Rugby's pitch battle

13 April 2012

So London comes to Cardiff for the FA Cup Final. And, as the late Sir Harry Secombe was wont to warble, "We'll keep a welcome . . ." Well, most of us will. For before hopping aboard your coaches you should know there are some in this town still coming to terms with what rugby's blazered old buffers consider sacrilege.

Yep, that's how they regard football being played on the sacred soil of what has been, for a century and more, rugby's true cathedral. For them it's always the Arms Park and not, as printed on your programme, the Millennium Stadium.

Here, the Welsh inflicted the only defeat on those "invincible" New Zealand All Blacks of 1905 to make the game of rugby Wales's real religion. Here, the country's rugby-playing paladins inspired passion and poetry fuelled by floods of pints. Until, in 1989, when, according to those blazered boyos, we sold our souls.

In May that year Wales played West Germany, and from the Cardiff Rugby Club next-door you could hear what sounded like Private Fraser's sepulchral warning to the rest of Dad's Army: "We're doomed, doomed, I tell ye."

Doomed indeed, echoed the blazers. Remember, they warned, their Field of Dreams had been usurped for the other game once before when England beat Wales 1-0. That was in 1910, and look what happened only four years later: the Great War broke out. No wonder those blazers were to be found somewhere else on the evening of the game.

As soon as kick-off came a large reproving finger would wag from the skies while a series of thunderbolts scorched the great North Stand, sizzling all the sinners in it. So convinced were the natives of this coming catastrophe that they closed their HQ, the Cardiff Athletic Club, and pubs in the fall-out area shoved up the shutters. Three hundred wary coppers plodded into the city-centre streets before the game and the message passed from pub to pub: "Lock up your barmaids."

What happened? We waited for the Barbarians to kick down the gates and, instead, they flipped open the flap to give us a parade of pussy cats. Only 30 arrests on the night and most of the problems, said one of those coppers brought in for Apocalypse Now, came when Cardiff City and Swansea fans collided.

The game itself ? A 1-1 draw and the only things demolished were Welsh dreams of qualifying for the World Cup. But that was West Germany, bringing only 1,000 fans. What might happen, the doom-mongers wondered, if England's terrible soccer tribes - Arsenal or Chelsea perhaps - came to town? Well, said the game's missionaries, they'd jump off that bridge when they came to it.

No need. From then on Wales played football internationals without problems on the old Arms Park - and then, in June 1999, the Millennium Stadium was unveiled with a game (rugby naturally) against South Africa.

Earlier that year Wembley hosted the Wales-England rugby international (Wales won), raising the idea of a reciprocal arrangement when work began on Wembley. Which meant football, in the shape of the Worthington Cup Final, the Charity Shield and, as Arsenal fans need no reminding, the FA Cup Final against Liverpool, in Cardiff.

The star of the show has been this magnificent stadium. Not simply because it offers a perfect view of the pitch from every one of the 72,000 seats, or because of its unique sliding roof, but because it is right in the middle of town. Cardiff 's famous "rugby pubs" are clustered beneath its massive bulk like trim little tugs around an ocean liner.

Places like the City Arms, where epic rugby wins have been celebrated for a century, are the sport's archetypal pubs, whose spilled beer foams up to the gates of the Millennium Stadium itself.

Here you can sup the legendary Brains SA, named after the brewery's founder Samuel Arthur Brain, but known because of its cataclysmic effects as Skull Attack. And that very special privilege can be yours for less than two quid a pint, folks.

In the Wetherspoons pubs along the road you can get a pint for, wait for it, £1.09.

You will not be popular with some regulars. Not merely because they can't get near the bar but because their image of a football supporter from London relies heavily on viewings of EastEnders. Let's face it, the thought of a couple of thousand Phil Mitchells marching ominously along the road from the station is not calculated to inspire thoughts of tranquil times ahead.

But, as I said, we'll keep a welcome. None more than those expectant pub landlords, already browsing happily through brochures featuring such seductive holiday destinations as the Seychelles.

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Rugby's pitch battle

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