Bluebirds and Swans

At either end of this 40 mile stretch of road are two cities.

Two neighbours that have a history forged by coal, steel and rugby.

He may well get there! And he has!

But now, their football clubs are leading the way.

Cardiff City and Swansea City play in the richest

league in the world, where winning and pride are everything.

It's a chance for us to confirm that we are the capital city.

It's first city and second city.

It's the feeling that maybe you are 40 miles down the M4

and 40 miles away from anybody's consideration.

And now they are set to meet on the biggest stage.

To a football fan it means everything.

Complete passion.

This is a story of respect. And the fight to be the top club in Wales.

The derby game is a leveller.

But behind the glare of the floodlights is a darker tale.

A bitter rivalry between fans, which spilled over into violence.

INDISTINCT SHOUTS

Hate is not a nice word to use but, yeah, I'm afraid that it is.

It is the story of how both clubs dragged themselves

out of a troubled past, and took their fans into a bright new future.

It is THE game.

In less than a weeks' time, Cardiff City

and Swansea City will play each other for the first

time in the English Premier League -

the most watched football league in the world.

With a global audience of 4.7 billion,

it will be one of the biggest ever sporting events to be held in Wales.

It's amazing that you've got two Welsh clubs now who,

on 3rd November, are going to be on a prime-time 4.00 slot

on Sunday afternoon, being beamed to 220 countries all around the world.

I think the Assembly Government are realising the power of football,

and what that can do to raise the profile of the country.

It's certainly going to put Wales on the map.

It's going to surpass anything we've known, really.

When we got promoted, one of the first messages

I had was from Lee, saying,

"Welcome to the Premier League. Now the fun starts."

It started when we were playing an audience that covered Wales.

Then as the clubs went through the divisions, it covered all of the UK.

Now this one in the Premier League.

It's going to be a worldwide audience.

It's all about, first and foremost, not losing.

And if you can win, all the better.

But thought of losing that game is absolutely awful.

The first of the two games will take place in Cardiff.

I can't stand the derbies

because they generally have a good record at our ground, Swansea.

I just wish we could not play them but finish above them in the table.

These old rivals have a history that spans a century.

Lord Ninian - an MP who gave his name to Cardiff's former ground,

Ninian Park - led a battalion from Swansea during the First World War.

After the war, football grew in popularity.

Swansea reached the FA Cup semifinal in 1926.

And by 1927, Cardiff had captured the most famous cup of all.

There was pride in both teams.

And the evidence suggests that a lot of Swansea fans went to

Wembley in 1927 to support Cardiff.

There are reports of Cardiff narrowly missing relegation

one season in the '30s.

When it was announced at the Vetch, there were cheers and applause.

Ivor Allchurch shoots. It's a goal!

I don't think you got it, you know.

The fans would turn up to games and stand next to each other.

A little bit of banter, but there was nothing more than that.

Cardiff's FA Cup win was the biggest achievement for South Wales

football in the early 20th century.

In 1964, Swansea had another stunning FA Cup run,

beating Stoke and the mighty Liverpool.

They made the semifinal, but lost narrowly to Preston,

breaking the hearts of the 30,000 Swansea fans.

Cup success was sporadic but infectious.

Clark! Yes!

And by 1971, Europe's most famous club, Real Madrid,

would fall in the Welsh capital.

In the domestic league,

the Bluebirds fiercest rivals were a team from across the River Severn.

Bristol City were the big opposition and the local rivalry.

I even once came down with my father to watch Swansea in a league game.

To support them. I try not to think about it too much now but...

Because they were just a side we never played,

other than in the Welsh Cup.

A star of Welsh football at the time was John Toshack.

One of Cardiff's greatest players who found fame at Liverpool.

But when he came back to Wales, it wasn't to his hometown club.

He headed for Swansea,

where he would become the greatest player-manager in their history.

It's rumoured that Tosh offered to come here first

and Cardiff turned him down. And we all know his history.

He went to them in the Fourth Division and took them to the First.

Toshack wanted to come back to Cardiff

and then manager Jimmy Andrews wouldn't take him

because he felt he was going to be a threat to his own position.

And so, Tosh went down the road

and took Swansea from the Fourth Division to the First Division.

The equivalent of the Premier League now.

And unfortunately, we were on the slide the other way.

Toshack's Swansea were now the hottest property in Welsh football.

John Toshack, you came on again and you did it again. That's right, yes.

A few people sweating there.

