At the top of the “By subject” section on the right hand side of this page, there is a category called “Home page”. The single article under that heading was the first one I ever wrote on here and was meant to be an introduction to myself for readers and an outline of what they could expect from this new Cardiff City site.
That first piece ended with me saying that “they” (City)
“have been one of the few constants in that life, they drive me to despair at times and they make me a miserable bastard at times, but I don’t know where I’d be without them – I’m sure that over the coming months this blog will reflect the bewildering range of emotions Cardiff City arose in me! “
Apart from the spelling mistake (which I’ve only just noticed!), you’ll note that I talked about the “coming months”. I honestly didn’t have a clue how long the blog would last when I wrote that, but I was determined to give it the best possible chance to succeed and, as that first piece was dated 7 August 2009 and it is now a decade to the day since it appeared, I believe I can say that Mauve and Yellow Army (MAYA) has been a success of sorts.
How big a success is for others to judge. I’ve never had any idea how many people read MAYA, but I suspect the number isn’t as large as many other blogs written by supporters of a particular football club.
Possible reasons for this include the fact that probably only a small number of City fans are aware of its existence despite its relative longevity, a style of writing and presentation which I suspect does not appeal to younger supporters much (my plan was always to write the sort of detailed analysis pieces that I remember reading in my youth) and me rambling on for too long for a lot of people’s tastes!
My financial circumstances were always going to mean that my attendance at away matches was going to be little more than occasional, so one thing I was determined to do was try and compensate for this by providing coverage of Cardiff City games below first team level that was second to none.
By providing reports on something like three quarters of all home fixtures played by the Development team, plus it’s earlier equivalents, and the Academy side in the past decade, I don’t think I’m being arrogant when I say that I’ve succeeded in that objective. To be frank mind, the competition has been virtually non existent over the past ten years – I’m being genuine though when I say that this site has been providing some good stuff on the Under 23s and Academy team in the last year or so.
Another aspect where I feel MAYA scores over the competition is in the quality of its Feedback section. The numbers involved may not be great (all new contributors are welcome!), but the quality is consistently high with a cast of regulars who, obviously, put a lot of time, thought and effort into their contributions.
It’s my proud boast that, apart from when it has specifically been requested by the writer, I have not had to edit or delete a single response to one of my pieces on here since MAYA began. I claim little credit for this – that should go to a group of friends of this site who have proved that it is possible to carry on debates and conversations online in a civil and responsible manner.
It wasn’t always as it is now mind. In the early days, getting a reply to anything I wrote was something of a novelty and I must say that things only started to change when Dai Woosnam got involved. Dai is a gifted writer and a very good storyteller who I’ve always felt was more responsible than me for getting others to contribute.
The strange thing is, I disagree with Dai on so many matters, not least football, and yet he always had my admiration for the contributions he made to MAYA. Sadly, Dai chose not to post on MAYA any more about a year ago and I think I speak for others when I say he is much missed – you’re welcome back here any time you want to return Dai!
Last year MAYA faced its biggest crisis when I was presented with the once every three years bill from the web hosting company I use. As I explained at the time, my financial position was always going to be precarious until I reached state pension age in 2022 and, especially after having just moved house, I did not have the means to pay a bill which ran to several hundred pounds.
Without a loan from a group of sympathetic City supporters, MAYA would have ceased to exist and so in August last year I decided to ask for help from readers by proposing a patron scheme operated by Patreon whereby a minimum sum of $1 dollar a month would be paid with the short term aim of paying back that loan as quickly as possible.
Here’s what I posted about the patron scheme last year, but, to give a very quick summary, it was, essentially, a plea for help with, as mentioned earlier, the short term aim of repayment of the loan, a medium term goal of paying for blog running costs and a long term target of producing another book to follow on from “The Journey Back” which was published in 2013.
I must say the response was very good. I’m getting a monthly income from Patreon, but, as it turned out, a majority of patrons preferred to contribute in other ways. Hence, there is also a monthly income in Standing Orders taken out by a small number of readers, while I would say the majority of contributors opted to make one off payments.
What all of this has meant is that two of the three targets were reached with the loan paid off within a matter of weeks and running costs comfortably covered for the 2018/19 season.
Given this, I feel I can make this promise to readers today – MAYA will continue as long as I’m fit and able to keep on getting to games, there will never be a compulsory charge to be paid to read it and, apart from the Google Ads one in the top right hand corner of the page on some browsers, you’ll not see an advert on here.
However, I hope those of you who have made contributions over the last year will continue to do so and that some of you who have not contributed before now will choose to do so.
While there are no large web hosting bills to be paid this season and I’m hopeful that something will be in place to cover things when they are next due in 2021, other costs are still higher than they’ve ever been.
For example, while supporting City means just one or two trips to Cardiff per fortnight for most supporters, that increases to as many as four if you are also watching the reserves and youth team as well as the first team. Furthermore, what was a round trip of five or six miles when I was based in Cardiff is now one of over forty with me living in Tynewydd.
My computer packing up last month offered a reminder of, first, how vital it is to the production of MAYA and, second, that, although I would say it falls into the category of something I must have these days so I would have found a way to have got one, it would have been a real struggle to do so without the income from the patrons to the blog.
This brings me on to the long term goal of producing a book. I’ll start by saying that I think I owe an apology to patrons for maybe not producing as much on MAYA as I was aiming to this time last year, but I will offer the partial excuse that I have been, indirectly, working for the MAYA cause over the past few months.
March 2021 will see the fiftieth anniversary of Cardiff City’s 1-0 win over Real Madrid and my aim is to get a book commemorating that achievement, and the momentous 1970/71 season, published for Christmas 2020.
Unfortunately, the small amount of writing I’d done pre my computer tribulations has been lost forever, but I’ve been redoing that this week and the summer has seen plenty more trips to Cardiff for reference work at Cathays Library.
While I accept that this is a subject that may have a limited appeal in terms of the age of those who might want to read it, I feel there is a good book waiting to be written about what I think may be the most important season of my City following lifetime in terms of impact on both supporters and the club.
Without support from MAYA’s patrons, I would say the chances of the book ever being published would be close to zero and, to be frank, having experienced the costs of printing and publishing once before, it may be more than could reasonably be expected to come from such a generous bunch as MAYA readers have been proven to be over the past twelve months.
However, that previous experience of the industry with The Journey Back proved the accuracy of the adage “where there’s a will, there’s a way” and, whatever happens, my intention is to spend the coming season typing things up, so that the work will have been done to meet the schedule of having something out by the fiftieth anniversary of Brian Clark’s header from Nigel Rees’ cross!
There’s one other matter for patrons that I would like to mention. Around the turn of the year I said my intention was to have a £50 prize draw for you all this month to mark the start of the new season as a way of saying thank you for your support. The feedback I got at the time though was unanimously of the view that there was no need for me to do this – I still intend to go ahead, but is that still your view?
Regarding methods by which you can become a patron, you can do so via Patreon or, if you prefer, you can e-mail me at paul.evans8153@hotmail.com and I can let you have my address, bank details or PayPal contact for cheques, money transfers, standing orders etc.
A big, big thank you to all of you who have become patrons in the last year – this applies to the Owl Centre in particular who have been generous “sponsors” of MAYA since the turn of the year and I can only echo what I’ve said before about being proud to be associated with such a worthy cause.
I’ll end by recording my appreciation of any and everyone who has ever read MAYA in the past ten years – very occasionally, it feels like a job, but mostly it’s been a sheer pleasure producing it and I hope you have enjoyed reading it.
