Rejecting the received wisdom, we enjoy Cardiff for rugby but don’t need to do it again

We have a tradition in the Bencard household that whoever is celebrating a milestone birthday gets to make the call on all of the travel for that year. I’ve written about it before; this is our second time through the cycle and I finished up my year in December. My husband now controls 2025, and the first celebratory destination of the year was Cardiff.

The Welsh capital is a nice enough place but without context you might be surprised it turns up on a big birthday bucket list. That context is rugby.

Rugby is the national sport in this mighty little country. It’s significant in other parts of the UK, but only in Wales does it eclipse all others with a dominance only otherwise seen in New Zealand. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the national stadium in Cardiff is legendary, and the annual 6 Nations match-up between England and Wales … played here every other year in rotation with England’s home ground at Twickenham … is one of the hardest tickets in rugby to get.

Tickets are always available for those with the cash and the desire to find a way, of course. Which is why this year we took our second trip with England Rugby Travel. This time we weren’t flying half way around the world to Japan, but driving two hours up the M4.

Was it worth it?

Like any premium experience, value comes down to your passions. If you aren’t a keen fan then it’s a lot of money for two nights in a generic corporate hotel (the Radisson Blu), an evening event with a couple of drinks and a styrofoam box with a burger and chips, and match seats less that 20 rows from the roof, behind the try line. (That would be “end zone” for my American readers.)

The reality, however, is that there’s no practical way to get tickets to this match as an outsider other than hospitality packages. And the overall experience comes with a lot of intangibles. The pre-game event brought us face-to-face with rugby legends telling tales of the past, analysing team performance, and making predictions for the next day. As a relative newcomer to the sport I knew who the people were and was entertained. (They’re all amusing, but emcee Martin Bayfield could have been a stand up comic.) If you grew up a rugby fan in England, however, as my husband did, then the guys on stage were legends, taking the night from amusing to magical.

There was more magic on the streets the next day with the Cardiff pre-game experience. You can enjoy this without a premium package. In fact, I’m fairly sure that thousands amongst the crowd didn’t have tickets to the game at all, but came into town for the atmosphere and would be watching play in one of the local pubs instead.

Unusually, Cardiff’s Principality Stadium is tightly-wedged into the centre of town. There’s no fan zone behind the ticket barriers, rather an approximately 20 square-block area jammed with bars and restaurants on the outside. That entire town centre becomes a fan zone for hours before and after the game. While I’ve never seen anything like it in Europe, it’s remarkably similar to the American college football scene at the big state universities. Good-natured fans stroll the streets, bands set up in squares to entertain the crowds, vendors sell patriotic fashion and face painting.

We faced two challenges. Once you get within three hours of kick-off there’s no chance of sitting down anywhere, and the queues for beer make it incredibly unlikely you’re getting a drink. In the latter it reminded me a great deal of Oktoberfest in Munich, walking for hours around the world’s most famous beer festival, thirsty.

We’d been lucky enough to get seats at the Owain Glyndwr pub five hours before kick-off; probably the last two seats in the place, sharing a table with others. We admired the two-pint glasses around us and should have taken the hint. After nursing our first pints for an hour … we were going to be drinking all day, so were pacing ourselves … we attempted another round and had to give up. The crowd at the bar was 30-people long, five people deep, and I barely moved in the 20 minutes I stood in the queue. I gave up and returned to our table, where we sat drinkless until an hour before the stadium gates opened. Clearly we should have purchased enough first time round for the duration.

We spent an hour walking through town drinking in atmosphere instead. It was fun, but in many streets we were facing the kind of body-to-body crowding that makes you think of news reports of unfortunates falling over and being trampled to death. Queues at all the other pubs we passed were equally mad; we were clearly not getting another drink in hand until we got into the stadium. Thus we were amongst the first through the turnstiles.

Here’s the conundrum: Getting in this early gets you easy access to food, drinks, seats and toilets, but there’s no atmosphere for at least the first hour and, unlike Twickenham, there are no screens showing the earlier match. Maybe we’re just old farts, but we were happy to forgo the buzz for our own comfort. Perhaps locals know how to get seats and drinks: clearly most fans don’t bother getting to the stadium until about 40 minutes pre-match, when there’s a sudden surge to fill seats for the pre-game show.

It’s here that I thought the Welsh really triumphed. From the flag unfurling to the bands, the lights and jets of flame, the DJ and the traditional male choir: the pre-game show here is a triumph. The Welsh reputation for singing is well-deserved and the hymns thundered.

We expected the local voices to add to the atmosphere throughout the game. When the roof is closed, as it was for our match, the crowd is often called the 16th man, giving the home team an intimidating advantage. There was no such energy on display. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, given that the home fans were sitting on a 16-game losing streak and then had to watch a 68-14 pounding.

Post-match crowds on the streets outside remained an uncomfortably tight sea of bodies. We retreated to our hotel, changed clothes and ventured out for a later dinner reservation at The Ivy Cardiff. We were incredibly thankful to the friend who had warned us that reservations were essential, or we wouldn’t get dinner following a match. After a day of crowds and queues we were grateful for table service and a quieter atmosphere.

So my verdict on Wales for away games will disappoint my Welsh friends. I am glad I ticked the box, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. At least not without a local who knows the tricks to negotiating the crowds better. I far prefer the away-game experience in Rome, even though the stadium is a tram line away from town.