With the football season over prematurely due to the Coronavirus Pandemic I’m in the unusual position of actually having this blog up to date! So to keep the content coming, and for something to do, I’ll do some old grounds and games where there’s a story to tell.

Friday 25th August 2006 ko 18.20

South Wales Amateur League Division Two

TRELEWIS WELFARE 3 (D Morris 65 90 Munkley 90)

GRAIG 3 (D Jones 29p Moon 31 Marshalsea 77)

Att 209

Entry £3

Programme £1

For so many people the clubs of the South Wales Amateur League, now the South Wales Alliance were opened up by organised events by the Welsh Groundhop, now GroundhopUK. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have visited without Chris Berezai’s help, Valleys football is hugely enjoyable, but sometimes you just need that little nudge in the right direction!

Except here this was a gigantic shove. The building company’s pitchside advertising gives the clue, the ground had been sold for housing and so the hop’s visit was case of visit while we still could it.  The club did a superb job for the hordes who visited, and that included a quite wonderful game to kick-off then 2006 Welsh/Hellenic Hop. Off course the great sadness of the piece was that Trelewis were a Welsh League club from 1970 to 1997. As ever in in the valleys once the coal mine closes, everything and everyone suffers, and that includes the football club.

We actually passed Trelewis’s new ground at Parc Taf Bargoed and I’m sure we all thought we’d be visiting there the next year.

Life being what it is we eventually got there in 2008 for the grand opening game, and that was despite the efforts of the lad from the council who tried to cut a sodden pitch using a tractor then literally tried to cover his tracks by filling the ruts with the grass clippings. I included photos from that game in the Treharris at Fochriw article, from 3 years’ ago.

But Trelewis Welfare folded in 2014, and since Treharris Athletic Western had lost the quite wonderful Athletic Ground in 2016, and had led a peripatetic existance since, they opted to move to nearby Trelewis and add a stand to Parc Taf Bargoed to bring it up to Welsh League standards.

The irony was that Trelewis Welfare were the team of the Navigation Colliery on which Parc Taf Bargoed now stands. Off course Treharris is named after the Harris Navigation company who pre-nationalisation owned the mines in the area, so at least the coal mining link survives.