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

One of the stars of Toshack's team was David Giles, who had

gone from the blue of his hometown club to the white of Swansea.

Playing for Swansea against Cardiff, it was hard really.

Cos I'm a Cardiff boy.

But I was a Swansea City footballer, being paid by Swansea,

and I had to do my best.

In 1980 Swansea and Cardiff were set to

play against each other for the first time in 15 years.

This was THE most eagerly awaited game in the calendar.

And more than 21,000 would squeeze into the Vetch

just to say they were there.

And the nature of the derby was changing,

it was getting serious, uncompromising, hostile.

When he got off the coach, it was like banks of people.

You'd have to walk through people,

and they're all tapping you on the shoulder, wishing you the best.

And then you'd noticed the Cardiff side coming through,

and I knew all the boys in the Cardiff team as well.

And I spoke to one or two of them, or tried to.

But then a couple Swans went,

"Hey, hey, that's the opposition, you don't speak to them.

"Not now, after the game."

Half the crowd was Cardiff, half the crowd was Swansea.

Two ex-Cardiff players scored for Swansea.

One of them was in the last minute.

David Giles scored a last-minute winner in a 2-1 defeat for us.

And that was the day where there was a lot of trouble.

Running back to the halfway line

and looking at the Cardiff fans on the far end.

you realise,

"Oh, I think I've upset him here. I'd better keep quiet."

The player said, "Hey, Giley, you'll have to go out the back.

"You better not go through the front."

So I borrowed somebody's coat.

Walking out with a couple of players, I just put the coat over my head.

The rivalry was changing. And Wales was changing too.

Unemployment and strikes marred much of the '80s.

And the unrest caused by the miners' strike

moved from the pits to the pitch and onto the terraces.

As society deindustrialised,

there was a disillusionment, an alienation.

An enormous element of our identity in Wales has been stripped from us.

You know, we were heavy industry. We had a key role in global terms.

We gloried in the fact we produced the best steel,

the best coal and so on.

All this kind of identity has gone and we're left with football.

COMMENTATOR: Now Robbie James, with space. Charles...

That's surely the First Division signed, sealed...

Meanwhile, Swansea had gone from strength to strength

and were promoted to the top division. This was dreamland.

I can assure you that this is only the start.

But for some Cardiff fans, it was a nightmare scenario.

It was a sense of injustice. "This should be us," you know.

This should be Toshack coming home to his home club

and, you know, it should be us.

So there was an anger about Cardiff's board and chairman at the time.

It was typical of us to sort of, you know, allow this to happen.

The jealousy aspects from Cardiff fans got involved

because Cardiff have always been perceived as Wales' number one club.

We think we are.

But for them to rise up the tables,

that was a bitter pill for people to swallow.

Swansea's top league status would be short-lived, and as the decade

wore on, both Swans and Bluebirds slid down the football league,

colliding with each other along the way, with ugly consequences.

Big trouble at games I saw was in '87,

the second game of the season that we were in Cardiff.

There was one guy on crutches. He was fighting with his crutches.

And the police didn't have much control that day.

The corner between the Bob Bank and the Grange End stand,

they had kept a free area

and the police had divided the fans apart.

There was one policeman in the no man's land in-between.

And the fans attacked the policeman.

I remember saying a prayer.

From a police background, you know, we've got to protect our police.

I thought his time had come. They were kind of horrible days.

If you followed Cardiff in the old Fourth Division,

there wasn't much football to appreciate.

So I think the...erm...

the violence came naturally.

And in 1988, there was

one incident that is still talked about to this day.

The skirmish had spilled onto the beach there on Swansea Bay,

and some Cardiff fans apparently retreated into the sea,

hence the "swim away" song that Swansea sing at Cardiff.

And, ever since, some Swans fans and players have

mocked their players with a swim away goal celebration.

A dark moment remembered with light humour.

It's a myth!

LAUGHTER

It's a myth! It's a myth.

It is probably best left as a myth, I think!

To do that to the other fans, obviously, winds them up instantly.

Of course, what you do then is make yourself an instant legend with your own fans, you know.

Back down the M4, Cardiff fans would revel in a gesture

of their own, a badge of honour known as the Ayatollah.

It was at the time of the Ayatollah Khomeini passing away in Iran.

It was seen all across British television with mourners

hitting their heads, you know. Bereavement, that was how they coped.

A band called U Thant, a Welsh-speaking punk band,

and they were fanatical Cardiff fans.

And they went to an away game and they dressed as Arabs

and hit their heads like what they must have seen on television.

