Welsh pride soars with the Swans

Swansea City's manager Michael Laudrup is tossed in the air by the players as they celebrate after defeating Bradford City in their English League Cup final soccer match at Wembley Stadium in London in this February 24, 2013 file photo. Swansea City's 5-0 win over Bradford City in the League Cup final at Wembley on Feb. 24 propelled them into next season's Europa League and prompted a congratulatory message from Michael Douglas at the Oscars ceremony later the same day.[Photo/Agencies]

Swansea, a sprawling Welsh seaside settlement dating back to William the Conqueror, is a city of contrasts stemming from its role in the world's first industrial nation.

Copper smelting succeeded ship building as the city's primary industry, and the disparity between a bleak industrial center and the attractions of Swansea Bay led poet Dylan Thomas to describe his birthplace as an "ugly, lovely town".

Modern Swansea contains a fresh contradiction. In a small nation whose sporting identity has been forged on the rugby field, a vibrant soccer club teetering on the brink of oblivion 10 years ago is riding high in the English Premier League and will play in Europe next season.

Swansea City's 5-0 win over Bradford City in the League Cup final at Wembley on Feb 24 propelled it into next season's Europa League and prompted a congratulatory message from Michael Douglas at the Oscars ceremony later the same day.

Douglas is married to Swansea-born actress Catherine Zeta-Jones and there has already been talk in the city of a Hollywood movie, dizzy heights for a club that just escaped relegation to non-league soccer on the final day of the 2002-03 season

"It's an amazing story and it's amazing to live through it," said Peter Stead, a Swansea writer and broadcaster. "We pinch ourselves, it is a miracle whatever gods we pray to.

"I think history is important. I've watched the Swans since 1957 and the remarkable feature about the Swans in 1957, when they were a second division side and had been so for several years and would remain so for some time, was the local identity they had."

Stead said nearly all the soccer players in Swansea had come from terraced houses close to the city center.

"What you find as you move out from Swansea, as you move five (eight km) or six or eight miles out, the villages tend to be rugby. In the villages they tended to be more Welsh-speaking and more rugby playing. But the inner suburbs, the places where you could walk into the center of the city, they were football," Stead said.

"Somehow or other, Swansea had superb schoolboy football in the 1940s and 50s, quite remarkably successful. They won the national British championships on a couple of occasions. They came close in other years.

"They had huge crowds, they would have over 20,000 to watch the schoolboys play. I don't quite know why that is, Swansea was quite prosperous in the 40s and 50s, Swansea was never hit as badly in the depression as some of the other towns because of the diverse industrial base.

"Swansea was a dynamic place in the 40s and 50s and somehow the culture of schoolboy football developed which went on to produce five or six, and this isn't putting too much of a spin on it, five or six of the best players in the world."