Jack to a King - The Swansea Story

To begin at the beginning.

It is spring, moonless night in the small town,

starless and Bible-black.

The cobblestreets silent

and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood

limping, invisible, down to the sloeblack, slow,

black, crow-black, fishing boat-bobbing sea.

'I was nervous.'

Bless the city.

'I knew I couldn't get to sleep so I started getting changed

'and everybody said, "Where are you going?"'

I said, "I'm going to church." They said, "Church? This time of night?"

'I remember phoning my friend and she said, "I feel sick."'

"I've just done my teeth and I feel sick."

You know I was obviously very nervous. You know, the consequences,

you know, running through your head and...

TV COMMENTATOR: Can Swansea take advantage of it?

Pratley...scores!

Unbelievable finish!

INDISTINCT COMMENTARY

And Swansea City are going to Wembley!

My television was on.

I had a bowl of Weetabix, but not with milk, with vodka on top,

because I thought it would just help to calm the nerves.

TV: 'So that's it, the stage is set.

'Will Swansea City be playing against the likes

'of Manchester United, Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal?

'We'll soon find out.'

It was nerve-racking.

You just felt these people, this lot, we deserve,

we deserve this now, after what we've been put through.

Front page that week is,

"Will the last person out of Swansea please turn off the light?"

RADIO: 'Good morning, bore da.

'It's the Breakfast Show here on Swansea Sound with me,

'Kev Johns, on this Monday morning.

'Not just any old Monday today - it's play-off final day.'

The Swans at Wembley for the Championship play-off today

'against Reading, and the exodus has begun.'

REPORTER: 'It is the most lucrative club match in world football.

'It'll be worth more than ?90 million to the club.

'The Championship play-off final

'with a place in the Premier League at stake.

'What a story it could be for Swansea City.'

Wembley is just, like... ultimate ground.

Well, nobody can sleep, nobody can sleep. The bus drivers can't sleep.

Nobody can sleep.

'Getting to Wembley was special.

'I remember pulling up on the bus.'

There must have been 20,000 Swans fans.

Black and white everywhere.

'And it's goose pimples and you just can't wait to get out there

'and have a great time.'

'You get to Wembley and you can't believe'

there's that many Swansea City fans, wearing black and white.

'I think it was only when we all put our suits on'

and the carnations on that it started to sink in.

Sometimes you forget when you're here that it is...

whatever it is, a billion people watching.

Swansea being Swansea, you know half the people there anyway.

And, you know...

'The worst time, I think, is just waiting for the game to start.

'It just felt as if it was, you know,

'it was a game that you had to win.'

'It was kind of like a boyhood dream come true, you know'

In 90 minutes, you could accomplish what every boy had dreamed about.

CROWD SINGS

'And then they start singing, and then you think,

'"We just have to win! We HAVE to win,

'because it's just not going to be very nice at all if we don't.'

COMMENTATOR: The accountants call it "the ?90 million match",

but for these 22 players, it's about the chance to perform

at the top of their profession,

about tales of glory for the grandchildren,

and you cannot put a price on that.

COMMENTATOR: 'Wearing ten for the Swans this afternoon,

'Lee Trundle!

'Wearing seven, Leon Britton.

'Wearing 16 for the Swans and the captain's armband, Garry Monk.'

DISTANT SINGING OF CROWD

'My Vetch was beautiful. It was raggedy, she was an old lady.'

She needed a lot of attention.

She never got it, there was no money for it,

'but it was a wonderful place. It was a cauldron of sound.'

SINGING CONTINUES

'Most probably the best ground I've ever seen.'

You know, there was the old Vetch behind the North Bank,

the Mel Nurse Bar, the Harry Griffiths Bar on the other end.

'It was such an ugly place, but such a lovely place.'

'My first memory was walking up the slope at the back

'of the North Bank and then catching the sight of the pitch,

'just looking and seeing the grass and smelling the turf

'during the winter months,

'climbing the wooden stairs to the double-decker

'and banging your feet.'

And my mother came to a few games

and convinced that the stand was going to collapse,

'because everybody was banging their feet, you know?'

# Swansea! #

I live back-to-back with the Vetch,

so you had no option but to follow Swansea City.

'The first time I went was when George Best played there,

'cos we all loved George Best.'

And I kind of got hooked from there, then.

WHISTLE BLOWS

# Swansea! #

As soon as I walked into the North Bank,

I just couldn't believe what I was hearing or witnessing.

You know, the place was heaving

and the whole atmosphere was just bouncing.

CROWD GASP AND MOAN

CHEERING

'Great days, with the North Bank, in particular, rocking'

The roof coming off almost, such, such was the atmosphere.

'I did train with the Swans and play a couple of times.

'Then I had a chance to sign for 'em.'

I decided I'm not going to sign.

I was going to go round to the North Bank and meet my mates

and have a day out watching the Swans.

'My grandfather, he was probably one of the last to leave the pub.'

He was usually the first one back in there as well,

but I wouldn't tell my grandmother that!

'When I first started, it was only the Harry Griffiths bar.

'It was brilliant. Scruffy as hell.'

And if you stood in a certain part of the bar,

you could see, like, all the men having a wee in the toilet

cos there was no door!

SHE LAUGHS And they just...

CROWD SINGS

CHEERING

The atmosphere was definitely one of the draws or one of the hooks.

I couldn't, you know...

To see people singing and chanting and shouting

'and swearing and everything they do when losing their emotions

'was a fairly amazing experience.

'You'd spend probably as much time watching the crowd

'as watching the match.'

COMMENTATOR: Ivor Allchurch shoots.

It's a goal! 3-1 is the score

that sends Swansea on into round five.

'When you train at the Vetch Field,'

the Vetch Field's just directly behind the jail,

so if you do anything wrong, you've not far to go!

'And I played on the Vetch as centre half and I had legends with me.

'I was only 17.

'And the smell of beer down there was terrible.

'Not that the players was drinking,

'but there was a brewer's behind the North Bank.

'You know what I mean? And, cor, and it stank.

'The hops, smell of the hops, but that was a smell of its own.

'Do you know what I mean?'

There's always been a good atmosphere, irrespective

of what league we played in, you know, what the results are,

'but I remember playing against Leeds,

'my first-ever game in the old First Division.

'Knew it was going to be a tough game,'

but the conditions were perfect, you know, the pitch was fantastic.

'Full house there, 25-26,000,

'and it was a beautiful day here. It was an absolutely glorious day.'

COMMENTATOR: The feed to Alan Curtis, perfect.

Oh, what a sidestep!

