I thought I share my memory of an event that occurred on the 14 January 1980 that has stayed with me since. I had previously posted about many years ago but I cannot find any trace of it.

Back in those days when an FA cup game was drawn and the replay was drawn, another replay was held at a neutral venue. In the third round in 1980 the Jacks had drawn twice with Crystal Palace, so a second replay was held at Ninian Park on a Monday night (what idiot thought that this was a good idea).

My mate and I, both 15 at the time, decided to go and watch the game and support Palace. We both had city scarves on us and caught the bus to Cardiff from Blackwood. After arriving at the central bus station we headed off down Ninian Park Road to walk to the ground.

We had not got far down Ninian Park Road when we noticed 4 older lads walking behind us quickly. When they got close we noticed they were Swansea fans and they noticed we were City fans by our scarves. They did not immediately attack us but they talked loudly about what they will do to us. They talked loudly about taking our shoes and burning our scarves. We tried to act unafraid and desperately looked for an escape.

This continued for the next few minutes as we walked down the road. I then noticed a small white van pull over further up the road. A group of lads got out of the van and started looking towards us. I thought we were done for as I thought they may be more Swansea fans. The group of lads by the van then started to chant Palace and charged towards the Swansea fans behind us. The Swansea fans then ran towards the Palace fans, which gave me and my mate a chance to get away. We both felt extremely relieved and after getting a safe distance away we looked back to see what happening. We could see the 2 groups brawling in the street, so we turned around and carried on walking to the ground.

We found out later that one of the Swansea fans was stabbed to death by on one of the Palace fans.

At the time I did not think too much about it, but as I got older and more wiser the consequences of what had had happened became clearer and the thought of the dangerous situation we were in has become even more obvious.

The drama of that day did not end there!

On arriving at the ground we used the Grange End entrance to get into the Bob Bank. On Walking onto the Bob we realised we were in with the Swansea fans. We could see that the other other half of the Bob was full of City fans and tried to make our way across. We had to get through an avalanche of punches and kicks to get to safety. By the time we got through we were minus our scarves, which by this time were on fire. The scene inside Ninian Park was surreal, with 3 sets of supporters around the ground.

I have no recollection of the game, but the events leading up to kick off have stuck with me ever since. At the time I did report what I had seen to the Police due to tribal rivalry and immaturity, which is something I now regret.