"Caerau FC - Caerau Athletics Ground"

Caerau (not to be confused with Caerau (Ely) FC who play in Cardiff) is a small village on the northern outskirts of Maesteg – on the A4063, north of Port Talbot. I have to say the village itself has seen better days. Whilst a lot of money has been pumped into regenerating both Cardiff and Swansea, to the extent that they are now considered chic, it hasn’t filtered down to Caerau, which seemed to be stuck in some depressing 1970s wasteland timewarp.
At least, although the ground is called the "Caerau Athletics Ground" there is no sign of the dreaded running track around the pitch !!

Location

The ground is located in a residential area in Caerau. The main road through the village is the A4063, Duffryn Road and the ground lays off to the right in amongst the houses.The nearest station is Maesteg which is 2 miles away, although there is parking on the streets around the ground. I didn’t see any pubs in Caerau itself, nor places to eat, There probably are some in Maesteg I guess.

View

What can I say about the ground? Well, it is in between rows of terraced streets and at the southern end of the ground is the kind of piece of waste ground you saw kids kicking a ball around on in the TV series ‘Life on Mars’…..Caerau reminds me of the same era. Entry into the ground is via a small, unobtrusive black metal door on the clubhouse (at the northern end). There is no turnstile as such, you go through the door and pay your money to the person sitting at a table the other side. The £3.00 entrance fee included a free programme (for what it was worth – see later) and a cup of tea.. The clubhouse / changing rooms sit above the level of the pitch. The building itself is of 1960’s construction – cinderblock and pebble-dashed….uninspiring and functional is the best you can say. This is located behind the goal at the northern end and there are about 5-6 steps down to the pitch level. During the match most of the 40+ strong crowd seemed to watch from this area.
The entire ground is surrounded by a prefab concrete sectioned fence. Unfortunately this has, in areas fallen to pieces which allows people outside to watch the match.. Inside, there is only one stand which is on the right as you look from the clubhouse end. It’s a concrete 1960s construction and has 3 steps of terracing but no seats and, in all honesty, looks pretty miserable. There is no concrete path around the pitch – just grass. The dugouts are on the far side but only one had seats – the home team occupied this whilst their visitors – Trethomas Bluebirds, sat on the grass in front of the stand. The pitch itself slopes massively uphill towards the clubhouse and the grass was long…..so long that it affected the movement of the ball and daisies where growing everywhere. The whole set up indicated to me that there is not a great deal of money sloshing around at Caerau FC.

Facilities

Facilities such as toilets are inside the clubhouse and there is certainly no such thing as a clubshop here (although one of the chaps did tell me they were thinking of having some badges made). The programme was 10 sides of glossy colour but most of these were given to adverts. The cover features a picture of Paul Merson who is listed as a current player (he managed to play one match back in October 2017, although this was abandoned due to floodlight failure – not sure if he has been back since). Also inside are photos of the Caerau squad, but that is about it. It looked very much as if this has been the standard programme for all matches since October. Inside was a paper insert giving the names of the players and officials of Trethomas Bluebirds but there was no lineups for either side.

Food & Drink

As for refreshments, there is a bar inside the clubhouse although I didn’t visit it and there is a snack bar located behind a hatch at the top of the clubhouse steps. The small menu consisted of Burgers (£2), Cheeseburger (£2.50), Hotdog (£2), chips (£1) and hot drinks.

Atmosphere

As previously stated the crowd for this match was about 40 most of whom seemed to be chatting amongst themselves, unconcerned by what was going on in the match, so the atmosphere was very flat.

Write your own review of Caerau Athletic Ground

Have you been to Caerau Athletic Ground? Write a review!