Swansea City: The Fall and Rise

This is Swansea.

Long before Nev and the Call Centre hit the headlines,

the talk of the town was their extraordinary football team.

Swansea City Football Club play in the richest league in the world.

The games are watched by billions,

and they are managed by a superstar.

But only ten years ago,

this club was in such a mess it was sold for just £1,

and nearly disappeared altogether.

Everybody realised this was the start of things

that might see the end of our club.

It was almost like someone dying.

You could feel your club and part of your life being ripped away

from you, and there was nothing you could do about it.

This is the story of a group of fans

who refused to give up on their club...

This is our club,

and it's that important that we have got to actually do something.

..and how they took it from rock bottom all the way to the very top.

COMMENTATOR: 'Third goal Swansea City!'

'Oh, they can start planning their trips to the Premier League now!'

South Wales - a working-class area built on industry and poetry.

But now football has become its most lucrative export,

with two Premier League teams.

Swansea City play here at the Liberty Stadium.

But just three miles away lay the remains of the Vetch Field,

the club's previous home.

Only a few traces of it remain these days,

but 30 years ago, this was the place to be.

MUSIC: "Hair Of The Dog" by Nazareth

In the late 1970s, Swansea City

were led by an ambitious young player-manager, John Toshack.

# Heart-breaker, soul-shaker

# I've been told about you. #

The team was made up of gifted local players like Alan Curtis.

It was an unbelievable time to be playing at the club,

and I think we probably fulfilled everybody's dreams and ambitions.

Fans watched in awe as Toshack's team got promoted not once,

but twice in a row.

COMMENTATOR: 'The Swans are promoted for the second successive season.'

'It'll be Division Two next season.'

John Toshack, you came on again, and you did it again.

That's right. There were a few people sweating there.

I don't know what all the fuss was about, really.

And it didn't stop there. In the following season,

they were on the brink of reaching

the top division of English football.

COMMENTATOR: 'Oh, and it's gone in!'

'And Swansea get a stroke of luck just when they needed it.'

'The Welsh club now need three points from their remaining two matches

'to become a first division club for the first time in their history.'

You just knew it was almost destiny that we were going to get promoted,

simply because I don't think we'd have been allowed

back into the city if we'd have failed.

'Now Robbie James with space.'

'Charles!'

LOUD CHEERING

'That's surely the First Division signed, sealed and delivered!'

On May 2nd 1981, they made it. Promotion to Division One.

Were we rock stars?

We obviously enjoyed our status, so to speak,

but some of the boys were boozing more than others.

And if it was a big deal for the players,

for the city, it was a dream come true.

I can assure you that this is only the start!

CHEERING

And in their first season, it just got better and better.

'Terry's with him.'

'Oh, what a sidestep!'

'What a shot, and what a goal!'

We went up to Arsenal and beat them.

I think we beat United at home, we beat Spurs at home.

We beat them all that season.

'Leighton James.'

'A wild challenge from Wilkins.'

'And Bailey, and yes!'

'No, on the line, but put in by Robbie James!'

But what nobody expected after their spectacular rise

was an even more dramatic fall.

'Dalglish.'

'Off the chest to Johnston!'

After just two seasons at the top, Swansea were relegated.

'Oh, it hit the post, and then went in off the goalkeeper!'

'It's really quite astonishing to see Swansea in one of the

'relegation places after four years of almost continuous success.'

'So, what's gone wrong?'

They were losing games, and then lost their inspirational manager.

I've lost a little bit of the spark that I had before.

Supporters had tasted success,

but their moment in the sun had been brief.

For lifelong fans, like Anne and Nigel Gigg,

Toshack's glorious era was over.

We can't keep him on his previous results.

We've got to move forward, and there's problems at the club,

and it's always the managers' heads that roll.

If the players wouldn't play for him,

there's not really a lot of point in him staying.

You almost felt as if, "Did it happen?"

then, because it disappeared all so quickly.

You know, we were falling down through the divisions,

and there was no money.

-There wasn't the structure in place, was there?