What a shot and what a goal!

The fact that we beat them 5-1 was, er...

People still talk about it

and they still talk about the goal that I scored, you know.

'Believe it or not, I've still got the shorts.

'If you look at it closely, I've actually split the shorts.

'It's the smallest pair of shorts I've ever owned, I think.'

You know, if the gates had been open,

I'd've been down the Mumbles Road... never to be seen again!

'I'm a football fan myself. I like football. I love football.

'I can't live without football.'

And when I became 16 years of age,

Swansea came in my life, and it's still there.

My teacher at school wasn't very happy with the way we talk English,

and so he asked us to try to find ourselves a pen pal in the UK.

So all my friends wrote letters

to Manchester United and Arsenal and Chelsea,

and I wrote a letter to Swansea City Football Club,

purely for the fun, and I thought I'd got more chance

to be in the programme than they've got at Manchester and Chelsea.

I wrote to him.

You know, there weren't that many letters at the start,

because he couldn't write English very well.

It was very broken,

and you had to sort of work out very much what he was trying to say.

I used to send him programmes and he used to send me Den Haag programmes,

which, to be honest with you, were a complete waste of time

cos I didn't understand a word of them, obviously, you know?

I stayed there quite often when I was 18, 19, you know?

And then you go out in Wind Street

and you see his mates, will become your mates.

And, er, now I can tell you that I've got more friends in Swansea

than I've got over here in Holland.

Those days we were playing in the lowest league,

and we were doing very, very bad.

The football was quite dire, obviously.

But it was your club,

and you supported your club through thick and thin.

The slide started, and people fell away.

I think it was disillusionment, really,

with possibly the way things were being handled in the background.

Perhaps people could sense that things weren't being run correctly.

We always knew the club had financial limitations.

We were never going to be a rich club.

Things were tight, you know.

The managers were coming and going,

and you knew that there must have been problems behind closed doors.

For a number of pressing reasons,

nobody wanted to own the club for any length of time.

It was almost becoming a hot potato.

The main owners of the club decided that enough was enough,

and they sold the club for ?1 to a chap called Mike Lewis,

to babysit it and to look for a new owner.

There were always stories in the press

about this person, that person, or group of people.

Not local people, but, er...

looking to possibly buy Swansea City Football Club.

I was down in Brisbane, and it was common knowledge at that time

that Swansea had changed ownership.

So I rang up Mike Lewis.

And he was very open.

Told me about the state of the nation.

It wasn't good.

And I said, "Well, OK, let me get back to you."

I then had a chat with one of the wealthiest clubs in Queensland

with a view to trying to rescue Swansea City.

Mike Lewis had put an advert in a newspaper.

"For Sale- Football League football club..."

blah, blah, blah... "..contact me."

And Brian Katzen saw this advert.

I was in New York, and one day I was sitting in my office,

and there was a one-liner that said,

"Swansea City for sale, call this number," you know?

And at that time I wasn't really serious.

I didn't really know what was involved.

Just kind of picked up the phone.

PHONE RINGS

Think I hit voicemail.

PHONE RINGS

No-one answered! HE LAUGHS

But funnily enough, the next day, my receptionist says,

"There's a phone call for you.

"It's the chairman of Swansea City on the phone."

I pretended to be busy,

and let him wait a few minutes, then picked up the phone.

Mike said, "I've just bought the club for ?1 from a public company.

"We're losing a lot of money. I've got no money.

"There's a lot of debts, and I need to get rid of this club fast."

Mike actually told me on the phone that,

"Look, if you want to come out, you've got to come out soon,

"because there's an Australian chap out here

"who's committed to put some cash up,

"and I don't have any other options,

"so if you can't make it, I've got no choice, you know?"

I flew over to Swansea

along with the chairman of the Brisbane Lions at the time.

They were going to put the money in.

Mike knew he couldn't carry on.

I mean, if we hadn't appeared...

..he probably had a month, maybe two at best,

before he would have gone under.

And that was... That's how bad it was.

At the time I still wasn't really serious -

I was just kind of investigating.

It was kind of cool having a... Talking to a football club.

Maybe something would happen, maybe something wouldn't happen.

And then 9/11 happened,

and airports were obviously shut down for a couple of days

or a couple of weeks, and I just couldn't get out, you know?

So I called him back and said, "Mike, I can't make it out there.

"Do what you've got to do, man."

CAMERA CLICKS

You always live in hope that somebody's going to come in

and buy the club and everything's going to be great, and...

I went to the press conference upstairs,

and, you know, he talked the talk. Do you know what I mean?

You come out of the conference thinking,

"Oh, yeah, we've got somebody who's got money,

"and he's going to look after our club."

Unfortunately for me, those guys flew back to Australia.

Somewhere down the line, within that next week or two,

they decided to change their mind,

which left me pretty much holding the baby,

because, by that time, Mike had relinquished power.

Um...and basically I was there without the money.

ANNOUNCER: 'Let's give our new owner and club chairman,

'Mr Tony Petty, a big welcome.'

Are you ready, stands?!

When Petty came in, I remember announcing him,

and it was quite funny, cos he never wanted a fuss made.

Are you ready, centre stand?

'I had no idea who he was and he was very reluctant for any recognition.'

Are you ready, North Bank?

But nobody reads anything into that - he might be a shy guy.

FANS SING

Rochdale was the first game that we played under me.

I think anyone that was at that match that night,

if you was a die-hard Swansea fan, you'd have gone,

"Well, that weren't good." Cos it weren't.

COMMENTATOR: It's a cross.

Oh, it's in the back of the net!

And it's an own goal.

We lost 1-0.

And I remember thinking...

"This is going to be really, really tough."

And... Well, something had to give.

'He said to me, "Colin, like to see you in the morning."'

"First thing," I said, "Fine. What time you call first thing?"

"Eight? Nine?" "Nine o'clock'll do fine." In I went, sat in the office.

He was there. And it went something like this.

He said, "Colin, I want you to get your six highest earners in.

"I'll get the six contracts sent down,

"and we're going to rip 'em up."

Colin's rolled up his sleeves and said, "Let's get on with it."

"Let's get it done so we can go forward."

And I obviously appreciated that.

So I said, "Do you think you can do that?"

So he said, "Well, why not?"

So he said to me, "It's like a bad dream."

I said, "It's not too clever for us either, but...

"if we all pull together, we'll get through it."

I remember shooting straight down to the Vetch

and seeing some of the players with tears in their eyes,

looking bewildered. Completely lost, really.

They didn't know what had hit them.

