Well, other parts of the UK too.
What are your memories of following North End when life was carefree, and everything was a blast? Here's one of mine...
A Wale(s) of a time
Taffy: A slang word or nickname for a Welshman. It is a merging of the common Welsh name Dafydd and the Welsh river Taff. Nowadays it's used has a derogatory term for a Welsh person.
There is no present in Wales, and no future; brittle with relics, wind-bitten towers and castles with sham ghost; mouldering quarries and mines; and an important people, sick with inbreeding, worrying the carcase of an old song - R. S. Thomas, Welsh poet & clergyman
This is what the self-taught Welsh speaker and Welsh nationalist, Ronald Stuart Thomas, wrote in 1952 about his own kinfolk , natives and the inhabitants of Wales, plus its landscape! Well, what more could a Englishman add to that?
History of the Welsh hating the English – a great hate may give a purpose in life – and vice-versa, stems back centuries and is a book in itself. Over the last 50 or so years the ‘hatred’ has reared its ugly head on more than one or two occasions. Events of such hatered include: the proposed, and eventual, flooding of Tryweryn Valley which provided a reservoir supplying more drinking water for Liverpool. This meant drowning a village, Capel Celyn, that 67 Welsh-speaking families lived in – they moved them out first, though. This had a knock on effect, the delivery of the Free Wales Army who, vandalised any road signs and English worded advertisement posters. They burnt down, and out, English second homes and holiday retreat cottages and caravans - and cars and boats too. Posh and Becks were warned to stay away from Wales when they showed an interest in owning property there too. They also planted devices and blew up several buildings including BBC owned English language radio and television transmitters and, even their own activists? The list goes on. And with the Welsh teams playing their football in the English leagues – strangely they still answer to the Welsh FA – such animosity spills over between opposing fans at the match.
My first encounter of the Welsh was as a young whippier snapper with a runny-nose while sat in the back of my dad’s car repetitively blurting “ Are we nearly there yet, are we nearly there yet, are we nearly there yet?” As far back as I recall, family holidays in the early 70’s consisted of Dad, Mum, me and sometimes a mate, were always spent in North Wales, at a Butlins Camp in Pwllheli. We’d been driving in the lovely country of Wales far an hour or so and seemed to be getting nowhere fast! And so did other cars too passing by or the ones behind us? Dad was explaining to Mum that the Welsh had been up to their old tricks; turning all the roadside signs to point in the wrong directions, when he pulled the car to the roadside outside a row of houses where two old dears were nattering away over the front garden fence – in English. He then proceeded to roll the window down and ask them politely if they could tell us the right way to Pwllheli. They both gave him a stern stare, briefly, turned their backs on him and carried on their conversation in Welsh. So, you can now see my first encounter with the Welsh wasn’t a pleasant one, to say the least.
The years rolled by, and many a summer holiday was spent rubbing shoulders, at some stage, with our fellow ‘Brits’ on the said campsite. I can honestly say I didn’t really have a problem with them until I started following Preston North End in my teens. My first excursion over the border, aboard a Football Special coach, was on the 1st of January 1980 as a fourteen year old to Wrexham. On exiting the coaches we were meet by the police and ordered to go straight on the ground, as it was approaching kick-off time. There was also a line of police separating the Wrexham fans queuing up and the rest of the North Enders, with both sets giving each other plenty of verbal and threats. Watching all this while giggling away with the mates we finally reached the turnstiles which had a copper posted on each one, who’s eyes were transfixed towards the folk wanting to enter the ground. And when it was time to pay our entrance fee he stopped us in our tracks. He then barked out orders that we’d to remove the laces out of our DM’s – Doctor Martin boots. The bewildered mates and I removed our laces throwing them onto a pile of other multi-coloured ones at the side of the turnstile door. We were also informed we could collect them at the end of the game after he had stood on our boot toe ends?. This was a norm back then at most ground but a new one to us spotty herbert’s. Others on the terraces had been made to take off their steel toe capped boots and were stood on scarves trying to keep their feet warm, if that was possible in subzero temperatures, and retrieve their boots after the game.
When the teams ran out in front of a near 15,000 crowd, the noise of the roar reached fever pitch, and this is when I started hearing anti-English and anti-Welsh songs, and chants, in abundance! Hatred that you could cut with a knife, filled the air when the referees' whistle blew for the start of the match. I hadn’t noticed any such abuse in my time following Preston when they’d played either Wrexham, Newport, Swansea or Cardiff on our home patch, Deepdale. The game itself is a bit of a blur after all these years, but what still stands out is the aggression by my fellow Preston comrades felt towards the Wrexham team and fans. This was returned with equal venom through the 8ft fences, and sometimes over it, by the baying home support. Even certain players received special attention that day at the Racecourse Ground, this being the likes of Joey Jones and Dai Davis playing for Robins. These chants focused on their parentage, masturbating and their country of birth. Apart from all the Eng-ger-land and PNE chants, and the Wrexham & Wales chants too, I will never forget what a lad stood at the side me tried to get going on numerous occasions ; ‘When the red red dragon goes bob bob bobbing along, Shot the bastard shot the bastard, shot shot the bastard’.
The game ended in a 2-0 defeat for Preston, only that day I realised there was much more to a fixture against Wrexham and their South Wales soul brothers – a shear repugnance for other British fans and teams that feel under the Union Jack flag that weren’t from their own teams country of birth! ‘