-No.

At the end of the day.

If their time at the top had been exciting and glamorous,

the next 15 years would be a little bit different.

MUSIC: "Mile End" by Pulp

# We didn't have nowhere to live

# We didn't have nowhere to go

# Till someone said

# "I know this place off Burditt Road" #

The fans had become accustomed to life in the lower leagues,

and watched as manager after manager came and went with limited success.

-'Can I ask why you're resigning?'

-'No.'

-'Is it a case of not enough money for the players?'

-'No.'

15 managers in the next 17 years,

from superstar John Toshack,

to former Cradley Town youth manager Kevin Cullis.

To have tasted success and then go back to it, it was hard,

but unfortunately, football's in your blood,

you can't walk away from it, so you've got to stick with it,

and you just think it's your lot in life, then, to support a side

that you're probably just grateful that you've had some success.

'Swansea City in fifth place play Tranmere at home,

'needing to make the most of this kind of chance if they're

'to have hopes of at least a play-off position.'

My granddaughter used to come with me.

She was a season ticket-holder then, and I used to say to her,

"It does get better than this," but she never believed me.

She used to say, "It's awful!"

To go to games was a sense of duty, as much as anything,

and just to meet your friends there.

Quite often, you'd turn up on a Saturday,

and not even realise until an hour before kick-off

who you were playing, because the previous few games could have been

so dire that you'd tried to switch off to it, but you'd still

turn up every game, because that's what you do as a football fan.

You turn up to see your team.

The supporters had stayed loyal through the good times

and the years of mediocrity,

but what happened next would threaten to end their club forever.

In 2001, Swansea City were still struggling in the bottom division.

Things were bad on the pitch...

..but off it, they were even worse.

Crippled by huge debts and looking for someone to take them forward,

the club was sold to a new owner for just £1.

Swansea's new chairman has urged supporters to give him

more time to solve the club's financial problems.

Tony Petty also warns that more cuts might be needed

to pull the club around.

The fans were used to their club changing managers, but what

they weren't prepared for were cutbacks at the heart of the team.

The new chairman's first move

was to sack seven of their highest-paid players.

It was a decision that made business sense,

but fans feared this was the beginning of the end.

It was almost like someone dying.

You could feel your club and part of your life just being ripped

away from you, and there was nothing you could do about it.

It was horrible.

He was holding our football club, and he could crush it at any time

if he wanted to, and I think that was the worst.

It was frightening, really.

Tony Petty's actions also alarmed former players like Mel Nurse,

who had been involved with the football club since the early 1950s,

and was now a director.

We were going to get relegated out of the Football League,

we were going to end up like Newport and Wrexham and everybody else.

That's not what I want.

I want Newport, Wrexham, Cardiff, Swansea, everybody to progress.

I want us to be all in the league, football leagues,

but they were going to take us out of the league.

I couldn't accept that.

Feeling like they had to do something,

fans joined together to voice their frustrations.

They called themselves the Supporters' Trust.

There was a group of fans,

I think they called us the Internet Warriors.

The club weren't happy with them,

because obviously we were delving into the business of what was

going on, and we could see then that there were problems.

To be fair to him, in one way,

he did what any normal company would do.

He had to make redundancies from his higher-paid staff,

which were the footballers,

but as everybody knows, you can't do that,

And that really galvanised the support,

and people then looked to the Supporters' Trust to join, and saw that

that perhaps was the avenue we were going to need to remove him.

Support for the Trust began to grow, and the movement to remove

the chairman spilled out onto the streets.

CROWD: 'We want Petty out! Say we want Petty out!'

'We want Petty out! Say we want Petty out!'

'We want Petty out! Say we want Petty out!'

'We want Petty out! Say we want Petty out!'

'We want Petty out! Say we want Petty out!'

It galvanised supporters into thinking, you know,

this is our club. This is something that we've got to have a stake in,

and it's that important that we have got to actually do something.

'If anybody says, "Is there a future for Swansea City Football Club?",

'let the message be loud and clear. Yes, yes, yes. Swansea till I die.'

