The day 10,000 fans said ‘no’ to their match getting called off

The Barry Herald
Saturday, 19 September 1925

Barry v Mid Rhondda United
Referee forced to allow match to proceed

Angry scenes were witnessed at Jenner Park today, when in consequence of the referees decision to abandon the match, two huge crowds numbering over 10,000 raised a stormy protest and clamoured for admission.

When the referee first inspected the ground he was settled in his decision that the game would have to be postponed owing to the bad state of the pitch, but suspended his intention when some of the Barry directorate offered to sweep away the water with brooms.

This they did, while the two huge crowds at the Gladstone Road and Crogan Hill (Barry Road) ends patiently awaited the verdict. Eventually, upon the townspeople demonstrating, the referee reversed his decision.

(ED: The match at Ninian Park between Division One Cardiff City and Sunderland HAD been postponed, so Barry folk returned from Cardiff in time for our kick-off and were not best pleased when our match was going to get called off as well. Interestingly, across the country, because of the weather, games were either called off or had severely depleted crowds.

The 10,000+ crowd at Jenner Park that day was a larger crowd than that seen at several English League Division One fixtures, such as Birmingham v Notts County (5,000), Sheffield United v Blackburn (7,000), WBA v Bury (8,000) and equal with that of Burnley v Arsenal, and only slightly less than the 12,000 at Leeds v West Ham, and Bolton v Aston Villa. The attendance at Anfield for Liverpool v Manchester United was 18,000, while Newcastle had the biggest attendance of 25,000 for their match with Leceister.

The attendance is even more extraordinary when you consider we had already played Mid Rhondda United in the Southern League twice already. But this was the 1st Qualifying Round of the FA Cup. This match ended in a 2-2 draw with our goals scored by Hopkins and Dai Collier. The Replay also ended in a draw, but the 2nd replay saw us edged out 2-1 in Tonypandy.

Amazingly, that wasn’t the end of it. We were drawn against them in the Welsh Cup 3rd Round, and after we held them 4-4 at theirs, we beat them 4-3 in the Replay. By the time this was settled, we had played Mid Rhondda United SEVEN times by the January.

Here are those stats:

02 Sep 25 : Mid Rhondda United (H) League 2-1 : W
14 Sep 25 : Mid Rhondda United (A) League 0-1 : L
19 Sep 25 : Mid Rhondda United (H) FA Cup 2-2 : D
23 Sep 25 : Mid Rhondda United (A) FA Cup 2-2 : D
26 Sep 25 : Mid Rhondda United (A) FA Cup 1-2 : L
13 Jan 26 : Mid Rhondda United (A) W. Cup 4-4 : D
27 Jan 26 : Mid Rhondda United (H) W. Cup 2-1 : W

…and that’s not including our Welsh League teams meeting twice during the season as well.)