CROWD CHEERING

The whole Ayatollah dimension,

there's not many football teams where the goalkeeper is asked to

do the Ayatollah even if the other team are attacking or the manager's

asked to do it even as he is arguing with the fourth official.

And as those rituals caught on,

the South Wales derby ended its darkest era.

1991 in the FA Cup down there,

it was famously the great line that Cardiff fans caused more

damage in an afternoon than the Luftwaffe managed in three days in Swansea.

It was kind of seen as things had gone too far.

I think a lot of people were saying that Cardiff-Swansea was literally

the most vicious derby in Britain, if not the world.

I mean, there was trouble every single game.

In 1993, violence between the two sets of supporters reached

a brutal tipping point.

We treated Swansea fans really kind and gave them

Block A in the Grandstand, or Block F in the Grandstand at Ninian Park.

And, unfortunately, they ended up wrecking it.

I had been to Ninian Park on many occasions.

That night was a completely different environment.

There was no women there in the Swans' support at all

and there was nobody over 40 and under 18.

It was a mass of probably 1,500 Swans fans who...

Yeah.

There was seats and anything being thrown, and that is the dark,

dark days of the derby.

There was families and that involved, which the

authorities, they frowned upon. People went to prison for that.

Quite worrying for me was, my wife was there.

So, if you can imagine, you are being professional about your job

and you're playing, and I have to say, I had one eye on that Grandstand.

Ninian Park and been vandalised,

and the fixture had become a national disgrace.

Something had to change, so the football authorities took

the extreme measure of banning away fans from the fixture.

They did stop the supporters coming.

It wasn't as intense... You know, if both sets of supporters were in,

it was a better atmosphere and, yeah, you know,

with the crowd trouble, it was a little bit disappointing,

but you just had to expect it in them days.

Four years would pass with no away support allowed.

Eventually, a plan was devised to bring the fans back.

Time is right to get back to that normality. After all,

this is supposed to be a football match between two of our top teams.

The vast majority of football supporters just want to watch the match.

The away fans returned,

but they would only be able to go on so-called bubble trips on buses.

They were escorted down the M4 by the police,

a practice which exists to this day.

I do actually believe that the bubble matches are the only way

to police it.

And I am pleased that they're going to do it and they will do it,

because it will avoid the opportunity for Welsh football to be

seen in a bad light.

As they approached the new millennium,

both clubs were looking to leave the troubled past behind.

But both were still in the lower leagues

and needed more fans through the turnstiles.

Cardiff have always had this big pool of fans.

They've had Cardiff in itself, the capital city, and the valleys.

You know, people from the valleys come down to watch.

Rhondda, Aberdare, Taff, Romney valleys, Western Gwent valleys,

fed into Cardiff. Cardiff City, I think,

are as much a product of the valleys

as they are of Grangetown and Canton.

As Cardiff looked to the valleys and the east for new followers,

Swansea looked to the west.

An enormous number of Swansea fans from Pembrokeshire, which is

of course, a great soccer area, Carmarthenshire

and Cardiganshire, there is a West Wales feel.

Both clubs embarked on a dramatic journey to the Premier League.

As both sets of fans toasted success,

some of the bitterness and resentment of the past decades

disappeared, enabling some even to cross the great divide.

Take Paul, the Swansea fan, running a pub in Cardiff.

Initially, I was sort of apprehensive,

because as you say, it is like the boogie man, isn't it?

You hear all these stories off your parents

about the Cardiff fan, but I was sort of apprehensive

about going up, but so, I've been here seven years and it's cool.

We have good Cardiff supporters here, a gentleman comes in here,

he's the mascot for...

Barclay Bluebird, I think they call him, or Redbird,

or whatever they're calling themselves now.

But, he's in here as well, and again, a really nice guy,

and we've always had great banter when he comes in.

Yeah, can't fault him! THEY LAUGH

But if the clubs were truly going to reach their potential, there would

need to be success on the pitch to attract a new legion of fans.

In 2001, Swansea City looked a long way from achieving that,

under unpopular chairman Tony Petty.

The fans don't particularly want me here.

I'm in it 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.

Everyone on the board earned the supporters' trust

and we own 20% of the club.

The rest of the shareholders are all local businessmen,

fans who have stood out in the rain, stood in the North Bank.

Ten years ago, we had bad times.

We have a model club in a way with the chairman

and board which is rooted in our character.

We speak the same language.

The football team is more important than anything else.

