Pontyclun FC

Pontyclun Football Club has been part of the South Wales football scene for over a century having been founded in 1896.

It is not certain where the Club played its earliest home games – it may have been at Talygarn – but there is documentary evidence that Ivor Park became the home ground in 1920 when Wyndham Damer Clark, formerly of Talygarn House, gave the Club preferential use of the land as a football field.

In 1922 the Club was admitted to the Football Association of Wales, one of the few amateur clubs to achieve such status. In 1968 the Club joined the Welsh Football League. In 1968, the composition of the Welsh Football League was much different to that of today. Some 54 teams competed in three divisions and the “Premier League” included the reserve teams of Cardiff City, Swansea Town and Newport County. Of the 54 teams who competed in the league throughout that season, only 14 now remain.

A former member and secretary of the Club in the 1920s and 1930s, Thomas Edgar (Eddy) Russell, was an influential administrator in Welsh soccer and he became Secretary of the South Wales Football Association (1936-1960) and later President of the Football Association of Wales (1967 to 1972). He also had a part in the FAW adopting the motto of Pontyclun Football Club on the national badge – “Gorau Chwarae Cyd Chwarae” (Best Play is Team Play). This appeared on a Welsh jersey in 1951 during the FAWs 75th anniversary celebration against a Great Britain X1 and remains to this day.

A former Welsh international, Keith Pontin, had his first taste of football as a junior at the Club and also made a contribution at senior level when he played out his “twilight” years at Ivor Park.

More information about the club can be found at the club’s website here

For more information about the history of the community of Pontyclun please visit our online museum