Cardiff council election: a preview

As voters go to the polls this week, Cardiff is likely to be a bellwether council in terms both of the Liberal Democrat collapse and the Labour resurgence.

In power for the last eight years – albeit initially in a minority administration before an electoral pact with Plaid Cymru four years ago – Wales’s biggest council has given the Lib Dems a platform to prove their local government credentials.

The party currently has 35 councillors out of a total of 75, and an electoral pact with Plaid’s six members saw Glaswegian Rodney Berman return as council leader for a second four-year term after the 2008 vote.

But there is a very real prospect the party’s representation will be cut dramatically after the votes have been counted, and the intrigue is likely to be whether or not Labour can gain overall control of the council rather than whether they will be the largest party.

The problem for the Lib Dems is perhaps their surprising success in the last two council elections in Cardiff. They hold a swathe of seats which would appear to be typically Labour, including Butetown (the Labour defeat in 2008 was described by Cardiff South and Penarth MP Alun Michael as “an aberration”), Grangetown, Caerau, Adamsdown and Llandaff North. Labour dominance in Splott was also challenged by the election of a Lib Dem to one of its three seats in 2008.

Those wards alone comprise seven Lib Dem defences, and it would not be a surprise to see Labour gain all of them. Elsewhere, the four Lib Dems in the Plasnewydd ward – including Berman – face an anxious bid for re-election.

It is not only Labour which looks set to profit from a decline in Lib Dem support. Despite recent problems for their London coalition partners, and depending on how the Lib Dem vote holds up, the Conservatives could also cash in on such a collapse.

Seats in the leafy northern suburbs are far more Conservative-inclined than anywhere else in the city – Cardiff North is the only one of the city’s four constituencies to have a Tory MP – and the party will be targeting Lib Dem seats in wards like Heath and Cyncoed. In Heath, Lib Dem Fenella Bowden was elected alongside two Tories in 2008, beating out the third Conservative by just 58 votes.

Bowden is standing again, but as one of three Heath and Birchgrove Independents; that move is likely to fatally damage Lib Dem hopes of holding the seat, although whether Bowden is returned or the seat moves into the Tory column is too close to call.

But those Conservative gains will probably not be enough to offset the damage Labour look set to inflict. The Tories are the official opposition in Cardiff City Hall, holding one more seat than Labour. But the party of First Minister Carwyn Jones has a far broader appeal across the city and will be able to make far deeper inroads next month than the Tories managed in 2008.

Labour would be disappointed not to take the Conservative seats of Rumney and Pentyrch – which the Conservatives held in an August 2008 by-election by just 12 votes. The Tories will be pessimistic about Rumney, where one of the two Tory incumbents, Duncan MacDonald, resigned the party whip in March and is now standing as an independent. In Pentyrch, Conservative Craig Williams is a popular councillor but faces a near-impossible against the likely tide of Labour gains.

The Conservatives would be disappointed to lose any of the six combined seats in the wards of Pontprennau & Old St Mellons and Llanishen, although offensive material posted online by a Labour candidate in Llanishen caused him to be suspended from the party and handed the four Tory incumbents a boost.

Most wards of Cardiff North should remain solidly Conservative. But one of the largest, Rhiwbina, is certain to re-elect popular independents and Tory defectees Adrian Robson and Deputy Lord Mayor Jayne Cowan. Fellow independent Eleanor Sanders, replacing incumbent Brian Jones, should also be elected.

Plaid, meanwhile, have never managed to gain much of a foothold in the city and their six members – seven were elected in 2008, but a by-election in the Riverside ward was lost to Labour last year – come from just three wards.

They will almost certainly hold the Creigiau and St Fagan’s seat of Lord Mayor Delme Bowen and should be safe in Fairwater, where leader Neil McEvoy holds one of the three seats.

There has been almost a complete absence of Welsh polling since Leanne Wood took over as Plaid leader, so the electoral consequences of her victory have yet to be tested. But while Plaid are likely to struggle to hold on to their remaining two councillors in Riverside, they are working hard to pick up seats elsewhere.

In Butetown, where Labour are considered the nominal favourites, Plaid’s Liz Musa has fought a strong campaign and, after receiving the endorsement of a former Labour councillor and community stalwart, could take the seat in what is expected to be a close three-way battle.

McEvoy has also targeted Ely, Grangetown, Llanrumney and Canton, but if Plaid beat Labour in any of those wards it would be a grim night for the reds.

The minor parties are not likely to see any success, and UKIP will be unable to capitalise on recent poll boosts as they are only fielding two candidates across the city.

Wards to watch:

Butetown (1 member): Lib Dem incumbent. This diversified ward is traditionally a Labour seat but a strong Plaid campaign could swing it for the nationalists.

Grangetown (3): Three Lib Dem incumbents. Labour will be hopeful of retaking this ward, but there is likely to be a strong Plaid showing here. A party split would not be a surprise.

Heath (3): Two Tory, one Lib Dem (now independent) incumbent. Whether the vote for Councillor Fenella Bowden was for the party or personal will decide whether the Tories can hold their seats, gain Bowden’s or perhaps even lose their two incumbents.

Llandaff (2): Two Lib Dem incumbents. The “city within a city” is a tight three-way between the major UK parties. Labour could come from third, or a split left vote could allow the Tories through if their vote holds up.

