The traffic gave the occasion away. More than an hour ahead of the 7.30pm kick-off between Cardiff City Women and Abergavenny Women in the Adran Premier, a queue of cars had piled up one behind the other on Leckwith Road just outside McDonald’s, waiting to be ushered to the appropriate car park outside Cardiff City Stadium.
The queue was small, but huge. In the same way that printed team sheets with the Cardiff City crest making their rounds through the press box was small but huge. Or the scoreboard to the left of the Canton Stand being turned on, with both teams' names programmed into the iridescent red lettering.
Or the plethora of ball girls, in lieu of ball boys, peppering the ground, clutching steaming hot cups of liquid warmth as they sat fearlessly cross-legged in the rain watching players who looked just like them play football in front of a baying crowd. A small, easily missed detail. But simultaneously huge.
What was not small was the crowd, the whole 5,175 cheering and screaming heads of it. The number shatters the previous women’s domestic record of 1,426 set by Swansea City and Cardiff Met — also in Wales' top women's domestic competition — two months ago, along with the men’s FAW-run domestic league record (3,250 fans for Porthmadog v Bangor in 1994) for good measure. This does not include Welsh Cup records.
Take into account that the Wales Women international team only broke their 2018 attendance barometer of 5,053 in their World Cup qualifier against Estonia in October 2021, and Wednesday night’s crowd for an Adran Premier David and Goliath 9-0 goal gala feels all the more declarative.
It is history, make no mistake. Some 30 hours earlier the stadium waved its good luck handkerchief to Gareth Bale and Co. as they bid to write the latest chapter of Welsh football in Qatar, so it can feel a smidge overzealous that a different chapter would be written so soon under these same lights.
But perhaps that is microcosmic of women’s football in Wales at the moment: finally given the oxygen to breathe, it is catching fire.
“We’ve shown it not once but twice now that we can play at a stadium this big,” said Bluebird Phoebie Poole, whose hattrick on the night marked her second at Cardiff City Stadium and helped keep Cardiff top of the league, when asked if the event might serve as a clarion call for women's football in Wales. “I’m honoured for the club to give us this opportunity, but yeah, hopefully we can get more chances like this. Not just us, everyone, so more little girls and boys can come.”
The sound of the crowd tells part of the story: a distinctly shriller pitch than that of your typical football match, with the squeals of school girls and an impressive cadre of boys cranking to higher decibels every time Poole or Rhianne Oakley latched onto the ball and scythed down a wing.
But there were groans too, as well as clamours for handball, the aggrieved pains after a particularly nasty challenge went unpunished, a distinct ripple of disappointment when on the half hour mark Oakley – already on a brace – failed to connect with what would have been the sweetest of bicycle kicks from Ffion Price's cross. More than anything, though, there was the roar.
“Do you know when you watch TV and you hear it and you’re like, 'oh, that’s class'?” asked Oakley. “When you hear that, and it delays, and then all of a sudden, it’s this massive thing and it’s just like…” She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, which said nothing and everything. “Buzzing,” she finally mustered. “I didn’t know where to look, where to run.”
The brain scramble is fair. Just a season ago, something like this was unfathomable, existing only in the most ridiculous of lucid dreams. While there are those who will point out that match tickets were gobbled up predominantly by local schools and age-grade clubs for a fractioned price, the underlying reality deals less in caveats as it does in significance: a crowd of young children growing up with the understanding that attending a women’s domestic league fixture on a chilly and rain-soaked Wednesday evening is not only appealing but normal, is momentous.
“For us, just being here is amazing," said Abergavenny captain Ceri Hudson, who after more than nine years with the club, felt a 9-0 scoreline was peripheral to the overall achievement on the night.
"We never would have had this years ago, never would’ve imagined being here, not in this league. A lot has happened over the last two years, but looking at this now, to have that many people watch me is amazing. There have been times when we turn up on a Sunday, especially years ago, and there’d be nobody there except for your mum and dad."
There lurks the acute danger in the women’s game of doing nothing more than over-glorified cheerleading in moments like this. As venomous chants of ‘we want 10’ rippled the air after Zoe Atkins slotted another in the final minutes, the argument for the match being an advert for the league on a purely footballing basis felt tenuous.
The gap between the league's haves and the have-nots is threatening to become chasmic. Clubs like Cardiff City Women — who are affiliated to Vincent Tan's Championship club, and not to be confused with Cardiff City Ladies — with backing from more powerful men’s departments, will only continue to swell at speeds that clubs such as Abergavenny will struggle to compete against. A more comprehensive look at the disparity of financial flex within the league will inevitably be required if a genuinely competitive product is to arise.
But there are grounds to argue for potential. For the scoreline, Abergavenny played their part in putting on a show, rebuffing the standard modus operandi of a team heading into the proverbial lion's den and opting to refreshingly play on the front foot until the final whistle. For those of a Cardiff leaning, Wednesday was bona fide entertainment. It is quickly becoming the expectation with this team.
For manager Iain Darbyshire, that development is critical. "Everyone will have enjoyed that," he said. "Everyone will have come away from that thinking [Cardiff] have got quite a good team them. We’re trying to entertain. It doesn’t matter that they’re girls. It doesn’t matter that men play on there. It doesn’t matter. It’s about football and enjoying it. And I feel like we created that culture and environment."
The turnout itself breeds hope for the future, says Darbyshire, who hopes that Wednesday night's milestone achievement will not be a milestone left untouched for years to come but instead trigger a chain reaction across the league.
“These girls are great, their potential is limitless but it’s now about providing the opportunities and making sure that we keep doing it and we don’t just settle for this, we keep going,” Darbyshire said. “We don’t just set the standards but we also hope that other clubs in the league will pinch ideas or push the limits - I’d be happy for someone else to beat that record. Then it’s on us and that’s how we build the game.”
As the final whistle blew, the record crowd turned into a wave, crashing down to the bottom of the stands to form a congealed mass of delirium. That the rain continued to whistle down in torrents had all the value of a dirty penny to the hordes of boys and girls earnestly lobbying for a souvenir from the night: a photograph, a selfie, a shirt, a signed forehead, a signed bobble hat, a signed anything.
"I couldn't move," recalled Oakley. "I was glued into it. People chucking jumpers, people wanting me to sign their arms, screaming at me. It's mental really."
"I've never had that before," echoed Abergavenny's and Wales under-17s' Katie Williams.
"I’m 18," added Poole. "I’m playing in front of these little boys and girls. I'm the living the dream that I want."
For her post-match interview, Oakley walked in to the conference room cradling a bottle of Prosecco, a just reward for her player of the match performance, albeit there would be no drinking in the hours which followed the match. Eight hours later, the 21-year-old would be getting up for her real job, teaching the very boys and girls who had watched her play in the pouring rain their As, Bs and Cs in a classroom. "They always say, Miss, I'm only coming if you score two goals," she mimes playfully. "At least I can go back in there now."
The dichotomy of such a life led by a women's footballer is not revolutionary. Women have long trundled along in some vein of this balancing act: full-time job, with football as a side dish. Ffion Price will invariably be signing more autographs on Thursday morning as she signs off on homework.
But as a crowd of more than 5,000 trickled out of Cardiff City Stadium and the floodlights went dim, the double-life led felt more pronounced, along with the undeniable sense that perhaps it is ever so slightly beginning to shift - however small, but equally huge.
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