Later that day, they all cleared off to the pub, and...

And we tried to set about finding out what was going on

and what Tony Petty was trying to do.

I jumped in the car, drove down to the Vetch Field.

A lot of players were walking out of the players' entrance at that time,

and I remember saying,

"We'll get it all sorted."

What I expected to do, I had no idea at all.

We're absolutely devastated, you know?

I mean, to come in, and in less than a week destroy a football club

which has been going for over 100 years is absolutely shambolic.

I just can't believe it.

It was...a Thatcher moment, if you like.

By announcing that I was going to let seven players go,

or basically cancel their contracts...

They're in the PFA, the Football Association union...

For those of you who don't know me, my name's Brendan Batson.

And, of course, the first phone call I got was from Brendan Batson,

saying, "Well, actually, you can't do that."

And I remember saying to Brendan, "Well, actually I can.

"All right, the company might get sued later, but actually, I can."

There were all sorts of stories coming out.

You'd almost look forward to coming into work in the morning,

to get on the phone, and, you know,

hear what the latest tales were about Tony Petty.

Tony Petty had a right-hand man based in the UK

called John Shuttleworth.

And it turned out, with a bit of investigation,

that John Shuttleworth was actually an agent of a porn star.

So, of course, when all these stories started coming to light,

alarm bells started ringing with people.

Allegedly, of course, Tony Petty turned up with a holdall

after one game to gather up all the takings from the turnstiles.

Straight into his bag with all the ?10 notes and straight out of town.

Tony Petty had my telephone number,

and he would phone me up for a little chat now and again.

And he would phone me up and say,

"I'm on my way to Swansea. I'm in the Newport area now."

And I would then make a phone call to the Vetch Field,

and say, "He's on his way. Hide everything."

PHONE RINGS

We used to take the cash upstairs,

and then used to hide the money so Tony Petty couldn't get it.

And then it'd come to payday,

and maybe about six of us got paid by cheque,

and the rest all had bags of change as their wages.

Quite a lot of people enjoyed the skulduggery

of telling everybody they've seen him come through Heathrow Airport

and they're following him down the M4,

and he's now coming past Bridgend, and...

You know, how much of it was really true, I don't know.

'This word "club", and it's used all over the country...

'You know, Manchester United Football Club

'or Liverpool Football Club...

'If you're a businessman, it's actually'

Liverpool Limited or plc, or Manchester United plc.

They are corporate limited vehicles,

and accordingly, you have to run them in a correct manner.

Now, we were projecting to lose over ?700,000 this year.

We've already cut it in half in three weeks.

That's not bad.

Even though we had an idea of the problems they had,

there wasn't much that we could do about it at the time.

And then I got contacted to say would I like to come and talk

to like-minded people about setting up a supporters' trust.

THEY CHANT: Swansea till I die! I'm Swansea till I die!

I know I am, I'm sure I am, I'm Swansea till I die.

'Good evening.'

CHEERING

'I was thinking of some songs to play on the radio for Mr Petty.

'I thought of Hit The Road, Jack,

'but he's no Jack, so I'm not playing that one.'

There was a very obvious and easy target.

It wasn't "the club" - it was Tony Petty who became "the target".

And unfortunately for him, he was perceived to be an outsider,

coming in and taking over "our club".

CHANTING AND SINGING

That was quite emotional, I think, that march through the city,

because I think it was almost...

the supporters taking the club back.

And it was almost like a popular uprising.

THEY CHANT: We want Petty out! We want Petty out!

Petty out!

'Mr Chairman, welcome to the Patti Pavilion...'

The Patti Pavilion is probably where it really, really started.

It was when, up on stage with some of the players

and Alan Curtis...

Kev Johns was there, pledging support.

Swansea boys!

I was asked to go along and support them, so...

It was a little bit awkward, obviously,

because, you know, erm...

It's almost the last place you want to go is, you know...

You've just been sacked from somewhere,

then you're having to speak in front of all these people.

But it just felt as if it was the right thing to do.

In all my years in professional football,

I've never experienced such scenes

as were played out at the Vetch this week.

With you, the supporters, also backing us,

together we will prevail and ensure that Swansea City,

the club you love, will never die.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

At the end, then, they gave out bits of paper,

just to put your name, to prove that you were there, basically,

so they had a bit of a head count.

And there was a tiny little box there, and it said,

"Tick if you'd like to get involved."

And I thought to myself,

"Yeah, I'll tick this, because I can make cups of tea and coffee,

"and I can sell raffle tickets. I can do a collection in buckets."

So I ticked the box and, erm...

I went from just, erm... someone sitting and listening

and appreciating what was being said

to participating, in that one little tick.

As a trust, we needed money, and we had bucket collections

so we'd have some sort of fighting fund.

'This club is on the brink of destruction,'

and we urge people to come forward, give money.

Not when it's too late, when the gates are locked. We want money now, to the Trust.

Help us save this club before it goes.

Tony Petty thought we were a silly little group of people

that he didn't really need to bother about.

You know, "They'll eventually get bored and go away,"

and we didn't. We got stronger and stronger,

because we needed to fight this man who was ruining our club.

'Petty, Petty, Petty...!'

'You know, I can understand the fans' feelings,

'but all I've done is told them what the position is,

and tried to make sure that the company survives,

you know, and suddenly I'm the most hated man in Wales.'

THEY CHANT: We want Petty out!

The reaction to the Tony Petty regime had been in the pipeline

for a while, and it...

You could almost feel it tangibly on the North Bank.

Incredible frustration and anger.

There were all sorts of groups that came together at the time,

groups of fans. Some bigger than others. Some...

Some more official than others.

One of them, the North Bank Alliance,

the name sticks in the memory particularly for me,

because somehow or other, my mobile number ended up on this flyer.

Yeah, well, you know, this is...

This is the beauty of, er... proof-reading, innit?

You know, er... Yeah.

You put Gareth Vincent of the Evening Post's phone number down

next to Shuttleworth's name.

HE SNORTS

"Oh, right, er... We've got a problem."

North Bank Alliance was a group of Swansea City supporters

who were a bit of an underground organisation.

So when this man came in

with the plan that he had, to just make money off it

and destroy the team, the club and everything

in the process...in my eyes, that was never going to happen.

He had to be stopped.

Got together one night then, I think it was

in The Builders Arms, wasn't it? That's right, yeah.

About 15, 16 of us, I didn't know half of them.

I knew Lee by sight, but, er...

"Lee." Shit...

John, I mean.

THEY LAUGH

We were trying to make it difficult for him to make any money.

