THE BATTLE OF WOMANBY STREET?
Evan Powell
Sunday was unreal, wasn't it? The buzz around the capital, bucket hats left right and centre, Welsh flags at every turn and the best result many of us have seen in the flesh. Despite this, many witnessed unsavoury scenes before the game in the heart of Cardiff and even on Wednesday evening you could see something wasn’t right.
Fans have descended on Womanby Street for years. A long and narrow street tucked away in the capital which becomes a site of pilgrimage every single match day. Home to the iconic Clwb Ifor Bach, Tiny Rebel and The City Arms and of course The (Full) Moon. Is it a Cymru fixture without consuming or seeing someone neck a pint of the most toxic looking green shit from a plastic cup?
For five years, marches to games have been organised by Welsh Football Fans For Independence that sees fans create a superb atmosphere whilst making their way to the Cardiff City Stadium. Faces young and old in unison, bonded by a mutual love for their country on and off the pitch. It isn’t a flashpoint for aggro, ridiculously far from it. Just a group of fans enjoying some drinks, making a bit of noise and painting the skies red. In the eyes of the law, this justifies physical altercation, match bans and breaches of privacy.
You’d swear it was a derby fixture with how the police turned up on Sunday. Ramming cameras in people's faces for chanting, barging kids as they walked up and down the street and treating fans with smoke canisters as if they just committed several war crimes. I saw a boy who looked no older than fourteen be gripped up and put in a van for simply holding a tiny pyro that let off under 30 seconds of smoke, what’s the point?
There’s been a case of two fans who were present on Sunday being told by police to either give their details and be searched to be able to attend the fixture. They complied, got to the turnstiles to find out they’ve had their tickets blocked. All for singing Viva Gareth Bale and having some red smoke shoot out of a plastic canister. Said fans were also banned from Wednesday’s game due to this…
This has never been the case and there’s no denying that as a collective of supporters, we’re being targeted in an attempt to silence what we’ve done for years. Was there a police presence like that for the many jubilee events taking place on the same day? Did police monitor and cause disruption to any other supporters? Someone high up has been utterly rattled by the supporters and now we’re seeing how ugly that gets.
Onto last night. Far from a sellout but playing world-class opposition, Womanby was dead. No meet up organised for obvious reasons but did the police get the memo? Clearly not as they mobbed up to the point there were more coppers than fans on the street. The approach of the police is rubbing off on bouncers it seems, with cases of fans being denied entry due to football shirts once again. I myself wasn’t allowed in The Moon on the basis of wearing shorts, despite there being four people in the venue wearing them themselves. To be fair, the venue has profusely apologised and I am very much looking forward to some free green shit this weekend, a nice touch to say the least.
We’re the supporters of the number one sport in the land, so why do the authorities want to treat us like shit? If it boils down to politics, I sure hope old bill listen in the CCS as the speakers play Yma O Hyd and Cymru Rydd. There’s no denying that the FAW knows the score to some extent. Noel Mooney and the FSA are already looking into this situation and that’s all we want.
We don’t cause trouble, we just want to be able to passionately support our country during what’s undeniably an unbelievable era to be Welsh. Is that a crime?