Originally Posted by
Kind of Blue
It’s a different kettle of fish now but non league clubs like Merthyr in their late 80s / early 90s zenith had teams that were as good as what could be offered at the bottom end of the football league, on occasions arguably better. For players with a well paying, secure job or career outside of football, the higher end of the non league pyramid could be a more lucrative arrangement than going full time in the FL dungeon and so some clubs had a sort of USP for a certain type of player that could’ve made it as a pro (obviously not all non league players then fit that mould). That isn’t quite the same now with how the professional and semi professional game has changed in England.
If I remember correctly the FAW treated Merthyr as they did the FL Welsh clubs because it wasn’t inconceivable they would be one soon enough themselves at that time and so didn’t harangue them as they did with the county (who it felt they wanted to make an example of) or the many Welsh clubs at the time that played lower down in English non league.
I only have young memories of this period and I’m surprised it still feels a little bit under documented as a contentious period of Welsh footballing history. How serious were these external threats to Welsh football at the time or how much were these seized upon by the FAW hierarchy either for good reason, possibly with a hint of paranoia, or even cynically, I don’t know. Would make an interesting book or documentary.
Looking back from this vantage point, with the money now sloshing about in the top two English divisions, a couple of seasons of top tier English football and well in excess of a decade in the championship for the city, joining the then emerging Welsh top flight setup seems unimaginable. But as TOBW has pointed out, although we had one division winning season (albeit the old 4th) this was arguably the nadir of city’s history. I’ve thought before about how my old man must have felt like he was watching a completely different club when we went to Ninian Park in the 90s compared to what he knew in the 60s and 70s.
It doesn’t seem so outlandish to me now that at that time the city, jacks, or Wrexham were hardly pulling up any trees in the English setup. The lure of European football was a little different then too, the money has increased exponentially but the exoticism and romance of a European tie still had a bit of resonance and you could pick up a plumb fixture straight out the hat. 2k crowds in the fourth tier playing Rochdale or domestic titles, cup wins, and European fixtures against Porto or Celtic? The FAW may also have had an eye on Scottish domestic football which had a bit of a golden period, or swan-song, in the 90s and thought why not here (on a smaller scale)? Even the English premier league itself to a degree.
Taken in this and it’s context of the time I do think if you had more skilled PR, diplomacy and negotiation from the FAW a different course and future may have been possible at the time.
I may be wrong here and it might not still be the case but I also thought some of the smaller European nations had a similar setup that Welsh football had pre the mid 90s. Although Wales was the biggest country in Europe to have that arrangement where the country’s bigger clubs play in a foreign league but still enter domestic cup competition and an entry into European football. Will have to check.