So, financially, we thought, "How can we do this?"

First of all, we glued the locks of the club shop

so that they couldn't sell any merchandise,

and we chained the big SCFC gates, so they couldn't open the gates

to let people into the turnstiles.

There was real anger and real venom in the air towards this guy.

It wasn't your usual banter

and everything else you get at a football ground,

and the atmosphere, the stick flying back and forth between the fans.

But there was real menace, you felt.

We were trying to make it so difficult for him to operate

in Swansea and to actually fear...

that something was going to happen to him, which is probably worse

than something actually happening to him.

And then, when he got up for the half-time interval,

he got up, he looked at me like that.

I stared at him and I went like that, "You're having it, son,"

like that.

By all accounts, he didn't come out for the second half. No.

So you had a bit of a rest.

Right now, no-one's actually coming forward and saying,

"Well, Tony, we'd like to take over Swansea City Football Club".

Nothing whatsoever.

So, um, can't really walk away, cos someone's got to run the ship.

I always felt at that time,

"Well, someone'll come in and someone'll do it

"and someone else do it,"

and then I think we realised that...

"We're going to have to do something.

"We're going to have to do something,

"because this club could just disappear."

We eventually ended up having a meeting

here at Swansea Rugby Club,

where about eight or ten of us had got together,

and we decided how we were going to try

and buy the football club off Petty.

And the logic was, we got ten people to put ?50,000 in each,

and that gave us half a million,

and that give us the kitty.

So it was then, "Can we find ten people?"

That was the defining moment.

Find ten people with 50,000 lots, and the trust was the first.

"We're here, we think we can get ?50,000 together."

The next person we approached was Mel Nurse,

and he agreed to join the consortium as well.

Then we spoke to Martin Morgan, as he had just sold his business.

PLANE SOARS

We'd sold the Travel House for 40 million,

so we were financially secure.

As long as we didn't blow it on a football club, right?!

Martin said, "I've got someone else, he'll come in,"

and I think that was probably the first time we met Huw.

I'd just done things probably without thinking too much,

cos I wanted to do them.

Probably exactly the same decision was taken then.

"Yeah, I'm going to go in and do this."

We had Brian Katzen, who's another story really.

Yeah, I think, if I recall,

I was the first crazy guy to send money across, you know.

No documents, no nothing, no promises, just a handshake.

So we just said, "Let's just do it", you know.

And David phoned me up that there was, er,

big shit in Swansea and, er,

he was trying to save the football club and he needed money.

All of a sudden, I had a new clan of friends from Swansea, you know.

So I didn't told my... Didn't told my wife as well,

because I thought, "If I tell her, I'll be in even more shit."

But anyway, I decided to put, er, to put money in.

I then pledged that, even though I support this trust,

I would find my share as well,

as long as I was, at the time, not wealthy compared to others.

Um...

we found our 50, but it meant mortgaging.

So I mortgaged a little bit of our house, so...

to make sure we got to the 50.

One match could've turned everything.

In actual fact, one match DID turn everything, as far as I'm concerned,

and that was the next round of the FA Cup.

That was it, that was the end.

We were praying we'd lose that game.

If we'd have beaten Macclesfield, drawn Manchester United away,

God knows how much money would have been pouring into his lap.

So I went to that game actually hoping we would lose. Oh, yeah.

I thought at worst we'd get a draw.

And we lost bad.

We lost 4-1, if I remember rightly.

The FA Cup had gone. We needed money.

End of story.

I was constantly onto him.

Didn't watch a minute of the game. Just in his ear.

He could hear us all along.

Every word I was saying, he heard every word.

"I'm going to break your legs. I'm coming over now, mate.

"I'm going to smash you. You're going down, son."

It was getting a little bit nasty.

It wasn't just "How can we upset him?"

There were people who would actually try and hurt him

if they had the opportunity.

There was house bricks being thrown, um, at many a car.

Um, mainly looking for my car!

Some random fan, er, apparently then...

attacked the car in the car park in Macclesfield,

thinking it was Petty's, and it wasn't.

It was their star striker who scored against us.

The intimidation...it was getting to me, of course it was.

I remember driving back and I said to John,

"That's it, that really is it."

THEY CHANT: We want Petty out! We want Petty out!

One day, rumours circulated

that Customs and Excise were about to move into the Vetch Field

the following day and close us down.

And then, out of the blue, I had a phone call

from a cockney gentleman with the words,

"Do you want to buy a football club?"

CAMERA CLICKS I thought, "There's only one buyer in town."

Whether they're offering a pound or whatever, you know,

if they want to have a go, then so be it.

I can't do no more.

By this time, I was very, very frightened

that if I made the wrong move,

it could actually mean the end of the football club,

and he could've turned round and blamed me for something I did.

So I put him in contact with our solicitor, Steve Penny.

I had a number of conversations with him.

He wanted ?250,000.

After a couple of days,

he reduced his asking price to...

I think it was ?100,000.

We said no. Er, I think he said to me,

when he rang me on the 18th of January,

"I didn't sleep last night."

And that was the first time I thought,

"We're getting very close now to doing a deal."

Let's be honest, um, 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.

I'd offered ?15,000 for his shares. He rejected it.

But then the following day he came back and said,

"If we can do a deal quickly, I'm off out of here.

"If you can give me ?20,000 for my trouble,

"I will sell the club."

David and I jumped in the car and drove up to Cardiff.

We'd been told that they would meet us at the Copthorne Hotel.

The meeting happened in the Copthorne

because Tony Petty, by now, was frightened to come to Swansea.

We had to raid the cashpoint in, um,

either Portland Street or Oxford Street.

I had withdrawn ?20,000 in cash,

the amount that Tony Petty wanted for his pound of flesh.

Put it in a Tesco carrier bag and then drive to buy a football club.

I was the bagman, he was the driver.

At the time, being perfectly honest, um,

I tried to treat it as normally as I would

if it had been another business transfer.

If I had stopped to think at the time how significant

this relatively modest financial transaction was going to be,

I think I probably would have bottled it in some shape or form.

Obviously, it was a very strange journey,

because it was just me and Steve in the car.

You were excited, but you were wary as well about what could lay ahead.

We met Tony Petty and we sat there for a number of hours trying to

deal with Tony Petty, cos it wasn't the most easy thing to deal with.

We also had to deal with his right-hand man John Shuttleworth,

who was on the telephone.

Both had to sign the paperwork,

and therefore there were faxes going back and forth.

NUMBER DIALLED INTO PHONE

We were stuck in a situation that we wanted to

walk out of that room owning a football club,

and it didn't really matter if it took 60 minutes

or a couple of days type of thing, you know.