'This club will never die, whatever Mr Petty tries to do to us.'

Anger was also building in the terraces.

I think it was Rushden & Diamonds, and I remember him

being in the directors' box,

and this is just hearsay that came from the steward,

and he could see the North Bank starting to inch forward

towards the front of the stand, and he actually turned to them and said,

"Are they actually going to come over and onto the pitch?",

And the steward said, "Oh, definitely. They're getting ready."

And he was gone.

He was out of that directors' box

and underneath the stand straight away!

You're never going to condone violence,

but the intimidation towards Tony Petty was what made him

realise his time was up,

and he had to get what he could as quickly as he could and get out.

'Let's be honest.'

'The fans don't particularly want me here

'a minute longer than this takes.'

'As far as I'm concerned,

'if I can get a deal done in the next 24 hours, then so be it.'

With Petty seeking a way out,

the Supporters' Trust believed there was only one way forward.

They needed to find new owners, people like themselves,

ordinary fans who loved the club.

After four months of battling to save their club,

Mel Nurse led a consortium of fans and local businessmen,

and they struck a deal to buy Swansea City.

I have some very good news to announce

to the supporters of Swansea City Football Club.

It was now owned by local people,

and the Supporters' Trust was part of the management.

But there was a problem.

The new board had no experience

of running a professional football club.

Just had the phone call to say it's been done, we've got the club,

and it was a question of, "All right, OK, so what do we do now?"

We've got to go down there tomorrow and actually go in there

and see what there is and what's going on.

It was a mess, absolute mess.

There was no time for planning or looking for any other route

in order to help you out.

You had to get on with it

and make sure the club tried to move on from that period straight away.

None of us had ever run a football club, and it's totally different from any other business.

Personally, I'd never done marketing or anything

commercial in my life before, so to say,

"Right, you're in charge of that, and Huw, you're in charge

"of football, and Dave, you're in charge of administration."

"Dawn, you do the accounts."

Loved doing it, mind.

You are owning or running your own football club that you've

supported all your lives.

The new owners may have been living the dream,

but reality soon hit home.

They were running the club on a shoestring,

and the team was losing games.

They were in real danger of being relegated

out of the Football League.

The squad was poor, very poor, and within about a month,

I informed the board that, basically, we needed a new team.

So we had to build a team within two months, which we did.

Without the money to spend on big signings,

they had to find other ways to strengthen the team.

Leon Britton joined the club on loan from Premier League club West Ham,

where he'd been frustrated at not playing in the first team.

I didn't know nothing about Swansea.

Not just the place, but, if I'm honest, the football team.

I didn't know too much about the history of the football club.

I just remember the M4 taking ages.

It was like a never-ending road, and you get down to Port Talbot

and you glance over on the left-hand side, and you're thinking,

"Where the hell am I?"

Alongside Britton, they recruited Roberto Martinez,

a creative midfielder with an eye for attractive, attacking football.

Brian Flynn told me, "I've got an incredible challenge.

"We need to stay in the division, we need to keep the professional status

"in a club like Swansea City, and I want to do it playing football."

For me, that was enough.

The challenge I always had in my head that you could be

successful in those leagues, playing football.

They would also draw on local talent.

James Thomas had been playing for Premier League side Blackburn,

but had made the decision to come home.

If you ask any professional footballer,

at some stage in their career, they'd all like to play

for their hometown club, and I was fortunate enough to do that.

I think it was an 80% pay cut at the time I had to take,

but like I said, I always wanted to play for Swansea,

and I think it was heart ruling head.

As the season drew to a close, with the threat of relegation

hanging over them, the makeshift team started to bond.

It was a feeling of togetherness, and we spent a lot of time together.

After training, where we'd go together to have a meal,

then we would have a coffee.

The lads all used to go and eat at a Spanish restaurant -

obviously Roberto's choice -

so we all used to go there after training, and a lot of us

had come from different areas.

It was a lot of new players had come in, and we all kind of clicked

straight away and got on, and the team spirit was so good.