And there was a clear understanding from the directors

and Swansea, that if they were going to put money into the club,

if they were going to build up the club, they had to do it hand-in-hand with the fans.

They've done that from the beginning.

As those die-hard Swansea fans fought to seize control,

there was barely a thought about the rivalry with Cardiff City.

With everything that was going on, we just... There was no looking

envious at anyone, other than the fact that the only envy was the

fact that they had a football club, and we were close to losing ours.

So, we had more, more bigger things or bigger fish to fry than

worry about anybody else at that time.

It was only when we got ourselves on an even keel that the rivalry started to come back.

Slowly, results improved and Swansea started climbing the league.

Thomas against the keeper! Chips in! Oh, yes!

Superb goal by James Thomas!

They would find their form

and leave the Vetch for a new home at the Liberty Stadium.

Swansea are back in the championship!

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

It was a model to be admired.

Everybody looks at the Swansea model and wishes they could,

they could copy it.

Cardiff City's road to the top took a different route.

Various owners came and went.

HE CHEERS

That's until the arrival

of a Lebanese businessman called Sam Hammam.

He had plans for the Bluebirds, which included a new ground.

And on the field, results improved. For a time.

Campbell! He's onside!

It's Andy Campbell! They got themselves to within one

promotion to the Premier League.

But bills were mounting and star players were sold

and the fans were turning on their saviour.

You will not sell nine or ten players next week!

No, I will not sell...

Well, that is what everyone else is saying!

I have to continue fighting for this club until I get them

out of this problem.

In stepped the former Leeds chairman, Peter Ridsdale.

He took over at the Welsh capital

and took on the dream of top-flight football in a brand-new stadium.

But that final step to the promised land still eluded them. It's there!

To achieve that goal,

Cardiff felt they needed a man with a serious amount of cash.

He arrived in the shape of a Malaysian billionaire.

Vincent Tan was a very, very brave individual to take on

a basket case of a club.

When you looked at the debts we were carrying,

the hangover from the Hammam days in terms of loan notes

and the sort of ticking time bomb of that particular debt,

and we were, you know, as a club, we were bouncing from one

transfer window to another transfer window for survival.

Cardiff City fall in the play-offs for the second year running.

Year after year, they came close. They were the perennial nearly men.

The Premier League dream, it seems, was forever on hold.

And it seemed as if we were the eternal bridesmaids

and football fans are football fans, that's why I love them so much.

They remind you constantly at all clubs, you know?

And especially Swansea!

And while Cardiff looked on enviously, Swansea got there first.

Goal! They can start planning their trips to the Premier League now!

We felt that we had to be the first ones there

and if Cardiff had moved up into the Premier League before us and taking

with them the media and etc, that would have happened at the time,

I think it may have set us back a year or two.

It was a bit like your bumpkin country cousin turning up

at a wedding, and he's turned into Brad Pitt.

It was a bit like, how the hell did that happen?!

How does Swansea go from being a team that left the league to

playing some of the best football in Britain, you know?

It was quite, yeah, it was hurtful.

I was here when they were playing in the play-offs.

They won 4-2, and I was running up and down the stairs every time.

Every time I came down and went back up, they scored!

So, they were wondering why I was running up and down?

Since then, it's been success all the way for the Swans -

sell-out crowds, top-flight survival under Brendan Rodgers,

the arrival of Michael Laudrup, a football superstar as his successor,

and then they won their first-ever major trophy - the League Cup.

They were leaving their rivals behind.

The pressure on us to get up - the idea that we had to get there -

was almost overwhelming last year.

It was kind of almost to the point where it didn't matter how we did it,

we just had to make the Premiership, because Swansea were in there.

Cardiff's owner felt a new approach was needed,

but his investment came at a price.

To the horror of many fans Vincent Tan changed the club's colours from blue to red.

We pay our respects to Mr Tan,

a man who clearly wants the club to succeed, internationally,

and domestically,

but a man who, it seems to me, often can deliberately alienate the fans.

We've got to appreciate that he has come along and saved the club,

but in return we have obviously had to have the rebrand of the shirt and the badge.

Which has been a bitter pill for some people to swallow.

But it's something we've had to take on the chin

otherwise we would not have had a football club.

You become a plaything for a multi-millionaire.

You're the football team they've got to tell their mates back home.

And they can do with you what they want.

They can change colour, your badge, do anything - change your name!

I don't know whether we are playing in November,

the Dragons or the Bluebirds or some other name.