We needed it sorted.

Personally, I was trying to stay focused on

dealing with the legal side of it.

but I think I could still sense that there was a...

a fairly tense atmosphere in the room.

In fact, I think you could say you could cut it with a knife.

We paid Mr Petty the ?20,000 purchase price

but then, in a fairly sort of flippant way,

he said, what about my pound then?

With all the change we had in our pocket,

we threw up a pound together. We handed it over to him.

He looked, laughed and threw it all on the floor.

That was the last dealings that we've ever had with Tony Petty.

I have some very good news to announce to the supporters

of Swansea City Football Club.

We met the press, we sat there like rabbits in the headlights

of a car because none of us knew what we were doing.

All we knew was that we now owned a football club

but what the next step after that was...

It was frightening, it was frightening.

The first season that we were in control,

our crowds virtually doubled

due to us turning to the public of Swansea and saying,

get behind us if you want the football club to survive,

we need you, and in fairness,

they all came along and supported Swansea City Football Club.

Unfortunately, it's probably the worst year in many, many, many years

for footballing.

When I played for Wales at schoolboy level under 15s,

we played in a tournament called the Victory Shield

and I got scouted from there.

A Blackburn scout scouted me from one of the games

and asked me to come up and have a trial game up in Blackburn.

They'd just won the Premier League

so they were the best team in the country.

My mum and dad took me up for the trial game.

Parked up in the car park next to someone's Rolls-Royce.

There were Jaguars and BMWs everywhere.

The first person I saw as I went to walk into the training ground

was Alan Shearer. I was like, wow, my God!

I was in awe of him really. It was like, oh, what do I say?

I must have obviously done all right because they offered me

a three-year professional contract.

The first-team opportunities were limited, so the club approach you

and say, we need you to have a bit of first-team experience.

Do you fancy going off on loan to West Brom?

After that, I spent a couple of months at Blackpool,

I spent six months at Sheffield United,

I spent a month at Bristol Rovers.

They farmed me out left, right and centre really.

Ask any footballer, they want to play for local clubs

and hometown clubs.

They asked me to come down and I signed a one-year contract.

I took an 80% pay cut but it was heart ruling head.

When I was at Blackburn, you had everything done for you.

You had your food cooked for you, your kit washed,

all the facilities were there, the gym, the training ground.

Going to Swansea City, you had to take your kit home to wash

after training every day and the changing rooms were falling apart.

The showers were leaking. It was such a difference.

You wouldn't believe.

Right, I need somebody with a little bit of brains.

The form wasn't good. Things weren't going well.

We were fighting for most of the season,

really, in the relegation zone.

Just when you think things can't get any worse,

we go down about 4-0 to Kidderminster at home.

The fans were just hurling abuse on the pitch, the worst I've ever had.

You ran in after the game and the security guard came in and said,

do not leave the stadium for at least an hour because you've got

half the North Bank standing outside the players' entrance,

waiting to kill you!

So we had to sit in the changing room for an hour or so

and just wait for the crowds to go back to the pub.

There was a real fear in 2002 and 2003

that this was the end of Swansea in the Football League.

They had built a team on not very much money

at the start of the season, to say the least,

and I think they paid the price for that.

Another change of manager was the result and Brian Flynn practically

built a whole new team in the last six months of the season.

I'm absolutely delighted that I've come to a club

that I know can do better and we must do better.

We must strive to get up the league.

Brian Flynn made some key signings.

Leon Britton being one from West Ham.

I just knew that Swansea was in Wales.

That's all I knew. I got a phone call.

Swansea and Brian Flynn want you to come down for a two-week trial,

see how things go.

Swansea will have a look at me,

I'll have a look at Swansea and we'll go from there.

I was just so excited.

I got in my car and I was like, right, this is an adventure.

I was driving through a different country, if you like.

I'd never been out of London,

and here you are, entering a new country over the bridge.

He'd probably never been to Wales before, let alone Swansea,

so a bit of a culture shock for him at first.

You don't know what to make of Port Talbot at first.

You look on the left-hand side and I'd never seen anything like it.

If Port Talbot is like this, what's Swansea like?

Lucky he wasn't playing in the Kidderminster game

because he probably would have packed his bags and gone back home.

I'd been told a lot about him,

I hadn't seen Leon play but I guess the shock

when anybody sees Leon,

especially when you're going back all those years ago,

10 years ago, I thought he was just a schoolboy who'd just got lost.

We genuinely wondered how he would cope with

the physicality of the league.

But from literally the first training session, and certainly

from the first game, you could see what a fantastic player he was.

Roberto was exactly the same.

Roberto came in and straightaway he made a huge impression,

simply because of his sheer professionalism.

Brian Flynn told me you're coming down to the Welsh Monaco

so just get ready to enjoy the marina.

Brian told me straightaway that he had clear ambition,

that he wanted to avoid relegation.

At that point we were six points adrift and everyone expected

Swansea to get relegated to the amateur level which is a real shock.

As soon as he came in, his professionalism

and the way he approached the game rubbed off on all the players.

We ended up playing for each other, rather than playing as individuals.

We went probably 17, 18 weeks, hoping to get into the final game

of the season with the possibility of staying up in the League.

The picture is crystal clear for us.

We still have to win on Saturday

and it's one of the most important games in the history

of Swansea City Football Club and that is without a shadow of a doubt.

Waking up that Saturday morning, I remember the rain,

just incessant rain.

I didn't sleep the night before because people don't realise

how many of us were going to lose our job.

The whole week leading up to it was like a Cup Final.

The club shop was never empty, people were buying tickets,

queuing for tickets, buying merchandise.

There was a real buzz about the place

but then everybody realised how important it was.

You could say it was a typical Swansea day.

I used to walk over to the bench with my boots in my hand

and wash bag in the other and you'd walk along and obviously

bumping into fans, letting you know how much this game meant.

You wake up early and you're worried

and you eventually get through to one o'clock,

or whatever time it is,

and my eyes filled up and I realised at that moment that I could have put

more money into the club and I had let my business...

..outdo my heart.

We wanted to sing the Welsh national anthem

and we asked the Football League could we sing the anthem.

They said, you can sing what you like but not with players lined up.

Once that 3 o'clock comes, that game starts.

So what we wanted to do was to sing the anthem as close

to the players coming out, so the players would get the atmosphere.

He got us in a huddle and he told us how much the football club

meant to himself, to the fans, to the staff, to whole city.

Alan was very emotional before the warm-up.

