A bumper crowd is expected at The SSE SWALEC on Thursday evening for Glamorgan’s NatWest T20 Blast quarter-final against the Yorkshire Vikings, with the attendance likely to be the largest for many years to a domestic match at Glamorgan’s headquarters.
The visit of the Australians to Swansea in 1938, and again in 1953, remain in the Cub’s annals as being amongst the highest attendance at a Glamorgan game with an estimated 25,000 in the St. Helen’s ground on each day of the 1938 match, and around 28,000 present for the match with the tourists during 1953. The visit of Gloucestershire to the Arms Park in 1946 drew an aggregate attendance of 33,000 whilst legend has it that 15,000 were shoehorned into the Arms Park for the visit of Middlesex in 1948.
In more recent times, approximately 11,500 people were present at Swansea in 1977 when Glamorgan defeated Leicestershire in their Gillette Cup semi-final in 1977, whilst an estimate of around 10,000 were present at St. Helen’s for the NatWest Trophy quarter-finals against Northamptonshire in 1992 and against Worcestershire the following year.
There have regularly been full houses for the Test Matches and other international contests at The SSE SWALEC, but as far as domestic games at the Sophia Gardens ground are concerned, amongst the largest crowd at a Twenty20 match came in 2013 when 7,978 were present for the match against Somerset.
Even more than this may have been present in 1976 at Cardiff for the closing Sunday League match against Somerset. With the visitors pressing for the John Player League title, and Glamorgan having enjoyed a torrid season, a massive contingent of supporters turned up from the West Country in mid-morning and gained access into the ground, then run by Cardiff Athletic Club, ahead of the arrival of the match-day stewards. However, Glamorgan had the last laugh as the Welsh county won a nail-biter by one run and thwarted Somerset’s ambitions of a first piece of silverware.
“I know from my playing days, how important a large home crowd can be, “said Hugh Morris, Glamorgan’s Chief Executive, “none more so than in 1993 when we won the Sunday League title. That year, we played at a variety of out-grounds all over Wales and every time there was a bumper crowd cheering us on.”
“The partisan and good-humoured support really helped to lift the boys, and I’m hoping that the same will happen on Thursday evening as the sporting public of Wales gets behind the Glamorgan team as we press for the victory that will clinch a place at Twenty20 Finals Day.”