Being a football FANATIC ( as opposed to a mere fan) requires a peculiar kind of crazy obsession which brings you out on a sunny Sunday afternoon for the testimonial game of a once-treasured player.
   There you are, two hours before kick-off for a non-competitive match to honour and raise funds for a player you admired, outside the stadium with a throng of equally monomaniacal characters.
   This was the case on March 26th, alongside my younger daughter for the Kevin McNaughton Testimonial.
   There were an assortment of genuine fanatics and downright nutters : older men with pin-point glares and large brown folders full of autographs, families seeking selfies, a few 'on the spectrum' who'd made CCFC their all-consuming interest and ( depending on your angle) the infamous 'legend' or 'madman' Dai Hunt.
   For any non-Bluebirds, Dai is a fan who has always been there.
   I recall him in the days of Ninian Park, sitting near the front and yelling at individual players during the warm-up to get a response.
  The big German Schwinkendorf ( seven-feet-tall-couldn't-head-the-ball) was one who'd always acknowledge Dai.
   Others soon learnt to ignore him.....not least Kevin McNaughton, our grey-haired , Scottish, tough-tackling full-back.
   Outside the ground that Sunday, Dai was limbering up.
   'You playing Dai?' I asked.
   'Nope....it's callisthenics!'
   But he made a bee-line for McNaughton's agent and engaged him in earnest negotiations.
   Dai, dressed in blue baseball cap, home shirt and a scarf down to his toes had, chware teg , been prominent in the back to blue campaign after owner Tan imposed his ludicrous red on us a few seasons back.
​   It turned out that Dai gave the team-talk that day, telling one-time top scorer Chopra to 'play on the shoulder' and for players to treat it 'just like any other game'.
   McNaughton's two 'wee sons' scored the last two goals (apart from the penalties) so little chance of that!
   My younger daughter managed to grab quite a few autographs and selfies and , as an obsessive, I can identify with Dai and another bloke who was hanging around outside the stadium on  a weekday chatting to a steward about transfers, when I was there to do workshops.
   Compared to Wales's outstanding adventure in the Euros and Swansea and Newport's last minute escapes from relegation, our season hasn't been overly exciting.
   Yet manager Neil Warnock's transformation of the club has been remarkable and , according to official data, the most successful managerial appointment of the season.
   When he joined in October last year we were, under former coach Paul Trollope, second from bottom and looking doomed. We ended the season in 12th position and with an emphatic 3-0 victory away to Huddersfield, who could yet be promoted to the Premiership.
   I'm delighted because, prior to his appointment, I was among those clamouring for Warnock on the message-boards.
   He immediately brought in two unattached players, Sol Bamba and Junior Hoilett and both galvanised the team.....indeed, Bamba scored on his debut, a home win v. Brizzle City.
   Together with his deputies Blackwell and Jepson, he has had a startling effect on certain players, notably full-back Jazz Richards, winger Kadeem Harris and , above all, striker Kenneth Zohore.
   In January, his main acquisition was experienced keeper Allan McGregor on loan from Hull and this helped to steady the defence.
   Warnock is the first manager for a long time to truly reflect the spirit and identity of the Bluebirds, with his passion, candour and humour.
   Commenting on Aron Gunnarsson's cracking winner v. Forest he quipped - 'Normally he knocks the pigeon off the top of the stand!'
   He completely changed top goalscorer Zohore's season with a stark warning, telling him he could be sent back to Belgium and to ditch the gloves he always wore while playing.
   Zohore has been a revelation, scoring freely yet still working hard for the team.
   Ultimately, he has motivated the whole squad to play for each other, with everyone knowing their role ; utilising the pace of Harris, Hoilett and Zohore to the utmost.
   He has invariably got a plan B, even plan C and deploying Bamba in midfield v. Villa ensured us victory.
   For our final game away to Huddersfield, we even played the dreaded wing-backs which had never worked 'the Wales way' for the hapless Trollope.
   As long as Dai Hunt doesn't do the team-talks, I believe Warnock will bring success and hope he's around to annoy the Swansea fans for a derby match in the not-too-distant future.   

     CARDIFF CITY FANATIC
 
 
Old men who should know better
with large brown folders
staring deadly serious
and homing in on anyone
with a suit and  flash car.
 
 
We are there, father and daughter,
seeking selfies and signatures
which resemble children’s doodles,
I call them by nicknames
as if I’m an old friend.
 
 
The infamous fanatic is lurking,
he’s outside the stadium
at crazy o’clock every time
blurting out tactless comments –
‘Lucky if you get picked today!’
 
 
Used to hear him from the Bob Bank
as the teams warmed up
yelling out players’ names ;
they soon learnt to ignore him
except one extremely tall German.
 
 
Dubbed either legend or madman,
once sat in a tree next to the training ground
as our star striker slammed balls at him
trying to bring him down;
tactics from his flailing arms.
 