I will always remember on the pitch and he told us

what that football club meant for him and it touched every player.

We talked about the club.

We said about Swansea, there's only 25 years ago we had been

in the old first division, top of the first division.

There's a couple of other things, what it means

to all the youngsters of the club, the future generation.

I really almost blurted it out

and it's one of those things that you almost felt

as if you had to say it because if you hadn't said it,

and we'd have gone down and you would never have forgiven yourself.

You're out on the pitch and the game kicks off.

We were just focused on trying to do your best for the team

and getting the job done.

I played right wing that day

and I remember I ended up by the North bank

and I just thought, just get the ball and face up the defenders.

Just have a run and try and get in the box, see what can happen.

I did a step over, jinxed, next thing you know, there was contact.

I go down and we get a penalty.

I think it was quite early in the game.

I think in the first 10 or 15 minutes.

COMMENTATOR: Such a tricky little player.

The tackle was a bad one, a silly one by Melton, the midfield man.

I was the penalty taker, so there was no doubt in my mind

that I was going to step up and take the penalty.

That's what you've got to be really. You've got to be confident

and just no negative thoughts.

COMMENTATOR: James Thomas with the penalty.

Oh, it's in!

Cool as a cucumber, he stuck the penalty away

and you're thinking, this isn't a bad start.

Just with a little flick.

Jenkins in trouble. Elliott with a chance to equalise.

The first goal was a mistake from one of our defence,

it was Lee Jenkins.

That ball defended by Swansea and it's gone across.

Another mistake from our other right back, Michael Howard.

Two mistakes from the fullbacks and you're 2-1 down

and there's just silence.

It was a full capacity crowd and everyone was really tense

and I could see even the players feeling that emotion.

Jenkins and Howard, at one time, they were both very, very emotional.

If we lose this game, their mistakes are going to be

the ones that will cost Swansea their place in the Football League.

I remember one of them taking a throw-in.

He's literally in tears.

You can see he's literally choked up.

A horrible feeling.

It's difficult to try and keep focused

because things start running through your mind.

What if now, we're 2-1 down and things aren't going well.

COMMENTATOR: Relegation to the Conference at the moment,

staring Swansea City in the face.

If there's anyone you want out on the pitch to try and gee you

and take the positives out of a bad situation, Roberto Martinez.

The whole game became everything

that you can expect in a football game.

You can have referee's errors, you can have players' errors,

you can have outstanding pieces of play,

you can have memorable moments, like a hat-trick.

It's a penalty for hand ball!

The ball hit him in the chest.

I just shoved my hand up, "Penalty, Ref!"

Somehow the ref gives it, but it was never a penalty.

The North Bank were all screaming for a penalty.

The ref decided to take the easy option and just give it

because he probably didn't want to be lynched after the game.

I think he bowed under the pressure and gave the penalty, unbelievably.

That was the first moment in the game really

that I really did feel pressure, stepping up for that one.

COMMENTATOR: 'And suddenly, before half-time,

'Swansea and their fans again have hope.'

It wasn't a good penalty at all.

More or less straight down the middle.

Lucky for me, Alan Fettis, who was in goal for Hull,

he was a colleague of mine at Blackburn,

so I don't know whether he just

dived out of the way on purpose to help me out.

I don't know to this day, but, er,

it went in, and I suppose any penalty that goes in

is a good penalty.

We came out for the second half then like a different team.

Once we got that goal, 3-2, Lenny Johnrose,

I think we were always going to go on

from that point and win the game.

And then, once the fourth goal went in,

I think it was game over.

WHISTLE

He's chipped it from 25, 30 yards,

and you're thinking, "What you doing? Take it closer to the goal."

And then you see it sail over the keeper's head to make it 4-2,

and it's just like...

that's when you start believing, I think,

that this is the day we're going to win.

ROBERTO MARTINEZ: I think it was his first hat-trick

that he scored for Swansea City.

And the third goal, with that chip, is as good a goal

as you're going to remember from the Vetch Field.

And he was probably the perfect headline -

the home-grown player,

that he went to a Premier League club of Blackburn

and came back just to save his team

and to score a hat-trick.

The relief was there, I think, after that goal went in,

because Hull had nothing to play for.

Hull were on their holidays, they didn't want to be there any more.

They just wanted to get back to Hull ASAP

and, you know, it was party time.

COMMENTATOR: 'Tremendous drama, then, at the Vetch Field

'as the hundreds and thousands of Swansea fans here today

'invade the pitch to celebrate Swansea City's salvation.'

'At last, manager Brian Flynn can smile.

'His team have a Football League future next season.'

Do you know what? If we'd lost that game,

I wouldn't have met my wife.

I wouldn't have had my twins now - my twin boys.

And you don't realise that that game...

changed and shaped your life so much

because if you're honest, and Swansea dropped out

of the Football League, as much as I wanted to

come back to Swansea, I wanted to still try

and stay in the Football League.

You probably wouldn't have come back to Swansea.

My life path would have been completely different.

Who knows where it would've gone?

We went from such a high at the Hull game, really,

and, erm, just after that

it just all went downhill for me, really.

I had a couple of operations on my knee, but my knee

just was never the same - it was just holding me back.

I couldn't achieve what I knew I could do before.

And then eventually called it a day, then.

I think the fans, throughout the season, expected the worst.

And they got into a point at that game, it could've been devastating.

And...that sense of fear became sense of joy

straight after. And I will always remember

that feeling of the whole city celebrating.

We were getting a little bit of criticism

from...

the general public that we didn't have a chairman.

Um, people were saying, "It's being run by

"a committee, and you know the way committees run things."

Some members of the media actually called us

"the Wheel Tappers and Shunters Committee".

And we got a lot of flack for that

because we weren't actually a board.

We were a committee to start with, and that's

because we were all hiding behind each other, really.

No-one wanted to be out there to be seen as leading anything, so...

We sat down, um, in the hotel -

me, Leigh Dineen, David Morgan and Huw.

It was agreed that, um, Huw would take up that role

as being the meanest person.

The meanest person we had out of the four of us, I think.

Martin Morgan was saying, "You should do it."

"You need to do it." And that was...

That was about it.

And in the end, Huw said, "Look, you know, I'll do it..."

As long as I came on as his vice chairman.

And then there was Dave. The three of us probably

were running the day-to-day.

We went there with no plan.

The plan was just to keep the doors open.

Paying the electric bill,

trying to find the money to do that, and our water bill,

to water the pitch week after week.

Between us, we had to find...

a float for the games on Saturdays.

