‘Something big is now happening in Newport’
Manchester City’s visit in the Cup tonight shows that a place which has suffered is fighting back, writes Jim White
Jeff Doe was there for the finest hour and a half in Newport County’s history. In 1981, the Welsh Cup holders reached the quarter-final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup, drawn against the East German side Carl Zeiss Jena. Like most of the workers in the city in those days, Jeff was employed in the giant Llanwern steelworks. He took a few days’ holiday and set off with a couple of mates to drive to the away leg in the heart of the Soviet bloc.
“We just went for the sheer hell of it,” he recalls, as he nurses a lunchtime pint in a Wetherspoons in the centre of Newport. “What I remember most was how depressed it seemed. It was dismal. I can honestly say it was the only place I’ve ever been to that was an even bigger s---hole than Newport.”
Jeff clearly missed a vocation in public relations. But his downbeat assessment of his home town is not untypical thereabouts. This is not somewhere that shouts about itself; there is no Liam Gallagherstyle Mancunian swagger in Newport. Take the attitude to its most prominent geographical feature. The River Usk runs through the middle of town, a wide, tidal stretch leading out to the docks on the Bristol Channel. And twice a day, when the water has headed seawards, huge banks of grime are exposed. Its lack of aesthetics is summed up in the nickname adopted by locals for their city: “Newport-on-mud”.
But at teatime today, the self-effacing Monmouthshire city will find itself at the centre of the sporting world. Manchester City, the Premier League title holders, will swank into County’s Rodney Parade ground for a fifth-round FA Cup tie. It is an encounter the significance of which runs beyond the giantkilling possibilities of the lowestranked team left in the competition taking on the highest. This is about more than the club who went bust taking on one with unfathomable riches. The assumption is that this is a game which will not only secure the local club’s immediate financial future but will spread its benevolence far and wide. This is the Cup tie reckoned good for the entire city.
“There’s no doubt about that,” says chairman Gavin Foxall, who heads a local management consultancy firm. “Newport has its challenges and if it does ever get in the news, it’s generally reported on for negative things. But this is the most positive of news stories. I tell you what, bringing a club of the calibre of Man City here is putting Newport back on the map for all the right reasons.”
Over the years for Newport, the negative things have stacked up. From 1839, when 22 Chartists marching for democratic representation were slaughtered by drunken militia in the town centre, through 1909, when 39 workmen lost their lives in a catastrophic accident at the docks, to 2001 when most of the Llanwern plant was mothballed, making 1,300 redundant, not much has gone its way.
In 2014, the council opened a shopping centre in the hope that retail might be the way forward. But, as it has across the country, in Newport the flight to online shopping has hit hard. The walk from the station takes the visitor through a depressing loop of boarded-up stores. On the old high street only vaping shops appear to thrive. The Westgate Hotel, the place from which the soldiers burst out to murder the marching Chartists, is derelict.
“You go to Cardiff and everything seems on the up, it seems lively, vibrant,” says Jeff Challingsworth, a retired local government officer who now volunteers in the County club shop. “We’re... well I hate to think what the best way to describe Newport is. The derelict buildings, the closed shops, the homeless: I guess everywhere has those problems, but here, because we’re small, it magnifies it. And there’s no real beauty spots to take the eye away. You’ve seen the river?”
But in Newport, looks can be deceptive. Beneath the mudsplattered assumption, things are on the turn. The unemployment rate is below the national average; 13.7 per cent of households are workless, compared to 17.5 per cent in Wales, and 14.5 per cent across the United Kingdom.
“I was given a statistic the other day which said we’re the fourthbiggest city for new business start-ups in the UK,” says Debbie Wilcox, who, in 2016 became the first woman to head the city council. “I thought that was a joke. But it turns out it’s true.”
‘We took the FA Cup into a school and one kid told me it was the best day of his life’
Driven by the sizeable semiconductor plant out by the M4 junction, the third-biggest conurbation in Wales is these days recasting itself as a centre for tech jobs. Midway between Cardiff and Bristol, with the soon-to-beelectrified railway taking just 90 minutes to London, the place is neatly positioned to exploit the moment.
“We’re not quite the northern powerhouse, but we’re ticking away,” says Wilcox. “The digital economy is our future. We’ve just signed a deal to bring the old Newport market back into use as 21st-century loft space, with a Fibre Academy and a food quarter. It’s Bermondsey Market in Wales.”
