IN ENGLAND’S Premiership this past weekend, Manchester United maintained a 100 per cent record and banked a record £3 million in gate money. At the top level in Wales, NEWI Cefn Druids celebrated their first league point and their biggest home crowd of the season — 205 being a marked improvement on the 60 who watched their previous game.
Those who acknowledge no life outside the Premiership and its glib millionaires may stop reading now, for this is a tale of a village and its football club struggling for survival in a changed world. Modern artificiality seems alien to Cefn. Celebrities don’t go there and the reality show is life itself.
Not that the Druids play at an insignificant level. Winning the Welsh Premier League is a passport to the Champions League and on Saturday evenings, especially if the pools coupon is light on games, James AlexanderGordon intones some beguiling names as he reads the results on Sport on Five.
There is Connah’s Quay Nomads, Airbus UK, Haverfordwest County and, until recently, Total Network Solutions, whose initials now stand for The New Saints. But it was Cefn Druids I listened out for, without ever knowing their history or even location.
The Druids turn out to be the oldest club in Wales. Formed in 1872 as an amalgamation of colliery and quarry teams in the hills south of Wrexham, they provided six players for the first Wales international side and were the first Welsh team to break into the FA Cup.
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The 19th century was Druids’ heyday. Thereafter, their history is as turbulent as the mining industry that sustained them until, in 1992, the two clubs then based in the village of Cefn Mawr joined forces.
The sponsorship of NEWI, a local college, came later. Druids are still known locally as “The Ancients”.
Cefn is coming to terms with being a monument to a lost past. Heritage Trail posters tell of the tramways, pits and quarries, the stately aqueduct and viaduct. They admit to the “terrible working conditions” but claim that the legacy was a “vibrant community”.
That community is still seeking an identity on an altered landscape. The village has an eerie feel out of hours, shutters on every shop. Overdue development is imminent with the continuing erection of Cefn Square, a sleek modern structure with a pavement cafe.
All that remains of the traditional industry is a chemical works, belching smoke from its dominant chimneys. At Plaskynaston Park, the colliery railway sidings that became the Druids ground, Spirit In The Sky pumps appropriately from a PA system manned by a stocky, grey-haired man.
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This is the club chairman, Brian Mackie, who works as a foreman at an engineering works but spends every spare hour doing every spare job for the Druids. In between making team announcements and putting on the music, Mackie leads a deputation of blazered directors to a scrubland hillock behind the goal, where they spend ten minutes peering behind bushes as if searching for lost balls.
It transpires that they are investigating the latest Druids crisis. Rabbits, an army of them, are emerging from their burrows to damage the pitch — not a problem they are familiar with at Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge.
The Druids are aiming to finish above the bottom six for the first time in the eight-year history of the Welsh Premier League, formerly the League of Wales, and have started poorly. They lost their first league game away to Bangor City 6-0, prompting Mackie to issue a public apology on the club website.
Mackie stays calm during the game, which is more than can be said for the Druids’ manager, Dixie McNeill. A former Wrexham player, McNeill looks ever more likely to combust as he berates his players and the officials through the long, stressful minutes.
Up on the few rows of terracing, just below the single turnstile, regular spectators are more sanguine. “It’s going to be a long, hard winter,” one said in long-suffering misery. “But you didn’t expect any bloody different, did you?” his friend retorted.
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Survival is the key word here. Druids play to average crowds of 180 and still have to find money to pay their players. “Our weekly wage bill can be £2,000,” Mackie said. And if that sounds a pittance, against Premiership individuals who can earn as much in a few hours, the money still has to come from somewhere.
“The history of this club is fantastic and we should probably play on it more,” the chairman said. “But they are all rough times. Balancing the books is the constant worry.”
As the final whistle sounds and the last Druids pies are served from the tea bar, spectators drift up the hill to the village. A desolate pub overlooks the ground, opposite it an offlicence, bravely called “The Enterprise”. Mackie and his men require plentiful supplies.
NEED TO KNOW
The game? Though the name has changed, Cefn Druids are the oldest football club in Wales
Who plays? Part-timers who are paid on a match basis
Who watches? Average gate in the Welsh Premier League is 268
Big event? The lure is Champions League qualification, as experienced by TNS
Weblink? cefndruids.co.uk