We used to lend the money -

put the money in for the Saturday float.

You can have it back on a Monday, when the takings were in.

It was mainly down to the players on the pitch,

which is what it's about. So many clubs focus on things

that are nothing to do with football.

You know, we simplified it from day one and never lost sight of that.

We try to keep it as simple as we can now.

Um, costs under control, and just keep your focus on that

11 players that go out on the pitch every week.

And if you do that, you've got a chance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You got it? Thanks, mate.

INDISTINCT SPEECH

All right, mate, you all right? Yeah.

Swansea City saved my life.

I was quite ill when I was younger.

I suffered with depression and anorexia.

And I was pretty close to dying.

One week, my uncle said to me,

"Come on, let's go and watch Swansea City."

So it was a Tuesday night, the first game I remember

when he took me. And instantly I just fell in love with them.

When I was in hospital, it was always, "This is my focus,

"my aim is to die." But then, when I went to watch football,

I felt, "No, this is my purpose."

And it just...it all felt right.

When I first saw Lee Trundle at the Vetch Field,

he caught my eye instantly.

When I go out, I like to enjoy myself out on the pitch.

I think, you know, if you can make fans go away

with a smile on their face, I think I'm doing me job.

He's my first memory of watching the Swans.

I'd never seen any skill like that at such a level before.

Lee was a proper showboater.

The one I'm most proud of was against, er,

Huddersfield last season where the ball's come out of the air,

I took it down on me chest,

rolled it round me neck,

and played someone in. I've never seen anyone

do that on a pitch before, really.

Trun's come in and he lifted the whole place.

He was exactly what the club needed.

We've told them a million times this week, "Do not let

"this boy get onto his left foot and face goal.

"Cos if it is, it's going to hit the back of that onion sack."

We did let him get onto his left foot. And where did it end up?

It hit the onion sack.

If we'd had a bad game the week before, or whatever,

you'd always want to go back,

even if it was just to watch Lee Trundle.

Lee Trundle just gave us something different.

He not only could score goals, but he had the personality

that was actually going to pull Swansea up a bit,

and make people start looking at us.

He brought glamour in. He's glitz...and he's Hollywood.

He brought Hollywood here.

He suddenly gave this football club an identity,

in the fact that the amount of kids and children,

families who are actually coming down to watch us, then.

You looked at the children, they all had

the Lee Trundle haircuts, the blond -

you know, the blond, spiky hair, and everyone loved him.

APPLAUSE AND CHANTING

Come on!

LEIGH: People really did see us now more as

a community club, and that there was local people

battling to try and help the club go forward.

It's a great irony, in some ways,

or there's a great connection

that the Liberty Stadium, erm, of course, is built upon

the site of the great slag heap

of the former Morfa Copperworks.

That site was the real epicentre

of Swansea's industrialisation.

And in a sense, the Swans almost literally

have a copper-bottomed history.

I was brought up at the top end of Plas Mawr, by the castle -

so overlooking where the Liberty is now today. And Plas Mawr was,

I suppose, a very, erm, working-class, down-to-earth area.

That area was...you know,

it was like the moon. It was like a volcano had been there.

You know, it was the largest industrial wasteland in the world.

You had the aftermath of the copper days,

so it was a barren, black landscape, really.

When I was a youngster, there was a huge project

where all the local schools

would go down and plant a tree for the future.

They lasted until the Liberty Stadium - they're gone now.

LEE TRUNDLE: It's going to be unbelievable when it's done.

It's going to help players who want to sign here, as well.

If you come round and see a ground like this,

it's going to make you want to join the club.

The facilities they're going to have here is going to be unbelievable.

I know they've been round to other clubs who've built new grounds,

asked what would they change, if they could,

so they can get everything perfect.

So I'm looking forward to seeing the finished article.

# It's a heartache

# Nothing but a heartache

# Hits you when it's too late

# Hits you when you're down

# It's a fool's game... #

'Could be the last touch of a football at the Vetch Field,

'and it is, cue pitch invasion!'

# Standing in the cold and rain

# Feeling like a clown

# It's a fool's game

# Standing in the cold rain... #

You can always get fans that they were a little bit disappointed

of having to move, but everyone would accept

that that move was needed and that was the reason

why the football club was able to progress and fight.

But I think the old Vetch feeling is there at the Liberty

for whoever had experiences in the old stadium.

After that season we played in League One,

after the promotion.

I finished my contract, and then is when my time

as a footballer, or football player, finished at Swansea.

My name is Gordon Jenkins.

My name is Morfydd Jenkins but they call me Molly.

He'd be at the back.

He wouldn't be in with the boys just sitting or whatever,

he'd be at the back.

Always at the back. Always a "stand back" boy.

Never pushed himself forward at all.

That's all he thought of, was football, you see.

I used to tell him about it. I said, "There'll be no job,

"you'll have no job playing that all the time."

My father was my... my inspiration.

As a young boy, as most of any young kids, your dad is...

is your hero and he was mine.

Obviously, he was the manager of the local teams and since the age

of two, I remember just going in the dressing room and being around.

And I was part of the furniture in that dressing room.

And then at home he would tell me

why he would select certain teams and how he would

accommodate a certain quality of a player to make it work.

Something that probably it was a real shock

when I came to the British game because the approach here's the opposite.

It's highlighting weaknesses of players and trying to improve them.

My way of understanding the game

always was from a technical point of view.

The influence of Barcelona where... the skill and the manner

that you won games had a big say and was important.

Well, it was an answer to prayer

when we had him, you know, and... Oh, yeah, quite.

The greatest day of our life. Loved the football and the ball.

And Lonlas Boys Club, he loved going up there. Yeah, yeah.

He was a good goalkeeper. That was his best position, I think.

We had some good fun.

Going around the country, all over the country with the schools.

To Scotland he went and, er... Aye, aye, marvellous.

I could more or less play any position at that age

and I enjoyed doing it, really, and, um...

because nobody else would play in goal, I ended up playing there.

I had my own bread business.

I had, er, I had six shops to do. And about 400 houses.

Two o'clock, down tools, wherever I was at two o'clock,

lock the van, come home, get the car,

pick the boy up, bag of sandwiches and a flask of tea.

Straight to the Swans. And a Double Decker. A Double Decker.

It's always been Swansea City, Swansea City...

Stopped coming to chapel.

Didn't really know he was involved to that extent, Mol, did we?

Oh, he was always down... Always down there, but when he used to...

All the time. We didn't know what was going on behind the scenes.

No. We didn't know people were asking who's going to be chairman.