 
 
His Bluebirds baseball cap, scarf
so long it trips him up,
players spot him approaching
with gibber and phone and pen,
dodge and weave better than in a game.
​
    

    After a week when it's been reported that 1000s of pupils have sought counselling for stress as a result of test/exam pressures, here is an apt poem by fellow Red Poet and Welsh socialist republican Barry Taylor -

                        SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

They slowly shuffle in,
Grey and stooped, faces lined with care,
Shoulders roundly hunched,
Peering close with world-weary eyes.

No-one speaks aloud ;
Funereal silence grimly stretches on.
Heads once filled with dreams
Confused, listless, dream no more.

Helpless, I look on,
Longing to reach out, to offer help,
But I am unable,
My silent empathy is useless here.

A cog in the machine,
Abhoring this but forced to play my part,
I enforce the official line.
They may be only nine
But it's still test time.

   Barry's also a Buddhist, atheist, haiku-dueller ; a dog-lover, home-brewer and teacher and I'm pretty sure he's a very disillusioned yet creative one who truly feels for the children in a system which imposes pointless pressure and demonstrates a total lack of trust in the teaching profession.
   He's going part-time in September and is delighted.
   Other friends are quitting the system, completely exhausted and drained by constant form-filling, inspection and the need to get good grades whatever the particular 'cohort' ( or year group ) are like.
   As well as the reports in the press of the mental torment which our children and young people are forced to endure, there have been two excellent and revealing articles in the 'Guardian'.
   The first was a personal account by a Head in England Peter Foggo who, together with his Deputy Head wife, decided to resign . He explains that the exam regime, budget cuts and impending introduction of Grammar schools  were the main reasons.
  He ends with - ' The vision of a world that sees every man for himself, fighting in the gutter over the last crust of bread, is what has driven me out.'
   An equally enlightening article by writer Gaby Hinsliff looks at the obsessive concentration on English grammar and its many terms in Primaries in England and the way it's destroying creativity ; she ends - 'Killing children's enthusiasm for writing is a mistake we will live to regret.'
   In Cymru, we should not be complacent. Our Primary children have been given two numeracy and one literacy test in the last few weeks. Every single year group sitting these in a system more intense and gruelling than England.
   A minority of lazy teachers welcome this : they can teach towards tests and avoid planning lessons.
   Teachers must also mark these tests which, in the numeracy reasoning test included truly baffling problems about currency on the Planet Zog ( I believe the examiner came from that planet!).
   These annual tests are sat from the age of six upwards, with six year-olds taking the same ones as eight year-olds.
   Despite the Donaldson Report (commissioned by the Welsh Assembly Gov.) which strongly recommended phasing out these tests, LibDem Education Minister Kirsty Williams' policy is merely to shift them online in the future at a cost of £8 million.
   This figure is not only a utter waste of money, which would be better spent recruiting more staff, but a definite underestimate.
   Many schools don't possess sufficient computers and many haven't ones which work regularly.
   It would probably take the best part of a term just to carry out the tests!
   One experienced and highly dedicated Primary teacher inherited a class of six and seven year-olds where 25 % could not read at the beginning of the year.
   This teacher managed to get all the class reading proficiently only for the tests to arrive and act as a hammer-blow, knocking their confidence and rendering one boy ( the subject of my poem) so upset he cried throughout the whole WAG Reading Test.
   Though some pupils can succeed, the tests are largely designed to befuddle and undermine, producing the self-same exam phobia the SATs once did ( and still do in England). How can it benefit a pupil to get 0 in these, as some have done?
   It's high time opposition parties like Plaid Cymru and the Greens embraced an alternative solution, one which places trust in teachers to foster creativity and imagination, to enable pupils to think for themselves or work in co-operation.
   The thematic approach - with local history, geography, nature and literature as its focus - should be at the centre of the curriculum in Primaries
especially ; in this way, local writers, historians etc could visit schools frequently to support and encourage.
   It's not complicated, but requires investment.
   All of the money squandered at present on the tests, Challenge Advisors and many needless courses should go into this instead.
   Just like the old 11 + exam we are increasingly ( under a moribund Labour administration) training pupils the tricks of passing tests and exams rather than discovering and researching for themselves.
   Ideals aren't merely a map of the future; they're paths towards a progressing nation.
   Let's venture along them before we are lost in a suffocating smog, with no vision in testing times.

                                 TESTING  TIME

He's just learnt to read,
I'm so proud of him.
He picks up books
like they are footballs
and prides in them.

He used to stare at words
as if they were tall boys
in the playground
playing a game
he couldn't join in.

His teacher sat with him
long hours, patient as a groundsman
caring for the grass,
nurturing simple seeds
into sentences, paragraphs.

Then came testing time
and he broke down at home -
'I tried Mam, I couldn't cope,
I cried all the exam!'
Threw his books in frustration.

We cwtched and reassured him -
'No matter, you're doing fine!'
His face a punctured ball
struck against thorns
next to the tended ground.
​