Cardiff's City's Red Wedding
A Story of Financial Greed over Loyalty

No Going Back

After two and a half seasons, the battle seemed to be won. However, many fans saw the rebrand as an unforgivable sin. One such fan is Marie O’Brien, who considered herself to be a lifelong Cardiff City fan, dating all the way back to her highschool days. Now in her fifties, she has fond memories of the years she’s spent traveling all over the country to cheer on the team with her brother Brendan, claiming that she “was absolutely devoted to them”. “Almost marriage-like”, she describes, “They’re part of my identity to be sure”. Not only was Marie a consummate Cardiff City, but she ensured that the stress of being a football fan was passed down amongst her family, who all had season tickets. That was until the year of the rebrand, the O’Brien family's final season of attending club games at the Cardiff City stadium.

In the year prior to the official rebrand it was nothing short of a rumor. “We thought it was a joke”, says Marie, “they’re never gonna do anything like that. No one was taking it seriously”. She continued with saying, “It won’t go ahead so I wasn’t too worried about it”. However, the rumors soon became reality, as in the build up to the 2012 season, her worst fears materialised.

“It started to change my feelings towards the club. I was very, very, very angry at them”. But despite her animosity towards the club, Marie decided to stick it out. “I kept going. All my kids had season tickets”. 

After years of watching her bluebirds languish in the lower leagues, this season should have been the best of her life, as Cardiff were making a serious push for promotion to the premier league. The first time in the club's history. However, Marie found herself rooting against her own team throughout the season. “If I look back on it, I almost wanted them to not get promoted. If they didn’t get promoted then the change might not have happened, and that was more important to me”. But the season didn’t go the way Marie wanted. Not only had Cardiff secured promotion to the premier league, it would be the first time in Marie’s lifetime that the team would be in the highest tier of football. But she wouldn’t celebrate. “The night we got promoted the pitch got invaded and there were thousands of fans on the pitch. Me and the kids just went home. I was honestly just sad”. 

Although she was disappointed at the club, Marie also found herself disappointed in the club's fanbase. The reaction to the promotion made Marie realise that her feelings weren’t shared by the majority of fans. “I just feel like people sold out, in a massive way”. She felt that her fellow fans had their priorities in the wrong way as, “it was all about success and getting to the premiership, and nothing else was important”.

To Marie, the rebrand wasn’t the turning point, but more the straw that broke the camels back. “It made me realise that over the previous 10 years how much we were being manipulated as fans”. She highlighted the increasing pressure but on fans by the orginisation in regards to getting fans to renew their season tickets. Offering fans incentives to renew earlier and earlier each year. This was a practice that Marie was not pleased with as she says, “I always felt like I had a gun against my head, and all they ever wanted was money”. After decades of supporting her team through thick and thin she felt betrayed. “It was never about loyalty”. When asked if she would ever consider going back, she quickly answered, “I don’t think so”. And in keeping with her marriage analogy, “it feels like I’ve been divorced from the club, because it feels like they’ve done the dirty on me”.

Once a Bluebird, always a Bluebird

While some fans like Marie turned their backs on Cardiff City and never took on another team, others, such as her brother Brendan had a more pragmatic approach. If Cardiff City weren’t going to be the bluebirds, then Brendan was going to find a team who was. This led him to Barrow AFC, a team just south of the Lake District and after having some chats online with the Barrow fans Brendan decided to go to a game. “He went along and really enjoyed it”, said Marie, “it reminded him of the early days when he supported Cardiff City where they went around the older grounds and it was just about the football”. Before he knew it, he was a fully fledged Barrow fan. Season ticket and all.

Sadly, Brendan wasn’t able to be a Barrow fan for long, passing away in the early half of 2022, but his loyalty and fanaticism are part of what makes football fandom special as he happily made the 10 hour round trip to watch his Bluebirds play. Football fans don’t necessarily need their team to be successful. Sure, that’s an added bonus. But fans really just want their team to do right by them, and for fans like Brendan and Marie, Cardiff City failed to do that, and in turn lost the fans like who spent years turning up to every home game, regardless of how well the team was playing at the time. They made their choice; they sacrificed the hardcore fanbase in favour of financial gain and have become part of the problem that we’re seeing with modern football.