When I did eventually hear that he was chairman,

"Huw - chairman? You must be joking!"

He's never, never in a month of Sundays. Never.

Never, never, never thought he'd be chairman. But he surprised me.

I'm proud of him. Fair play.

Huw Jenkins is a really ambitious man.

He's got a knack for a good decision.

And he always makes the right appointment.

And that's something that he comes across,

is very confident with all the issues that he has to deal with.

I knew that, to develop my ideas and...

and to use my ideas as a manager, Swansea City was a perfect club.

And I had a phone call from Huw Jenkins,

and he just asked me if I would be interested in the job.

Obviously, that came as a shock.

He was a young manager looking to make a name for himself.

Roberto didn't play football at the highest level

but wanted to get to the highest level as a manager

and this was his chance. I think he had, you know, looking back,

it was a great opportunity for both of us that,

one, to take the club forward, and two, for himself,

to take his career forward.

You can reach the Premiership here and if you're taking this challenge,

and it would be very easy for me to say,

"Well, take one step at a time."

But, no, I think it's the Premiership

and I would be just a fool denying that.

How long it's going to take us, I don't know. The quicker the better.

I was so thrilled that he was going to be my manager

because he was my friend, and he'd come in and he was, like,

"Hi, Suzan," and I went "Hi, Rob."

You know, I was thinking...nothing.

I thought, "Oh, no, he's changed."

So we were upstairs and he said, "Suzan, can you come in my office?"

I was thinking, "What have I done?"

So Rob called me in and I said to him, "Hi."

"Come here!" he said, and he's cuddling.

He said, "I gotta show I'm a manager now!

"I can't show 'em this side," you know. And that was great.

'Let's welcome now for the first time to the Liberty Stadium...'

It was strange when Rob came back

but you always knew he was management material.

Rob came in at the age of, I think it was 33.

He was such a leader on the pitch.

You could just feel that that was the natural progression for him,

was to be a leader off the pitch as a manager.

Swansea City was a perfect club because I knew the players,

I knew where they were going for lunch.

I knew where they were going for partying and I knew what it could do.

I knew the fans, they will give me the time and will have the patience.

You've played with him, you've roomed with him

and all of a sudden instead of calling him Rob, you're calling him boss and gaffer and...

I remember we used to have a fine system in place.

It was ?10 every time you called him Rob on the training pitch,

so we soon, you know, there's a few tight ones in the group

and it soon stopped anyone calling him Rob.

I always felt that we had to change a little bit

the culture and the way of thinking.

That change of culture and that change of mentality

and that change of approach quite quickly was shown on the pitch.

Garry Monk to Gomez.

The ball would go from the keeper out to a fullback.

The fullback would make a run at the wing,

would go to a winger and it would come in and there'd be

a bit of play outside the box, and, bang, it would go in the net.

You looked at the other players and they didn't know what was going on.

They was looking round, "This isn't normal,

"this isn't the 4-4-2 we play against every week."

"We've got a player here but I'm going to be marking him. Who's marking him?"

And it was... You could just see the confusion

on the opposition players' faces and it was great to watch.

It became very, very exciting.

It's very rare that you go home from a game that you've lost

and you say, "What a great game of football that was."

We'd had an average of 120 passes per game

and we ended up having very, very close of 650 passes per game.

I think from day one Roberto surprised me.

Everything I thought he may give us...

he gave us far more than that.

# Ole, ole, ole, ole... #

Hey, everything we do, we do it together

and then you see the characters and the boys making decisions

and bonding together.

And it's always a great experience to see how they react from each other.

# Swansea

# Oh, Swansea City... #

Everyone wants to be friends and we all get on off the field

and on the field and I think that's showing.

Little things like he introduced, you know, breakfast together

and, you know, dinner together, which I know it sounds small

but it makes a big difference, you know?

He makes it known that every day, we have to play the Spanish way.

Swansea City, baby!

I think everyone believed it in the end.

The players, you know, the supporters, the staff,

and we was all heading in one direction and that was going up.

I never left this football club, you know.

When I was a player I was forced out.

I always wanted to stay and as a manager it's going to be the same,

if all the, if everything...

If Swansea City wants for me to stay, I will.

He said he'd only leave the Liberty if he was pushed.

Now it seems Wigan will benefit from the manager

described as a football genius.

Swansea won't be the same without him.

Thank you.

I felt hurt, I did, cos I really felt that he wouldn't leave us.

I really did, and I felt "Oh, here we go."

You know, "Why is he leaving us and he's going to Wigan?"

If he'd have gone to Everton or if he'd have gone to Man City,

I'd have said, "OK, fine."

And it was like, "Well, they're the Premier League, Martin,"

and I'm like, "Well, we're going to be Premier League.

"Can't you see it?

"Can't you see you're going to get us to the Premier League?

"You've just got to wait. Just wait, please."

It was, er, a very, very difficult time.

The relationship with the fans is very close,

we've got great chemistry.

And at that time we got too good too quickly.

And probably the next step had to be...

with a real need of finances that we didn't have,

to be able to replace players like Jordi Gomez or the situation

with Jason Scotland, needed something that we didn't have.

And I knew as a manager that I had to move to allow Swansea City

to carry on to the momentum of getting to the Premiership

in the next two years.

I personally was never under any illusion that,

you know, managers or players are here for life.

It's their job.

Once the door opens to find a little bit

of a climb up the ladder to enhance their careers,

they're going to do it.

There's very few people are going to say no to that.

And once you get, you know, you accept that, that's how things are,

you quickly move on to other things and we look for the next man.

Now, with the new season just three weeks away,

Brendan Rodgers has been confirmed as the new Swansea Manager.

Rodgers, who's been out of football

since leaving Reading in December, is expected to take charge

of their pre-season friendly at Yeovil tomorrow.

Brendan who?

I'd never heard of him but I trust the Board.

Never heard of him, to be honest with you, particularly.

And when I did hear about him, it was failures.

But it's a case of "In Huw we trust."

He had sent, um, like a dossier in to the club about

his philosophies on football and applied for the job,

and about two weeks after we had lost the manager

then it appeared on my desk.

It had been lost for a week.

And his coaching manual which, you know,

which if you want to call it a bible is a bible.

It was pretty thick, pretty comprehensive.

I read through his thoughts on football.

I thought, "I've got to meet this guy."

Huw and I had a good look through it.

I think he understood more than I did.

But, um, yeah, he did have his bible.

I think we hit it off really straight away.

I think his thoughts on football, where our team was at,

what he wanted to do, what we wanted to do, were perfect for each other.