But despite their best efforts, with one game of the season remaining,

they were still near the bottom of the table.

They had to win or would face dropping out of the Football League

for the first time in their 91-year history.

It was a match that nobody wanted to miss, whatever the cost.

I wasn't going to miss the game, really.

Pull a sickie, I'll go down and it'll be OK, and got my ticket.

As you can see, I was third in line, on the paper.

Didn't actually know until the next day, when I went into work,

of course, and they presented that to me in work!

So you lost your job because of Swansea City?

Basically, yeah.

-It was worth it.

-It was worth it.

I wasn't going to miss the Hull game,

and that was the end of it, really.

After years of facing uncertainty off the pitch,

the future of the club now came down to the players.

The football club was on the verge of dropping out of the Football League

for the first time in the club's history,

and you could go to the local supermarket, your local shop,

get your hair cut, people were talking about it, the Hull game.

"You can't lose. The Swans can't go down."

You almost felt ill, you felt sick and ill.

You just couldn't take it all in, really.

We didn't know what happened past Saturday at five o'clock, because we

hadn't thought about what happened past Saturday at five o'clock.

Alan Curtis, who'd been there for the good times, and was now

one of the coaches, reminded the players what was at stake.

When someone like Curt speaks, you know,

he's a legend at this football club. He's been here literally forever.

He got everyone in a huddle,

and he basically just laid it on the line, you know.

Those emotions all came out.

He just said, "Look, you need to realise how much this means,

"this game today, how much it means for the fans, the supporters,

"the city, the staff."

I just felt as if I had to portray what it meant to everybody.

What the club meant to everybody, because if we'd have gone down

and I'd not said anything, then I would never have forgiven myself.

'It's difficult to enjoy occasions like this.'

'There's just too much at stake.'

'A city, a nation, hold their breath,

'because Swansea City's fight for survival is under way.'

I experienced feelings during that game that I've never,

ever had before, and I don't think I'll ever have.

It was absolutely packed.

I remember the North Bank, how could anyone breathe in there?

Everyone was squashed in, and the atmosphere was just unbelievable.

It was a rainy, wet day, as well, a bit miserable,

but you could feel the nervous tension in the stadium as well.

3pm at the Vetch.

Win or bust.

'Britton, in midfield. Slips past one challenge, and another.'

'Comes wide to the nearside, the Swansea right. Martinez is inside.'

'Britton, does a little step over. Into the box he goes. Still going.'

'Down! Penalty!'

In the stand, lifelong fan Nigel Gigg

was watching the game with his daughters.

They were always emotional about the football anyway,

but I didn't think they would react the way they did react at the game.

'James Thomas, with Swansea's survival in mind.'

Watch it!

I can't!

Watch with me, watch with me.

I can't!

'Left-footed, up he comes, and scores!'

Yes! Yes! Yes!

'That's the first step to survival!'

Local boy James Thomas had put the Swans ahead,

but Hull came back fighting, scoring two goals.

'Hull are pressing again. Mistake by Michael Howard this time.'

'Reeves is in, chips Cutler, and that's in the back of the net!'

'And has Martin Reeves put Swansea in the Conference?'

I will always remember that after we went 2-1 down,

the silence in the crowd was incredible.

It was like a real feeling of fear.

The two fullbacks, at that time, they were even close to crying,

because they felt that they made mistakes

where they could have incredible implications.

'Thomas tries to come inside. That's a penalty. It's a penalty!'

'That's the second, handball, and Swansea have got a lifeline.'

'A minute before half-time.'

'James Thomas, for the second time, steps up, left-footed, scores!'

'There is life for Swansea City!'

Swansea had built a fragile lead. Now they needed to finish the job.

The ball broke, and I'd already scored two in the game,

I was confident, and when you're confident,

you tend not to really think about things, and the first thing

that came into my mind was, "He's off the line, chip him."

'James Thomas is through!'

'Thomas against the keeper, chips him!'

'Oh, yes!'

