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    Shine On Swansea City: 2011/12 A Season in the Sun
    Shine On Swansea City: 2011/12 A Season in the Sun
    Shine On Swansea City: 2011/12 A Season in the Sun
    Ebook287 pages4 hours

    Shine On Swansea City: 2011/12 A Season in the Sun

    By Keith Haynes

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    About this ebook

    A sensational account of Swansea City’s 2011/12 season in the Premier League covering 12 months in the life of a Welsh football club that in 2002 was just 40 minutes away from extinction and expulsion from the football league. Taking up the story where he left off at the end of Walking on Sunshine, Keith Haynes gives a vivid and passionate account of Swansea City’s first foray into the Premier League. Playing with the top teams in England was never going to be easy, but under the expert guidance of manager Brendan Rodgers, the boys from the valleys have shown they are more than capable of holding their own.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateAug 1, 2012
    ISBN9780752493794
    Shine On Swansea City: 2011/12 A Season in the Sun

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      Book preview

      Shine On Swansea City - Keith Haynes

      time.

      Chapter One

      The Only Human

      in the League

      30 May 2011

      It’s ten o’ clock at night and I am pissed. The heat from the day and the stress washes away as I gaze upwards to the Gloucester skyline. I am holding a bottle of London Pride – I have been to London, so therefore it seemed a good idea. The date many of you will know, and many of you will remember forever. It’s Monday 30 May 2011. You may be a new or even an old supporter, I don’t really care. The sight of over 40,000 Swansea City supporters at Wembley, witnessing one dream at one time all sharing that one desire, will stay with me for the rest of my days. Be those days short or long, months, years or whatever, this day will be with me for every single second.

      My head has been stained since 1968 with wanton and frivolous Swansea Town (then City) desires. I was indeed one of John Toshack’s Black and White Army, and as many of you now know I was a long-lost punk rocker, come skinhead, come casual. So I will remain perfectly casual as I revisit that Bank Holiday Monday when my team Swansea City first cruised, then squeezed their way into a Premier League nobody said we would reach. A league that people laughed at when it was mentioned that we would. Those people, who now, by a strange coincidence are quiet, withdrawn and not evident at any level.

      It has been at least sixteen hours since my mate reorganised the décor of my house by letting the dog out into a torrential downpour and battlefield-like garden, and then letting her back in again to ruin the kitchen and all that it was, and how I remembered it the night before. It seemed to me we had been on a pilgrimage, or maybe the word crusade is better? A lifelong desire for ultimate success that was the morning had been accomplished by the evening, our Sabbath day was a Bank Holiday and the principal players were those 40,000-plus Swansea souls.

      You can only laugh and celebrate so much, and as the bile rose and the curve of a projectile lob hammered in to the dark, I felt much better. It was even fitting that I had successfully guided the day’s beer and food onto a well-worn lawn and now had the freedom to enjoy more. If indeed I felt I could. This final act of the day was an exorcism. All the shit and bollocks that we all have had to put up with from the bilious no-marks in the press and the foolish writers of ‘everywhere’ in local and national newspapers had been truly splattered in vomit over a Gloucester landscape. Where are you now you ‘true professionals’ of the press in both England and Wales? Where are you now? I know you’re sicker than I ever could be. Deep down you are hating this moment – your real team is beneath us, a downtrodden piece of mismanaged garbage beneath my feet. And in my current state I reckon that’s exactly where you deserve to be. I have heard for years how this is your time, and this is the right team to achieve success for Wales and even from that ridiculous head-slapping man of years gone by I have heard how this team will represent the whole of the Principality. Oh really? What a joke. What a joker, and all who drove him and paraded with him, be they in prison, in court, in the newspaper or in the nude, I celebrate your lowly lives tonight. I am not bitter but I reckon I could fight them all this evening. One on one.

      And then I collapse.

