? The name excludes people from Newport, Bridgend and the Valleys (our true support). Let’s rebrand them, like we’re a f*cking fizzy drink, as the South Wales Red Sox. If it doesn’t work we’ll move somewhere else. Cornwall doesn’t have a team, they’re like the Welsh but with a better tan, it’ll play well with the demographic of people who like fish restaurants, the Kernow Dragons it is. This could happen (and has) become we’ll become a brand, a plaything, a commodity to be tarted up and pimped out.
Emphatically; the owners don’t give a shiney shit about the club, the fans, the city or the area. Nor do any football owners, with the exception of your mill owning sheepskin jacket Dave Whealen types who are a dying breed. It’s spin, it’s jargon filled multinational bullshit of the highest order. We are disposable. They didn’t know the country existed 6 years ago. They haven’t got our best interest at heart. They see us either a vanity project or a way to make money. They will milk us then leave our vanquished and sore teat dry before skipping away into the night, laughing and pissing milk. This kind of fawning idolatry of any investment has led to the death of football clubs. A refusal to look at the money’s origin and intention, wilful ignorance, ends in Man City fans singing and joking with their ex owner last week, a former Thai president that had Amnesty International complaining about his abuse of Human Rights and has been on trial for killing his own people innumerate times. But it’s alright because he bought Wayne Bridge. Beware of false profits.
Don’t accept this. Don’t let the bullshit about brand realisation and the important tiger economies and demographics confuse you. It didn’t help Crystal Palace when they changed their kit in the 1980s. We’ve been playing football for over a century and the lack of success has nothing to do with the colour of the kit. Logic knows this. We know this. Don’t accept it. Bluebirds (IDST).
Money can’t buy you love.