'Superb goal by James Thomas!'

'The hat-trick for Thomas,

'and it's his hat-trick that could ensure survival for Swansea City!'

'To see it hit the back of the net was just unbelievable.'

You couldn't wish for a better goal.

That was a surviving goal that kept us in the league.

As soon as that fourth goal went in,

you just sensed that Hull were going away on their summer holidays.

There was no way they were going to get two goals back, and I think

then we started to enjoy ourselves a bit for the rest of the day.

'There is the final whistle!'

'Swansea City will stay in the Football League.'

'They needed three points for survival. They have got them.'

'We have the crowd invasion.'

It was a great moment.

I think, suddenly, all the pressure just relented,

and all the weight on the shoulders were lifted.

It was just such a relief. You could feel it in the whole stadium.

The end story was Roy Of The Rovers material, wasn't it?

James Thomas, Swansea boy, scores a hat-trick.

I had my shirt ripped off me by the fans, my shorts, as well.

All I was left with was my socks.

You knew that was a turning point at the football club.

First because it was a wake-up call,

it was the moment to get everyone together,

and probably just to realise that something special would come

out of that, because we were very, very close

to making it nearly impossible for the football club.

They'd survived. Just.

But the impact of the win had left a lasting impression.

Leon Britton had to return to West Ham,

but now had no doubt about where he belonged.

I didn't want to go back there, after the experience I had

at Swansea, and go back to reserve team football. That was it.

I wanted to go out and play on Saturday at three o'clock

in the Football League, so I felt I owed Swansea.

They're the ones that gave me the opportunity, so I had to give them,

you know, something back,

because they're the ones who took the chance on me.

For James Thomas, the Hull game would be the end of the road.

Struggling with injuries, he would bow out of football.

It was so frustrating, because every day in training and playing I was

in pain with my knee, and not able to get to the level that I could before.

I got a bit disillusioned with the game, really,

and I just wanted to take a backwards step, and I didn't watch

any of the Swans' games or anything for a couple of years after.

As Thomas retired, the team gradually began to improve.

New heroes emerged, and old ones returned.

Leon Britton came back, this time on a permanent deal.

And in the boardroom, the owners were learning how to run

a successful football club.

It probably took us a little bit of time to realise,

if we're going to do this properly,

that we had to rule with our heads, and not our hearts.

In 2005, they were promoted out of the bottom division.

'It has finished here, and the Swansea City fans

'are flooding onto the pitch. Swansea are promoted.'

'They move to a new home with a higher level of football. Job done.'

The club was going in the right direction,

and moved to a new home, the Liberty Stadium.

But now they faced a new problem.

In League One, they would be up against big-money teams

with a powerful, physical style.

Swansea didn't have the money to buy those type of players,

so they would have to find another way to compete.

They turned to former player Roberto Martinez.

Untested as a manager, he believed Swansea could take on the big clubs

by playing a passing style of football,

something rarely seen in the lower leagues.

We had to try and do something different,

because other clubs probably had more financial backing

behind them, and we had to find a way of doing something different.

Huw had spoken to him at length over the years, we all had,

and his philosophy on how he felt it should be played had struck

a chord with us, I think.

I knew players that, technically, were very, very gifted,

and they could play in that manner, so everything was ready for me

to make that commitment, and obviously, Huw Jenkins,

as a young chairman, a young board of directors,

they would be supportive and they would be patient with the changes,

because when you push drastic changes, it takes time.

Martinez believed the Swans had huge potential,

and wasted no time in putting his new style of play into practice.

It was all about passing the ball and being comfortable with it,

not being afraid to accept the ball in all areas of the park.

We went from having an average of 120 passes a game

to start getting 300 passes

and trying to build that up to 800 passes that we got in certain games.

At the start, it is a bit nerve-wracking

when you're being asked to get it off the keeper as a midfielder,

and you make a mistake, and you're thinking the easy option is

just to play a long ball and you're not in trouble then, but I think

he kept on banging on that we've got to play this way, and he backed us,

and we all believed in what he wanted to do, and that's the main thing.

