Why We Should Be Nice To The English

Financial advantage to the Swans.

I would guess that on average, every visiting supporter spends £15 to £20 – for the sake of argument, let’s say it is £17. Therefore ever 100 visiting fans brings in £1700. Multiply by 23 league games, plus say, 3 cup games, i.e. 26 home games total per season, and each 100 visiting fans over the season brings income to the club of £44,000. (I know that cup game income is split, but it doesn’t alter the basic figures much). So if we could average 200 visiting fans the income would be £88,000; 300 would be £132,000 and so on. Maybe with the advent of the new stadium, a target could be set to achieve an average of, say 500 visiting fans, providing an annual income of over £200,000. One point is that this income should be largely bottom line or clear profit, as overheads are not necessarily increased to cover visiting fans numbers, and if overheads hare increased somewhat, they are certainly not proportional to the extra numbers.

An additional point is that we as a Swans fan base, provide more income to our 3^rd Division competitors than they provide to us. In general, we take more fans to away grounds, than they bring to Swansea. Also, our entry prices, beer, food and programme prices are the lowest or amongst the lowest in the Nationwide League, so for every fan we take away, we provide extra income to competitive clubs compared to an away fan visiting Swansea. When we take 1,000 to Oxford, or somewhere like that we immediately pump £20,000 into a competitive club.

Therfore, my summary is that on purely financial grounds we should put out the red carpet treatment for visiting fans, encourage them to come next year, tell their friends and family members about the excellent welcome they receive and come back in larger numbers every year.

Financial advantage to Swansea and South West Wales

It is suprising how many local jobs depend on visitors, when you consider the numbers of us employed in retail, pub, hotel, restaurant, night club, tourist attractions, petrol stations, Council services, stewards, police, and so on. Every visiting fan is a potential customer for all these services and more. Each visiting supporter may be encouraged on future visits to bring family members who may not wish to see the football, but will go shopping or visit the beaches, etc. Also visiting fans may decide to come back for longer vacations, once they see what the area has to offer.

Swansea City FC place in the Nationwide League

I believe that the future for our club must be in the English Nationwide League/Premier League pyramid. I do not see much merit in being in any sort of Welsh League structure, or any sort of Celtic league that could be envisaged. If you do not agree with me on this point, then please miss out the rest of this section.

As an aside, although it is really none of my business, I fail to see why larger clubs in the North Wales, such as Bangor and Rhyl would not be better off in joining the English Pyramid like Conwy. I always thought the same about Barry Town, and maybe if they had moved to the Southern League structure several years back they would not now be in the desperate financial circumstances in which they currently find themselves. Not getting into politics here, but I see the main reason that Wales does not work as a political and economic unit is that the country is really two parts much more related to the nearby regions of England. South Wales is inextricably linked to the Bristol area and onwards via the M.4 corridor to London and the S.E. of England. The narrow populated coastal region of North Wales is even more so a part of the North West of England. It is often said with some truth that it is easier to get from Swansea to Burnley than Swansea to Bangor – perhaps is what Mr Flynn thought, but let’s not go down into that topic again.

Swansea and the other 5 “Anglo” clubs in Wales are in the English Pyramid for good historical reasons, which were recently well documented on Dai’s site, so don’t need reiterating here. However, we are there by invitation, which presumably could be removed at any time. There is also the nagging but distant worry that UEFA and FIFA, known for their odd and dictatorial rule, could one day, out of a blue sky, force us out of the English pyramid. However, more likely, although still a distant possibility is that the fans, owners and administrators of the English pyramid could one day chuck us out. Shear travel distance to Swansea has caused comment in recent years that some clubs would not be too sad to see us out of the League. Some of the comments are, of course, in jest, or banter as it seems to be called (although to me this word “banter”seems to cover all the worst excesses of rudeness, disrespect, parochialism, zenophobia and, even at times ing onto racism), but we do see comments of the sort from fans of our competing clubs: “If you hate England so much, why don’t you bog off to the Welsh League”. In my judgement, if you are a guest in someone’s house, you don’t dirty the carpet. I am not saying that we need to be subservient to our English “hosts”, but a bit of politeness might be a better option than “England’s full of sh@t”.

Making English home fans, players, officials, managers and their families welcome.

Following on from the comments in the last section. I don’t care what is said by the “its all banter and good clean fun” section of opinion. I cannot for the life of me see how anyone can doubt that a fair proportion of English home fans, our own players, plus many of our club staff and their families will be offended by the constant disrespect to their homeland and nationality that we hear at each game. Some if not most of them must be offended by the anti-English chants.

I mean by “English fans”, those of English origin who support the club because they have settled in the area or are temporarily here e.g. as students. If they support our club and are willing to pay the entrance fee, then we should make them welcome, no matter from where they originate. I have no idea of the current numbers, but I do know of some English fans, and indisputably there are a lot of English people living in Swansea at any one time.

In the sixties, most of our playing squad were local boys, but these days they are a minority. Even the many Irish and Scottish players from our past are a rarity these days, and a major part of out playing staff and their families are English.

Right now we have an English manager (albeit with strong Welsh associations) with an English wife and kids.

It has been stated many times that ALL referees and linesmen in the Nationwide League are English. It is only simple logic that some of these, at some time, will be influenced by a barrage of abuse of their home country and nationality. Even if some critical decisions per season go against us for this reason, is it worth the risk? The officials must be accustomed to abuse about their parentage, eyesight, honesty, etc, from home and away supporters wherever they go, but the only time they have their nationality abused is when they officiate in games with Welsh teams. And for those who say that the officials are too professional to be affected, they have been watching a different breed of lower league officials to the fairly incompetent bunch I have witnessed in recent years. It may be an urban myth, but there are too many reports for it to be untrue, that the Russian linesman who gave Geoff Hurst’s disputed goal at the 1966 World Cup, ran back to the middle muttering “Remember Stalingrad”.

They are Just Like Us.

This section may be more difficult for some to take as it is a bit of my philosophy, and is just an opinion. I accept that others may think differently.

I travel around the country with my work and I frequently end up watching football matches at various levels, including when I am lucky, Swans away matches. I usually try to speak to local football fans to see what makes them tick. Also, football is a good conversation topic even away from grounds, wherever one happens to be. Of course, a lot of people support Premiership teams. Even some of these supporters, who are from the locality of e.g. Manchester or Newcastle, are like us, but almost all the supporters of lower league clubs are JUST LIKE US. I happen to know very well some Hartlepool, Darlington, Tamworth, Nuneaton, Woking and Southend fans who, apart from the accents, are indistinguishable from Swans fans. Without these fans the whole structure of football would collapse. I see no reason to abuse them.

Respect and Welcome for the Traveller

Even more difficult to take for some. So I will not labour the subject about which I could write at length. Maybe it was being brought up in the Sandfields where, in the post war era, if it wasn’t real Glasgow style poverty, then it certainly was not the high life. Other fellow working class strugglers from any part of the country were welcomed. Class war perhaps, but we had more in common with the proletariat from Bristol and London than the rich landowners and businessmen of South Wales. My mam brought me up to have respect for other people. Having had to travel to earn a living most of my life, I have always been grateful for those who were not hostile to a traveller from afar.

Why not check out the latest Vetch Verdict on the BBC site?