At the heart of this new Newport are the football club. Like the city, they are emerging from grim times. Thirty years ago, eight seasons after their great European adventure, Newport went bust. A phoenix club started from the wreckage in the Hellenic Southern League. In their first season, due to a dispute with the council, they could not even get to play in their home town, staging matches in Moreton-in-marsh – which, it should be noted, is in England. It was an episode that earned the new club their nickname, the Exiles. But since they regained League status in 2013, they have shared a ground with the Dragons rugby club on the banks of the Usk. It is some improvement on the old stadium, Somerton Park.
“The thing I remember most about the home leg against Carl Zeiss Jena,” recalls Challingsworth, “is that the toilets were all flooded. You had to wade through urine that was ankle deep.”
It is not like that in the new stand at Rodney Parade, where things are so progressive there is no hint of flooding in the “gender neutral” toilets. This week, workers were installing temporary seating for the visit of City, taking the capacity well over 10,000.
“Mind, we could have sold twice that,” says Foxall. “The whole town’s buzzing off this. We went to a school this morning to show them the FA Cup and one kid told me it was the best day of his life.
“We were in the wilderness for 25 years and lost a whole generation of fans. Loads of people from here go to watch Cardiff in the Premier League. You can’t blame them, it’s only 12 minutes on the train. That’s why this match is so important. It’s telling the world there’s something big going on in Newport. It’s lifted the place.”
Not that a Cup run is going to provide jobs for the city’s 3,565-registered unemployed or build homes for those camped in doorways in the old town centre. But what it will do is act as a boisterous cheerleader for the city’s new direction. And Foxall insists that – for the club at least – there have already been tangible rewards: £1.2 million has been earned in television revenue and prize money from the Cup victories over Leicester and Middlesbrough – money earmarked for a new training ground. Then there is the increased sponsorship.
“We’ve gone to a different level,” he says, as he sits in the stand. “It’s the nationals and multinationals who’ve suddenly got interested in a way they just weren’t before.”
As if on cue, over his shoulder two workmen are replacing an advertising hoarding for a local turf company with one for a sizeable betting company. Though, in truth, the turf business may have asked for its advertisement to be removed – after all, the pitch here is hardly the best endorsement. An apparent extension of the Usk, it is a seamless stretch of mud.
“It’s the hardest-working pitch in Britain, what with us and two rugby clubs playing on it,” says goalkeeper Joe Day, who garnered considerable attention after the win over Middlesbrough when he shot off at the final whistle to attend the birth of his twin daughters. “Actually, it’s not as bad to play on as it looks. Just don’t tell City that.”
It is a surface that has contributed to Newport’s recent Cup runs. Last season, they beat Leeds on it, then drew with Tottenham. This year, they have beaten Leicester and, in a South Wales monsoon, Boro. Now comes the biggest test of all.
At the heart of their endeavour is their manager. Newport born and bred, Michael Flynn knows how much the game means.
“My phone hasn’t stopped since the draw came through” he says. “Everybody I know, everybody I grew up with, wants tickets. We could have put up that extra stand just for my family.”
One thing is for sure, whether they have a ticket or not, the entire city will be watching.
“Nobody’s talked about anything else for the past week,” says fruit-and-vegetable stallholder Dean. “I’m meant to be going to some right smart party at the Celtic Manor. I’ve told the wife, we’ve got to get there early to watch in one of the bars. And I’ve told her, I don’t care how fancy the do is, I’m not going in till after the game.”
Celtic Manor will be an intriguing place to watch, not least because it was where the 2010 Ryder Cup was staged – the last grand sporting occasion staged hereabouts to claim it was “good for the town”.
“Yeah, that was a right load of b------s,” reckons Doe, the Wetherspoons cynic. “They bussed all the spectators from the train station straight up to the golf. Not one of them spent a penny in town. At least with the football, the pubs will do some extra trade. A mate of mine reckons that for the pubs it’s going to be the biggest night since Newport rugby club beat the All Blacks in 1963.”
For Flynn, the scale of the moment has further dimension. “All the people of Newport seem to be happy,” he says. “What I want to do now is make them even happier. Because Christ, they’ve been through enough bad times over the years.”