You need a group of players that believe in what the manager wants.

Slowly but surely, the team began to click.

'Britton has the ball. Inside to Bauza. He's found Scotland.'

'Inside the penalty area, Jason Scotland.'

'He's got Bauza in the middle, and it's there!'

'Swansea City, five points clear now at the top of League One, as they

'close in on Championship football for the first time in two decades.'

Roberto, obviously, as a manager, took it on leaps and bounds.

With Roberto, we'd score four if they'd scored three.

'Robinson. Oh, this is superb from Swansea. Scotland, Bauza, 2-0!'

After just one season in charge,

Martinez took the team to the second tier of English football.

'Swansea are back in the Championship!'

'They're there for the first time in 24 years!'

For the first time since the Toshack years, the Swans were on a roll.

How can you have a day like this without talking to the

Swansea legend that is Alan Curtis?

Alan, I know you've done it all in football...

CROWD CHEER

-Can you ever get tired of days like this?

-No, you can't.

It's been 24 long years, and thankfully,

we're back where we are, and hopefully we can push on again.

The team loved the new way of playing,

but some fans weren't still convinced.

We celebrated the League One title in record-breaking style.

I will always remember the parade that we had around the city.

I had a fan following the bus saying, "Next season, 4-4-2!"

So even then, there was a real difficulty in trying

to get everyone to understand what we were trying to do.

'Sinclair, right-footed. Chance. Dribbles past one, then another.'

'Comes to Moore. Sinclair again! Brilliant goal by Swansea City!'

The Martinez style had attracted admirers,

and he would leave to manage in the Premier League,

but, crucially, his philosophy would remain.

Now any manager coming to the Liberty Stadium

would have to buy in to this kind of football.

'Great passing by Swansea. Bauza, teeing up Scotland, and Gomez!'

You have to find the person

who genuinely believes in the way we do things.

They need to be able to play what our fans expect now.

Our fans expect to play that type of football,

and they allow a manager to do it.

Historically, Swansea have a really, really poor record of not retaining

managers for any length of time, the turnover of managers.

And the turnover of managers has carried on over the last ten years,

but we've become the exception to the rule,

and the turnover of the managers has actually improved the

performance of the club, and that's really, really unusual in football.

It just doesn't happen, when you lose managers and the club improves.

By 2011, under manager Brendan Rodgers, Swansea had climbed

towards the top of the table.

'It's Leon Britton! Where did that come from? Where did that come from?'

They were now on the brink of a return

to the top league of English football.

'Pratley, from distance, and it will go all the way into the Forest goal!'

'Swansea City have a third!'

'The Swans are going to the Championship play-off final!'

'They're going to Wembley Stadium!'

I've been at the club for quite a while and seen a lot of lows,

but recently we've had a few promotions, and to get to the

Premiership would be a dream come true for a lot of the lads.

Incredibly, the club, which at its lowest point was sold for a pound,

would be involved in a game worth 90 million,

a play-off for a place in the Premier League.

'All roads lead to Wembley for Swansea City fans,

'ahead of the game which could bring Premier League football to Wales.'

'Swansea manager Brendan Rodgers says today's game could be

'a once-in-a-lifetime chance to secure Premier League football.'

We had a group of about 20 people, family and friends,

people who sit by us at the Liberty, and we were all together there,

And I think most of us were crying by the time we left Swansea.

Yes, we were, weren't we?

I wasn't!

It was a special moment for all of us,

because there was a lot of players together in that group

who'd been on the journey for five or six years,

and we'd all done it together, and it made it that bit more special.

Among the thousands of Swansea supporters was one fan

who'd played his part in getting the club to Wembley.

I work for the Welsh Ambulance Service.

It's something I never thought I'd see myself doing ten years ago,

when I lobbed that ball over the Hull keeper.

I went to the play-off final, and it was unbelievable.

It's nice to follow the Swans now as a supporter,

rather than a player, now.

The fact that we were actually in that game

doesn't seem real at the time.