Pontprennau & Old St. Mellons (2): Two Tory incumbents. Labour are breathing down the Conservatives’ necks. Dianne Rees should be safe; the second Tory seat is very much up for grabs.

Riverside (3): Two Plaid, one Labour incumbent. Labour’s 2011 by-election gain here might indicate this should be two more Labour gains, but new Plaid leader Leanne Wood will be hopeful of boosting her party’s appeal.

Cardiff Rules: Panthers dominate Welsh footy

This post was originally published on 'An Early Bath', my new blog dedicated to grassroots and non-mainstream sport.

Australian Rules Football – ‘footy’ Down Under, colloquially ‘Aussie rules’ to the rest of the world – can claim to be one of the well-known non-mainstream sports in the UK, although they will probably see it as a confused melee, loosely based on some kind of hybrid between rugby and basketball.

Most sports fans in this country will have a vague idea of the concept of the game, which is the most popular sport in Australia. But, after it was devised in Victoria as a means of keeping cricketers in shape during the winter, little effort was made to spread it to the rest of the world. Its very name implies a certain degree of isolation.

A 2007 survey by the AFL, the governing body of the sport in Australia, revealed that there were only 303 registered clubs and fewer than 10,000 players in the whole of the rest of the world. By contrast, there are hundreds of thousands registered players in the country of the sport’s birth.

Since that survey, though, Aussie rules has seen something of a surge in support in the UK, says Mark Horsman, club secretary of the South Cardiff Panthers, who play at Pontcanna Fields in the Riverside area of the city.

The Panthers, established in 2006 as a founding member of the Welsh Australian Rules Football League (WARFL), are one of the most successful clubs in Britain.

Only three of the 24 squad members are Australian, suggesting Aussie rules in this country has become far more than simply a comfort for homesick Antipodeans and that, however small, the sport has established a foothold on these shores.

Welsh Australian Rules Football League Video credit: brycestone, YouTube

The version of the sport played most commonly in this country is a truncated adaptation of the original. In Australia, matches are played on cricket pitches – a throwback to the game’s original purpose – by teams of 18. Here, rugby fields are used for nine-a-side encounters.

But Mark Horsman points out that Australia has begun to introduce the nine-player version as well, in an effort to make playing the sport more accessible: “It is in its early days but could prove successful.

“It is a great testament to the game in Europe.”

Other than a solitary defeat against the Swansea Magpies last season, the Panthers have gone unbeaten in the WARFL for the last three years and their only other loss in that period came against a London side comprised entirely of Australians.

Such a success hardly sits well with the description of the Panthers as a grassroots side. They can boast not only the success they have had in their own right – but also the fact three quarters of the Panthers’ squad are internationals, most representing Wales in the nine-man format.

Horsman is among seven Panthers who have also made the step up to the Great Britain Bulldogs 18-a-side game in the past four seasons, one of whom – 6ft 9in ruckman Chris James – played at the International Cup in August, where the Bulldogs finished seventh.

Meanwhile, club President and Wales captain David Saunders has been selected for the EuroCup Team Europe for the last two seasons, the only Welsh player to achieve that feat.

Yet, undeniably, despite the sport’s growing popularity in this country, Aussie rules remains very much a minority sport in Cardiff, as with almost everywhere outside Oz. Organisers of the six-team WARFL (which is to be extended by a further two clubs in time for the 2012 season) are perfectly aware of this – as many players do not play solely Aussie rules, the season runs through the summer to avoid clashing with rugby, football and hockey matches.

Panthers after winning their third successive Welsh Grand Final earlier this year

Other sides in the league have often faced player shortages but the Panthers have managed to avoid these difficulties, which so often affect grassroots sports teams.

Indeed, it could be said the Panthers run a perfect operation for a club of their stature. They have a number of sponsorship deals – Deli Rouge, Cardiff Sports Nutritions, Spire Healthcare and the Outdoor Fitness company if were asking – and also run successful Facebook and Twitter campaigns to keep squad numbers up and embark on an annual end-of-season tour, the latest being a successful trip to Rome at the end of October.

Nor is fitness taken lightly, in a warning to anyone who thinks an ability to catch and kick the ovoid ball is a valid qualification for joining the squad. The commitment to conditioning is one of the main reasons for the success enjoyed by the Panthers, explains Horsman.

“I think I could safely say that all of our players are heavily into their fitness,” he says. The link with Outdoor Fitness gives ample opportunity for that – and, perhaps, little excuse not to.

“Most of the team train with Outdoor Fitness through the week at all times of the year and this type of training – military style – really suits the intensity and physicality of Aussie Rules.”

Although the Panthers were founders of the WARFL, Aussie rules in Wales dates back to the Second World War, when it was played by members of the Royal Australian Air Force based at Pembroke Dock.

Although there may not have been any direct link between that first Welsh taste of footy and the fledging league the Panthers have come to dominate, the side has been asked to commemorate that occasion in 1944 by playing another fixture on Anzac Day (remembrance day for Australians and New Zealanders).

That planned fixture alludes to the perpetual Australian link that will colour every instance of this sport wherever around the world it is played. But teams such as the South Cardiff Panthers are fiercely proud of their own contribution to the development in Wales of the sport as it comes increasingly – if still very slowly – into the public conscience.

“The scene in Wales and the UK is very promising with a big growth in clubs and players over the last 3 years,” notes Horsman. How long it will be before the South Wales Panthers are properly challenged, however, remains to be seen.