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| Hereford At Merthyr in 2017 |
Today's Guardian carries an article all about 'friendship forged on football terraces'.
The article features supporters of several different football clubs and how they met.
Merthyr Town is one of the clubs.
Mark and Nigel remember the first time they met, in the early 80s. Not actually on the terraces, but heading to an away game: Merthyr Town were playing Cardiff City in the Welsh Cup. “Me and my then girlfriend were having a nice kissing session on the train, while Nigel was getting hassled by some Cardiff fans,” Mark says.
Nigel remembers Mark, who was a skinhead at the time, disentangling from his amorous liaison and emerging from under a sheepskin coat “like David Jason’s in Only Fools and Horses” to come to his aid, and has been grateful ever since. Merthyr lost the game 5-0, but Mark and Nigel both gained a mate for life, and they’ve watched the Martyrs together from the same spot at Penydarren Park ever since.
And it’s not just the two of them. Mike showed up, later in the 80s. “He’s from a different part of town, a different religion – we’ve still got Catholic and Protestant schools in Merthyr,” Mark says. The group grew, and started a fanzine: they became the Dial M for Merthyr lads.
There’s now a core of 15 or 20 pals, and I’m on a video call with five of them: Mark, Nigel and Mike, plus more recent recruits Louis and Jason, speaking from in and around Merthyr Tydfil. “An oasis of football in the sea of rugby in the south Wales valleys,” says Mark. “Since the deindustrialisation of our area, the only thing we have left is football.” Actually, Mark’s not at home right now. He’s gone to another away game – Wales’s World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan; he’s in a hotel room in the capital, Astana.
Oh, and they’re all part-owners of the club, which became fan owned in 2010 after liquidation. Mark, Nigel and Mike were instrumental in that, too, but this is more about terrace friendship than business affairs.
For home games at Penydarren Park, the Dial M lads stand in the CTM memorial stand – not its official name, but what they started to call it after one of their lot, 72-year-old Colin the Monk (named after a bad haircut), didn’t show up for a few weeks. “We thought he was dead, so we put up a little plaque,” says Mark, who does most of the talking. “But, a few weeks later, he reappeared. He’d just moved away with a new girlfriend.” Colin the Monk is off again soon, to live in the Philippines.
They look out for one another, even if they don’t see much of each other away from the CTM stand. “It’s a bit like the Cheers bar, where everyone knows your name,” says Mark. “You can be having a really bad week, you could be depressed, we’ve had a few of those: three o’clock and so-and-so’s not here, let’s give him a ring and see what’s up.”