      It must have been an hour later that I recall steadily and calmly pursuing a route through darkness in the garden to my greenhouse. Staggering slowly through a dense, dark night I find some form of solace in the thought that sleep will come far quicker in this space intended for vegetables and fruit. Yes, one more vegetable is coming to join you. I stagger one way, then the other, I find the wall of the house and then the line of the fence . . . this is incredibly time-consuming and I recall thinking ‘this is taking far too long’, then a large pole wedged itself in my crotch, knocking me down like a tenpin. This is really not the best way to end the day. Sitting there in the calm summer’s night I gather what thoughts I can and try to recall the evening and the day. We got back from London at about nine o’ clock, so I must have drunk quite a bit in the time between then and now. But of course I recall collapsing and falling around like the drunken man I was. I had only been drinking for half an hour tops, and then only a bottle of ale. That’s very odd, one bottle can’t do this to you – can it? The darkness swamped me again, knocking me down, penetrating my head and causing me to fall sideways to get more comfortable and to stop the nausea. This has not happened to me before that’s for sure.

      This is remarkably silly, very odd and all a part of the promotion process I thought. Four weeks later I would put two and two together (with the help of my GP) and realise that this was the first of my adventures in to the world of being diabetic. Drink had nothing to do with it . . . I was simply celebrating my new friend diabetes and Premier League football in one go. (From here on in we call him Dai.) On a day that was life-changing for Swansea City and all who work and play for the name, mine had changed as well. And equally as memorable as this may be for them, I reckon my life-changing event was unlikely to be rewarded with a £20,000 a week salary for playing in a white football shirt.

      Bloody hell. What a pickle.

      So that’s the state of play, readers. However, the real state of play is a simple one. Swansea City have reached the Premier League when all around us, and close to us, have failed. The manner of the promotion, for me as a fan of some years now, has been in a way expected. I expected improvement as a club from the first day the board, as it was in 2002 and is today, took over the groaning old lady of the Vetch Field. In fact a truer statement would be that I should not in any way have expected improvement at all – the fact we had a club was a bonus. I think as football fans we expect a constant improvement in the state of harmony on and off the field at our clubs, and to an extent as a customer I suppose that is right. Of course you have to take into account the very fact that if it were not for the hard-fought battles of yesteryear, the fans’ protests and all, more than adequately now covered, we wouldn’t have a club at all. Question is, would you, me, us as fans of Swansea City now be over it if indeed we had succumbed to the great god of football failure, and been consigned to non-league football forever? Or maybe a worse fate – the end of the road as a club, full stop? Who would have thought it, Swansea City in the Premier League. So much to look forward to, and so much to hope for. After the past nine years of absolute and total football success.

      In my last book, Swansea City 2010/11: Walking on Sunshine, I got the bit between my teeth from the very off as if exorcising another ghost – that is of the previous leaderships of the club. On this occasion unless I repeat it all again, there is no ghost to exorcise or blackguards to chase out of town. It’s all a bit fine and dandy. Swansea City is shining, the world is lovely, and I have to change my diet. Excellent.

      Of course straight away I am told by the experts who populate my life at work and in my various social circles that we will come straight back down . . . well that just goes to show how much they don’t know. They wonder why their lives are so full of negativity, when all they can talk about is negatives. Someone, somewhere loves them – maybe. In a negative way no doubt.

      Chapter Two

      Here Comes

      the Summer

      My main gripe in the 2010/11 season was the lack of recognition for the excellent football and management the club maintained throughout the hardest season it had encountered for a few generations. The eloquent way the manager put his views across, backed up by Colin Pascoe and Alan Curtis, two stalwarts of the club, and its achievements over a magnificent season was truly remarkable. Many will say that it’s best to stay under the radar, but if the successes of this club are to continue, how long will that have to be the case? Immediately I am infuriated by the media; their lack of knowledge about the players, the stadium, the club, the team ethos, style of play and stewardship is alarming, almost shocking. Some idiot on TalkSport (there are many) sparks up and asks ‘who is the Swansea money man?’ Straight away I am incensed and have the desire to deliver a full-length Doctor Marten to his head via my telephone, but of course this is the TalkSport way. Make a silly remark, and get the callers lined up at 50p a minute, No, I will not make that mistake today, nor any other day. I feel there will be more of this as the season progresses; journalists with only an eye for the top six in the league having to trail down to West Wales, trying to fool the educated that they know about our club and its origins. They won’t fool me, and I doubt they will fool you

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