In most parts of Wales football rarely takes precedence over rugby, but on two weekends a year it certainly does. When Swansea City sealed their promotion to the Championship in the 2007/08 season, after winning the League One title, the South Wales derby was revived after being deceased for almost a decade. Since that day, every match between the two bitter rivals has failed to disappoint.
Taking a historical view, the first South Wales derby was played in Swansea’s first year of existence, 1912. The result was a 1-1 draw. Cardiff City were very much the more talented team in this era, with Swansea only recently being formed and Cardiff having their most successful period in the 1920s, when they only just missed out on a league title, lost in the FA Cup final and eventually became an FA Cup winner.
Swansea had success too, but at a much later date. The glory era of John Toshack et al started in the late-70s. Toshack managed to orchestrate Swansea’s meteoric rise from Fourth Division to top of the First Division. Unfortunately a meteoric decline was in the wings. By the mid-80s the club were on the brink of extinction, and consecutive relegations took them back down to the Fourth Division.
However, those days began to demonstrate what we came to expect from these highly-strung encounters between the two Welsh sides. The matches may lack the glamour of top flight rivalries, but they were always raw and emotional. September 1988 saw Swansea face Cardiff at the Vetch Field in a League Cup tie and it would become a match which is still referred to by Swansea fans to this day, even though the game was lost.
Cardiff won the match 2-0 but it was the post-match shenanigans that the match was remembered for. It was reported by a local Swansea resident that around 50 Swansea fans chased around 30 Cardiff fans toward the beach and eventually chest-deep into the sea, and thus the “Swim Away” chant was born on the Swansea terraces.
Five years later another South Wales derby made the headlines, but this time not just locally and unfortunately for the wrong reasons. A Division Two match between the sides on December 1993 was dubbed the “Battle of Ninian Park”. Crowd trouble overshadowed the 1-0 win by Cardiff over Swansea, with thousands of fans swarming onto the pitch, eventually leading to Swansea fans ripping out the seating to use as missiles onto the pitch. This unacceptable behaviour lead to the FAW banning away fans from attending the derby for several years – the first time an action this severe was handed to a British team.
Fast forward to the revival of the South Wales derby two years ago, after Swansea’s decline into the Third Division and Cardiff’s eventual rise to the First, the blue side of South Wales were certainly billed as the favourites. South Wales Police, however, weren’t as thrilled as the fans were at the prospect of the derby.
In the 2008/09 season the teams met three times, with Swansea taking the spoils in the first meeting for almost a decade, a 1-0 win in a League Cup tie after a splendid free-kick from Jordi Gomez. The first league game ended in another win for Swansea with a spectacular 3-2 result, but yet more fan-related idiocy led to high media exposure for the final derby of the season.
The game finished as a 2-2 draw, with a nail-biting finish that saw Swansea regain the lead through Joe Allen in the 88th minute, only for a Ross McCormack penalty to save the Bluebirds’ blushes in the dying seconds. The nail-biting finish though, was not the incident the media were concerned about.
Referee Mike Dean suffered a blow to the head from a coin was hurled by a Cardiff fan at the man in the middle. It wasn’t the same scale as the aforementioned “Battle of Ninian Park” but the tie had yet again put people’s safety at risk. Several fans were arrested after the game, an occurrence that has become a regular feature of these matches in modern times.
So, what next for the fiery Welsh derby? Cardiff have consistently been play-off candidates for the past two years, with Swansea chasing them in close pursuit. You only have to look to last year to see Cardiff reaching the play-off final and Swansea missing out on the final play-off spot due to a torrid end to the season.
One scenario that the South Wales Police and Metropolitan Police would surely not want to happen would be for the two to meet in the final. With public transport from Swansea going through Cardiff, and both teams taking the same near 200-mile route, it would be a logistical nightmare.
And with Sky already gladly hyping the next derby with mass TV coverage, if it were to be a Premier League tie, would the media spotlight on a match which often creates controversy be overemphasised? Could the match take over as the most brutal derby in British football?
As a Swansea fan, there certainly is a lot to look forward to. The rivalry between the two teams has never been bigger and with such a valuable prize up for grabs, it’s only going to get better.
Tags: Cardiff City, Swansea City