As I approached the ground it felt like a final time. I experienced an overwhelming sense of mourning, like I had felt before the last game at old Ninian Park stadium.
I studied Cardiff City Walk carefully, leading up to the gates. Almost every brick there, large and small, black and golden, was inscribed with the words BLUEBIRD or BLUEBIRDS.
The crest was prominent across the stadium and outside the kiosks and club shop. The actual stadium itself (built from large lego, we always joked) is blue and white , as are the seats within.
In the club shop Cardiff Blues merchandise had disappeared and ours was much depleted, to prepare for 'enter the dragon', a weird and alien prospect. One man was asking about the arrival of the new shirts and seemed very enthusiastic.
This was a kind of ending, though I'll return as a spectator, of course, always wearing blue yet wary of shouting for the Bluebirds when a strange red-shirted team come out onto the field.
It was an ending because the scheme I had taken part in and enjoyed doing so much - 'All Skilled Up', organised by CCFC and Literature Wales - was finishing that day and its funding had run out.
It was a literacy project with a strong Creative Writing impetus and I have relished the many workshops I've done there, together with other poets such as Mike Church, Patrick Jones and Peter Read (Luton, Spurs and Wrexham fans, who have never betrayed their bias......unlike me!).
No other club in Cymru has provided this : a unique opportunity for Primary ,and some Secondary, pupils to tour the stadium and write poetry about football.
Like everything else, the Cuts have impacted severely on Creative Writing provisions and I wonder if such a scheme will ever happen again.
The teacher from the first school was, like me, a die-hard Bluebird. He told me how he absolutely loathed the changes to red shirt and dragon badge and he'd agonised, as I have, over whether to go at all next season, despite having a season ticket.
I tried to reassure him that we, the fans, would be there when everyone else - manager, owners and players - had left to look for more money elsewhere; but he didn't seem convinced.
It simply wasn't his club any more : the one his grandfather had brought him to as a boy and he'd loved ever since.
The teacher from the next school was a Swansea fan who was sympathetic, but still managed to look at me as though I'd suffered a bereavement.
One of his pupils was less caring however and , at the first opportunity and out of the blue (that colour again!) simply put up his hand to announce - ' Cardiff City lost to Liverpool in the Carling Cup Final!'
Only weeks before this we had been celebrating victory. The owner Vincent Tan had declared categorically that there would be no change of either shirt or badge. He had said - ' For all concerned I would like to emphasize that I hold no desire to trample on club history or heritage...'
Fast forward less than a month and he had done exactly that : managed to tear up 110 years of the Bluebirds!
Our history was being re-written like the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's '1984'. Indeed, the more I think about Orwell's dystopian vision the more it seems relevant not just to the state capitalism it exposed, but to the present corporate greed of the West, with its total disregard for people's wishes.
We have been lied to at least once before, when the manager was promised transfer funds in the January window ; money which never materialised and might well have ensured us a Premiership place. One or two transfers certainly altered Reading's season dramatically, especially the signing of Jason Roberts.
How can we possibly trust such owners? Most of their investment of £40 million is actually made up of money they have loaned and the club will have to pay them interest. This is the selfsame scenario of previous owner Sam Hammam, still owed substantial amounts by the club.
I love the Bluebirds and will not run away. Yet, it's difficult for me to summon any enthusiasm for next season, when my team will take the field in Welsh team badges and sub-Liverpool outfit!
And......I am bound to glower at every fan who has been duped by this lunatic scheme and not feel at one with them.
That vital tribal mentality, based on everything from bricks to chants, from colours to fanzines, has been shattered in two.
My friend believes that a sponsorship deal with a company whose main colours are red and black must be pending.
My young daughter speculated on the Tomato Ketchup Stadium!
If I am surrounded by sell-out red and refuseniks in blue are outnumbered, then I may have to think again.
But, for now, one ending is enough to take in.
BLUEBIRDS FOREVER!
Our club crest is the Bluebird,
We wear the colour blue
And there’s no lying businessman
Going to tell us what to do.
Over 100 years of history
Which they’re binning like litter,
Blue after Riverside F.C. ;
They wonder why we’re bitter.
Only last month they promised us
That things would not be changed.
Who’s going to buy these red insults?
The plan is totally deranged.
We’ve seen owners come and go,
Managers and players through the years,
But most of us will still be here
When money makes others disappear.
I took my son to Ninian Park
When he was only five ,
Now he’s a man we’re fighting strong
To keep the Bluebirds alive!
Our club crest is the Bluebird,
We wear the colour blue
And there’s no lying businessman
Going to tell us what to do.
Over 100 years of history
Which they’re binning like litter,
Blue after Riverside F.C. ;
They wonder why we’re bitter.
Only last month they promised us
That things would not be changed.
Who’s going to buy these red insults?
The plan is totally deranged.
We’ve seen owners come and go,
Managers and players through the years,
But most of us will still be here
When money makes others disappear.
I took my son to Ninian Park
When he was only five ,
Now he’s a man we’re fighting strong
To keep the Bluebirds alive!
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