And that's quite sad.

Despite the protests around the rebrand,

red turned out to be a lucky colour.

The Bluebirds finally made it to the Premier League.

I suppose we were quite proud

that we were the only Welsh team in the Premier League.

That we'd got there first.

And we'd done it, and we were standing alone for Wales.

And all of a sudden, the noisy neighbours from down the road

managed to gate-crash the party.

Having said that, it's fantastic for Wales, isn't it?

10% of the Premier League is Welsh.

Thought it might take a bit of the shine off what Swansea did,

so I guess there was a little bit of disappointment there.

I also immediately thought about the prospect of two derby games to cover,

and so much resting on which way it goes.

I wasn't happy because I was enjoying our little bit of peace

in the Premier League, without derby games.

So, you know, you knew it was coming.

They'd had an absolutely amazing season.

They deserved their promotion.

They haven't played the attractive football we've done to get there,

but they're still there.

And give them credit - they did win the championship,

and won it quite comfortably.

All fans have got something to judge themself against,

and now with the both of us in the Premier,

it gives us that extra edge again.

It had been a dramatic journey.

The clubs had changed,

Wales had changed.

There was almost slightly the feeling in Swansea

that Wales was a plot invented by Cardiff.

That this new Welsh identity -

devolution as we eventually came to call it -

was something that Cardiff invented.

Swansea votes yes for devolution, Cardiff votes no -

they get the Senate and we get a swimming pool.

And that, in basic terms, probably sums up where Swansea feels

in its relationship to the capital city.

Now, together, the two football clubs are about to make history.

Their first ever derby in the Premier League.

As football players, if you can't enjoy a game of that intensity and passion...

..you shouldn't be playing.

Two different styles come together in this derby.

A locally owned team or a team that's owned by someone who

doesn't come from the area, a team which is owned

by 20% of its fans, um, a team that still plays in the same colours.

You've got a lot of city rivalries, where you've got Liverpool

and Everton, Bristol City and Bristol Rovers, you know, Sheffield.

A lot of them do tolerate each other cos

they live on each other's doorstep.

I think we've had that barrier of 40 miles.

People here do look and see all the things that Cardiff get

and the money that's being spent there

and I think there is a feeling that Swansea gets forgotten about.

They get all the good publicity, according to them.

It's hard to tell it from the other side but I think Cardiff is the biggest city.

It's the capital, at the end of the day.

Some Swansea supporters tell me

they just don't want to go up to Cardiff unless they absolutely

have to, which basically means if the Swans are playing.

Football is an easy decider of who's got the best argument,

who's got the best players, who's got the best team.

Who's got the best city!

It's a wonderful rivalry and Abertawe town have done

wonderful in the last two or three years, you know.

But they'll always be in the shadow of their capital city.

I have a season ticket for both. I watch them both, I support them both and you know, I relish that.

I always feel we've got more of a right to be bitter about things than they have

but they probably would say the same thing.

Disliking your rivals is part of being a football supporter.

The teams that you don't like almost define you as much as the team that you support.

At the end of the day, we've got more in common with Cardiff

and their supporters than we have any other club.

And yet, we treat each other as the biggest enemies in the world.

But we've got far more in common with one another

than with certainly anyone else in English football.

They have had the best of times, they've had the worst of times.

These two Welsh cities. One built on copper, the other, coal.

38 miles separate them geographically,

but culturally and mentally, it's a whole different story.

Cardiff - the capital, the heartbeat of business, culture, media,

education and government. This city that voted no but got the Assembly.

Swansea - the city that said yes but got nothing.

The Assembly, the Ayatollah, the Swans and "swim away."

The Bluebirds, the Jack Army, SA1 or Brains SA.

Swansea Bay, the Mumbles Mile, the Gower,

Dylan Thomas' "ugly, lovely town."

Cardiff Bay, the Millennium Centre, the Millennium Stadium,

the Liberty Stadium. Catherine Zeta and John Charles.

Shirley Bassey and Gareth Bale.

The FA Cup - Cardiff have won it, they've even hosted it.

The top-flight - Swansea stormed it.

What a shot and what a goal!

And very nearly fell out of the league altogether.

John Toshack the player or Tosh the manager.

Ivor Allchurch, Alan Curtis. Michu. Cliff Jones.

Nathan Blake and Bellamy.

It's city versus city, a tale of two.

The best of times, the worst of times.

It was this season of light, this season of darkness.

It's the season for South Wales derbies.

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