Why intercity derbies don’t really mean anything

By: Martyn | November 5th, 2009

kangaroo06-Fighting-JumpingKick As anybody living in these parts probably knows by now, the entire South Welsh Police force will be having a paperwork-free bonding session at the Liberty Stadium this Saturday lunchtime. The itinerary will include separating lager-breathed Danny Dyer lookalikes hell-bent on manhandling one another, lots of human-barrier forming akin to portraying the Berlin Wall in a pleasant game of charades, and constant correction of daft scoundrels who keep mistaking you for a pink animal with trotters and a tail.

Oh, and in the background, a game of football between the two largest Welsh cities is scheduled.

Along with their elder brother, the metropolis derby, intercity derbies are still regarded as the bedrock of British football. Foam-mouthed pundits will reel off the likes of United vs Liverpool, Blackburn vs Burnley, and Norwich vs Ipswich with all the enthusiasm of a wind turbine during a hurricane.

Yet other than a rowdier ambience, burgeoned ticket sales, and a free-for-all on the town that hosts the stadium for burglars, these games mean diddly squat in terms of one branch of regional politics triumphing over another. And anybody who tries convincing you otherwise is as misguided as Popeye is if he thinks tinned-spinach counts as one of his 5-a-day.

Now I don’t wish to inaccurately generalise, but…

Cardiff and Swansea were once thriving, working-class towns. With mines in the surrounding valleys and thriving ports, satellite settlements were common. Nevertheless, the hub remained the heartbeat, and a community spirit was apparent. In the post-Industrial Age, this was the substitute for national identity, although remnants of such characteristics lingered in the peoples of both towns (there is an enthusiasm for life and boisterousness in Wales that is conspicuous by its absence elsewhere).

As moves to identikit modernist housing estates began in earnest from about the 1930s, such community ties waned. With Cardiff being named capital city in 1955, postmodern regeneration continued to kill any ideas of regional identity, and rather than matches between the cities’ foremost football clubs being fun-to-attend-if-you-wanted engagements between close-knit working-class societies, the fragmented identities and asphyxiating life-lethargy saw the clashes take on a fresh significance.

The difference lies in the changed role of what it is to follow the sport. Back then, you’d go to the game as a escapist spectacle enjoyed with like-minded citizens. Now however, you are football. Being a fan – to use the modern vernacular – involves inescapable entanglement within a web of rhetoric, semantics-absconding colour and bloated non-importance.

Such a development meant thinking of them-up-the-road in a new context. With Cardiff and Swansea far enough apart – each has a different daily rag too; South Wales Echo in Cardiff and the Evening Post in Swansea – to facilitate irregular daily contact with the other-city folk, absence perversely made the heart grow fonder: now when the clubs meet, this new breed of fan-man didn’t know how to react. He was supposed to follow the narrative and deplore these upstarts he in actual fact shared an awful lot in common with. So other than a spot of smirky-schadenfreude if James Alexander-Gordon told you they’d lost, how did one go about showing this scorn?

angry-man-with-gsm Previously, bonds and friendships with players who came from and lived in the community saw ticket-payers bestow a semblance of proud association into spurring the local lads on. A rattle, the occasional striped scarf, and the company of one’s nearest and dearest was enough to go with it if one wished. Nowdays, nothing less than bellowing unnecessary obscenities at everything and anyone, and wearing a grotesque polyester replica jersey littered with advertisements for faceless corporations will do. Football was angry.

Yob culture became rampant in football, specifically during the late 1970s and 80s (androgynous greengrocer’s daughter + ignorant use of position of power = a generation more peeved than Paddington Bear confronted by an empty jar of marmalade), and derby games degenerated into little more than a façade offering mere backdrop to scuffles and hollow Guggenheim Museum-mouthed insults. Even in today’s Taylor Report world of alienating outta-town architectures we refer to as ‘home’, post-hooligan culture is rife albeit in a diluted confused form.

Events and magnified magniloquence such as parading neighbour-baiting swear-wordy flags on the pitch, tall Chinese Whisper-ish tales of fights descending into the sea, & the heinous crime of BADGE KISSING (??!!!???”@@’%) spark the quasi-crises that underpin and self-justify the actions of the imbeciles. Henri Lloyd-clad men clash in parks because Cardiff and Swansea hate each other – thus perpetuating the myth that we hate each other!

“We have to think it is just another game as it is just another three points, but it is more than that to the supporters as they want the bragging rights over their rivals”, says Anthony Gerrard. Sure, the relatively few Swansea supporters some of us know may spend the following week or so being incredibly obnoxious and overdosing on banter were they to triumph, but I’m certain I speak for the majority here when noting that *conversations* regarding football with any of the hordes of Manchester United and Liverpool-ites we unfortunately have to associate with are ten times more bothersome. And what may there be to brag about – that fleeting, ostentatious, football-external emotion – anyway? A lavishly-salaried drink-driver netting the winning goal?

The rise of live television coverage has led to Armchair vs Support Your Local Team militias following the game. With regards to the latter, save for putting money into a business deemed *local* (with Malaysian and/or Lebanese investors), how is Cardiff City FC a gallery to display the invested feelings of regionalism? In 2009, what makes Cardiff, Cardiff? More to the point, how does our special ingredient differentiate us from the nearest British city and its people? We throw coins at officials and they don’t, is that it? At least city clashes such as Rangers vs Celtic and Boca Juniors vs River Plate are marinated in (admittedly subsiding) meaning by virtue of contrasting religious and class values meeting. Therefore, I don’t see how we can ascribe any sense of ‘meaning’ to this intercity derby encounter.

“We are alienated in an absolute sense from the world-historical; we cannot even determine how things got this complicated”
Frederic Jameson

OliverBashStES_600x373 Were Roger the Dodger incepted as a character in the Beano today, he’d more than likely be cast as Roger the Benefit Fraud. Times change – deal with it. Nevertheless, the occasion doesn’t have to mean to be enjoyable. I’ve attended encounters between the sides both home and away and they are certainly exciting.

A full house will make for a noisy atmosphere that inevitably raises the tempo of what may well otherwise have been a rather ordinary Championship encounter. I, like many others, hope to watch my team maturely handle the vulgarities and hullabaloo by demonstrating a performance worthy of winning. Failing that, a route-one hoof at the death to add 3 points to our already handsome tally would do! My gripe, as I now hope you understand, is with the hordes who try placing an emphasis on the tie that simply does not exist.

So forgive me for not calling this the most important game of the season or any of that claptrap. Quantifying what the most important game of a season was should be made once said campaign has concluded, not before or during. While a loss against the league’s lowest scorers would be disappointing, you won’t find this City fan overdoing the moping. Although defeats to the likes of Doncaster and QPR were embarrassingly pitiful, the team has shown immense character to bounce back from such hindrances and is fully capable of doing so again.

Sooooooooooo….

Is it too blasé to castigate an entire legion of motorway-connected city derbies, tucking them in under one big, snug duvet? No, because postmodern British life is the same in each generic town, lifestyle and facet of existence.

Today’s class-less, suburban Blighty is one of chocolate biscuits, Steve Wright on the radio, sixth-form college and one-bedroom apartment skyscrapers – not a fight for survival, skittles at the inn, work in a sweatshop and extended families. Thus, it is for that reason the match between the City’s of Cardiff and Swansea is no more than a tempestuous affair between two geographically-adjacent football clubs. And if you don’t like it, you’ve always got Spoony’s ear to bend. Saying that, so have I…