Ninian Park's First Executive Box

The Executive Box

I first went to Ninian Park in March 1974. My father had decided that we needed to spend some ‘quality time’ together after I was nearly killed in a traffic accident.  What better way than a sporting event? After ignoring my pleas to go to a Rugby match, Dad chose football.

Cardiff City’s reputation for violence and hooliganism was fully established by 1974. To ease me in to the Ninian Park experience, which I fully expected to be vaguely traumatising and possibly ending up with stitches, we sat in the Grandstand close to the Grange End (also known as the ‘Boys Enclosure’). Common consent was that you had to be bordering on psychopathic to watch your football from that enclosure.

Middlesbrough were the opponents and City won 3-2. Cardiff were, to my utter disbelief, frankly excellent and I loved every minute. I was 10 years old and ‘The Goodies’ were on telly that night so it was pretty much a perfect day.

The game was not 10 minutes old and Cardiff 2-0 up before I realized my father was not a typical football fan. He appeared to be on an unspoken mission to be awarded the accolade of being the most undemonstrative man in the crowd. His expression and demeanour did not change during the entire match, no matter how thrilling or controversial the action.

There were no replica shirts in the Grange End; only scarves, flared trousers and Dr Marten boots. As I was dressed head to toe in polyester and didn’t own any of these items, I didn’t think the Grange End was the place for me. In fact, I considered it noisy and evil as it was full of ‘bigger boys’ with knives. I thought that going in there would lead to my death.

Smaller boys, foolish or brave enough to go in the Grange, were robbed of their sweet money, mugged for their shoes and bullied for their scarves by bastards.  Years later, I was accused of being from Swansea by a Grange End ‘thumper’ because I did not have any City tattoos. I ended up showing him my Cardiff Buss pass as proof of allegiance. He may have recognized it by sense of smell as it is unlikely he could read. Only partially satisfied, he went away. His punishment is being him. It’s true that you will find violent cretins everywhere but also true that they have a tendency to congregate at football grounds.

Despite the nascent hooliganism, the only fences at Ninian Park in 1974 were those to prevent you gaining access to more expensive areas of the ground. The only segregation you heard about was in South Africa. Within two years, there were fences everywhere to prevent violence and pitch invasions, each one a permanent reminder of some act of hooliganism or other.

I was directly responsible for one of those pitch invasions.

My father and I never went in the Grandstand again. One-off treats aside, 50p was considered too expensive for a football match; instead I had my own ‘executive box’ on the Bob Bank.

I wasn’t very tall, so I stood, or more accurately, balanced on a small wooden box my father knocked up at work in order to see the action. This box combined three design points in a unique way; it was at once practical, impractical and embarrassing.

It was practical in that I could now see the match. It was impractical in that falling from a foot high, 10 inch square box was never my preferred way to celebrate a goal. Furthermore, it drew laughs from bystanders when I first unwrapped it from a Tesco carrier bag and got on it. When you are a child, it's natural to feel like everyone is watching everything you do. In this case, they were.

In truth, the box’s Ninian debut was postponed for several weeks as I ‘forgot’ it a couple of times and, even when my father reminded me, succeeded in leaving it in the car once or twice, too.

Cardiff City went in to the final game of the season against Crystal Palace needing a point to avoid relegation.

I went in to the final game of the season against Crystal Palace with my box. All went reasonably well (there were no major falls, not even when Tony Villars equalised) until the final moments as it became apparent a pitch invasion to celebrate City staying in Division Two was brewing. 

As the final whistle blew, I was rudely shoved aside and my box used as a stepping stone off the terrace and over the perimeter wall by hundreds of jubilant fans.  They swarmed endlessly like ants on to the pitch where they jigged in the centre circle, waved scarves above their heads and mimed scoring goals at the Grange End. 

When they had all gone, I looked down to see my box had been splintered to matchsticks by the pounding of countless heavy boots.

It was never replaced.

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Bobbing Along. Issue 3. May 1989

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