Wednesday 31st December 2025 ko 12:30

Cymru North

PENRHYNCOCH 1 (Owen 86)

RUTHIN TOWN 1 (Holland 24)

Att 140 at Cae Baker, Penrhyn-coch

Entry £7

Programme online/downloadable

For those of you that ask, yes I do question my sanity, and driving as I was, on New Year’s Eve through Snowdonia with the temperature dropping alarmingly as I climbed the mountains. It got to point where I drove through Troedyrallt and so white was the scene outside that I couldn’t imagine that the game was still on. But I was committed, 3 hours in to my drive from Oxford, with no alternate game to divert to.

So I kept going, and soon after got caught at a set of traffic lights at some roadworks. That gave me just enough time to check the Cymru Football App, and since both clubs had posted their line-ups, much to my pleasant surprise I hadn’t wasted my New Year’s Eve!

The village of Penrhyn-coch lies a mere 4+¹⁄₂ miles north-east of Aberystwyth. I remember that in the days of the Ceredigion Hop we looked at trying to involving Penrhyncoch, mainly due there not being a massive number of floodlit grounds in Ceredigion. We did finish early on a number of days. Please don’t read anything into the fact that GroundhopUK never got to Cae Baker, it was just that the stars never quite aligned! Equally we might just make it here in the future!

The Roosters have been around since 1965 and have always played at Cae Baker with the club gaining a lease from Ceredigion County Council in 1975. The ground is named after John Baker, an 18th-century farmer who previously farmed the land. Even now the ground sits with agriculture as its backdrop. I did note that the shepherd, with his dog, and Land Rover, didn’t pause to watch the football, while coralling the sheep!

The changing rooms were built by volunteers in 1980 with the stand dating from the same time.  In 1982 the Club became founder members of the Central Wales League Division 2, where they won the Championship and were promoted to the First Division. In 1990 the Cymru Alliance was formed with Penrhyncoch being one of the founder members, with the club alternating between the second and third tiers over the intervening years.

It is a place where if you didn’t love Welsh football before you visited, you will by the time you leave. I arrived, and made a beeline for the tea bar. I ordered a tea and overheard the staff marvelling that someone from Stuttgart was there, I replied “So you’ve met Andreas then” so some consternation! What they didn’t know it that Andreas was part of a group of German groundhoppers who had travelled here from Newcastle-on-Tyne and were heading back there after the game! That is what happens when you’re just about the only game on New Year’s Eve.

It was an unusual experience being the Englishman who explained what the reproduction of the “Cofiwch Dryweryn” graffiti on the tea bar wall means both in terms of translation and meaning to the German visitors. I must admit I didn’t know that the infamous reservoir was designed by John Stilgoe, father of songwriter and broadcaster Sir Richard Stilgoe. Perhaps the way to look at it, is every time you use water in Liverpool remember the folks of Dryweryn. The original graffiti is 12 miles south of here.

It was a convivial lunchtime watching two clubs struggling at the wrong end of Wales’ second tier. Perhaps the draw was expected, it seemed to do neither club any good judging by the table as it is now. At the end, I knew I needed to fill up the car, so I headed to the filling station behind the ground. The lady in front of me in the queue for the cashier came with an accent, she was from Knowle West in Bristol like Robyn my wife. We compared notes, but she had the longer drive home….