Because we've all come from the background, you know,

that ten or 12 years ago.

If beating Hull had been about survival,

the play-off final was about fulfilling a dream.

'Dyer turns in the box.'

'Khizanishvili gets a foot in.'

'Penalty, Swansea City!'

'Scott Sinclair has taken the responsibility to give

'Swansea City first blood in this Championship play-off final.'

'Sinclair hits it, sends Federici the wrong way!'

'Swansea City lead by a goal to nil!'

'And this is Dobbie, breaking into the penalty area, right-hand side.'

'It's Scott Sinclair again!'

'It's 2-0 Swansea City!'

'Two goals in a minute!'

When the Swans were at Wembley,

I was in Swansea Hospital with my wife.

Everybody in the hospital was running up

and down the corridors, whoa! Jumping and shouting!

I could tell how the result was going

by the way people were behaving.

'Dyer attacks,

'goes down the right-hand side, slides in the cross.'

'Third goal, Swansea City!'

'Oh, they can start planning their trips to the Premier League now!'

3-0 up at half-time,

the fans couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Swansea never do anything easy, and you think,

"Well, for once in our lives, we're going to win a game easily."

But, of course, us two were standing at half-time going,

"Three's not enough!"

And they were right. Reading fought back.

'Corner for Reading.'

'Mills' header! It's 3-2!'

'It's game on again!'

'And no, it's not so simple for Swansea City.'

That's probably the closest I've ever come to questioning,

"Do I really want to support this football club?"

Because had we not won that game,

I honestly don't think I could have gone back.

Devastated.

I couldn't imagine going back the following season.

But this wasn't like the old times.

The Swans would finish the job.

Just like against Hull, they would win 4-2.

As the clock ticked towards the final whistle,

directors Leigh Dineen and Martin Morgan

knew the club was about to change forever.

There were 90 seconds to go, and I said, "It's finished, now."

"It's never finished," he said.

"It's £1 million a second for the next 90 seconds,"

he was screaming, and I remember that, and then when

the whistle went, he just suddenly thought, "We're here now."

"That's not going to be taken away."

"We're going to go to the Premier League."

"We're going to go and enjoy it."

'Swansea City are soaring into the Premiership!'

'Eight years after almost falling through the Football League trapdoor,

'they've marched through the gateway

'to the fame and fortune of the promised land!'

It took Swansea City 28 years

to return to the top league of English football.

But the journey really started ten years ago, when,

at their lowest ebb, supporters, players and managers came together

to keep the club alive.

Swansea City is not a normal football club.

You really get attached to it.

Once you get involved, you're involved forever, and from

a distance, you can be extremely proud of their achievements,

and the players that were involved that day, to see

players like Leon Britton that they've been through everything

for our football club, and with that football club, is phenomenal.

After joining on loan a decade ago,

Leon Britton continues to play for the Swans.

Alan Curtis, who first played for Swansea over 40 years ago,

is still with the club and is part of the coaching team.

The board have continued their policy of finding managers

who fit their philosophy of how to play the game.

They are now managed by one of the world's greatest ever players,

Michael Laudrup.

In their darkest days, they could only afford bargain players.

Now they are breaking club records with multi-million-pound signings.

What they have achieved continues to win admirers.

People have said in previous years about teams coming up

and being like a breath of fresh air.

This is a team that can play, and they play the right way,

and it's amazing what you can do with a group of players,

with the right coaching and get them playing together as a team.

That's the icing on the cake, isn't it?

To listen to all the tributes from the great and the good of football,

talking about the Swansea way of playing,

and you pinch yourself, sometimes.

They've gone from a team, ten years ago, fighting for survival,

and now, all of a sudden, they're talking about us competing

with Manchester United, Manchester City, and all these people.

And outplaying them. Lord alive!

In 2013, they won the League Cup.

Now, for the first time in two decades,

they will play against some of Europe's finest teams

in the Europa League.

The first major trophy ever in the history of this club,

so it's a huge achievement.

The club is still owned and run by the fans.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd