SUPPORT LOCAL

(Pic by Lewis Mitchell/FAW)

Ryan March

There’s something about the Cymru Premier. Something that draws you in. Like a feeling you can’t shake. It’s hard to describe it, but it’s true. Speak to anyone involved in any capacity and they all feel it. A sense of belonging, of hiraeth, of community. It’s intoxicating.

And it grabbed me as well. When I needed it most.

Rewind to the bleak winter of early 2021. In the midst of a second lockdown. The novelty had well and truly worn off. The January blues were bluer than ever before. I was sick to death of watching football on the telly. I quite quickly learned that maybe I didn’t love the sport as much as I thought I did. What I actually loved was everything around the game. And I missed it more than ever.

Enter Penybont Football Club. A club that had always been a bit of an enigma to me. Despite being born and raised in Bridgend, and being a football obsessive, I’d never felt a connection to the club. A club with a complicated history, forged by a merger between the town’s two biggest clubs — Bridgend Town and Bryntirion Athletic — in 2013. I was playing at under-18 level for Bridgend Town at the time, and it left me and my mates with no obvious place to continue playing football together. But almost a decade had passed and things had changed a lot.

I’d been to university, chased the rock ’n’ roll dream, fallen out of love with the dream, and was stuck in what felt like a never-ending loop of lockdowns, isolation and boredom. I was sick to death of my retail job. I needed something more.

In the months before, I had finally started Alternative Wales after threatening to do it for a long time. It was going well! It had given me the confidence to give new things a go. And my degree in media production had sat dormant for long enough. I noticed the club had no real presence online and felt I had something to offer. I reached out to someone I knew involved in the club, offered my services as media officer, and the rest, as they say, is history.

To begin with, it was just an opportunity for me to learn some new skills, have something of my own to look after, distract myself from the tedium of my day job, and watch some football on the weekends after almost a year of being locked out of stadiums.

But it quickly became a lot more than that. Like I said earlier, there’s something about the Cymru Premier — and Penybont. It drags you in and never lets you go.

I’d long been growing tired of Cardiff City and the circus that seemed to follow it around. A football club that had truly lost its way since the rebrand in 2012 and struggled to rediscover its identity since. An identity that was omnipotent in my formative years. Years I spent on the terraces of Ninian Park or travelling around the football grounds of England like a pack of wolves, all looking out for each other. Things were different now. I didn’t feel that belonging anymore. I hadn’t stopped loving Cardiff City — I never will. They are my club. But as I grew older, I needed more from football. And quite quickly, Penybont began to fill that void.

I found myself celebrating goals that little bit more, or a defeat lingering a little bit longer. It started to mean something to me. It was never supposed to, but here I was.

As the season restarted in the spring and life began to open up again, Penybont sprang into action and achieved their first ever top-half finish and a play-off for a shot at European football. It wasn’t to be this time, as Newtown went on to win the play-offs, but it had given me a taste of what was possible. I had an insight into the inner workings of a football club, and I loved it.

The second season came around and Bont picked up where they left off — another solid season for a still relatively new club to the league. And this season was to be a special one. Fans were back and a cup run was on the cards.

This was where I knew I was in too deep. After a couple of tense affairs in the early rounds — including a win on penalties against Caernarfon Town and making tough work of a valiant Taffs Well — Bont were in the semi-finals for the first time in the club’s history. Only Bridgend Town had reached this stage of the third-oldest cup competition in football, back in 1979.

Bont would face a tough test, though. Cymru Premier stalwarts, regular European adventurers and former Welsh Cup winners Bala Town stood in their way.

A trip to Aberystwyth on a cold Friday night in March was set to decide Penybont’s fate. And it would become the night I realised I was in too deep and there was no going back.

It was a cagey affair. Both teams were evenly matched and neither really wanted to go for it. It was inevitable it would be decided on penalties. Agonising — it always is when you’ve got skin in the game.

But the joy I felt when (ex-Swansea City player, of all people) Shaun MacDonald slotted home the winning penalty was up there with anything I’d felt watching Cardiff City. I hadn’t even realised it meant that much to me before that moment. And thus, the love affair went into another gear.

Two trips to Europe followed in the subsequent years, and I’ve been so lucky and honoured to play a small role in the club’s continued growth. And despite stepping back from my role as media officer earlier this year, I still help out where I can at the club — but with the added element of enjoying a matchday that little bit more.

Thanks to volunteering with Penybont over the last five years, I’ve not only furthered my career — I’m doing this for a living now! — I’ve also met a fantastic group of people from all elements of the game. Players, managers, fellow volunteers, people from other clubs, other media organisations. When I go to a game anywhere in Wales now, there’s a good chance I’ll run into a familiar face. If that’s not community, I don’t know what is.

But beyond falling in love with Penybont, I’ve also fallen head over heels in love with the Cymru Premier. Our national league. It may not be perfect, it may not have all the glitz and glam of neighbouring professional leagues, but it’s unique, it’s entertaining, and most importantly, it’s ours. It’s full of people at every level of the game all pulling together for the same cause: to make sure their team, their league, and their community have the best chance of thriving.

Supporting local can manifest itself in a number of different ways. It can further your career, give you new skills by throwing yourself into volunteering, or you could meet new friends and find a new community just by turning up every week and supporting your local team. You take out what you put in. That’s the beauty of it.

And with football increasingly being eaten up by the richest — especially after the news broke earlier this week about World Cup ticket prices — it increasingly feels like the Cymru Premier and its feeder leagues are the last bastion of what made us fall in love with football in the first place. It’s reignited my love for the game. Maybe it might reignite yours. Just give it a go.

Your support can make all the difference. Be the home advantage in the #JDCymruPremier and support local this season.