9/11

September 11^th 2001 started out as a pretty normal day.

My offices in Cardiff, just off Cathedral Road, and near to the County Cricket Ground, were bursting with bright, young and career driven employees. We were working on the development of a new football ground in Swansea, and our thoughts were focussed on the ‘basket case’ that was heading towards the Conference and possible oblivion.

And then, just after lunch, news of an incident in New York started to fill our TV screens and minds.

And so it was, that in the early morning of 11 September 2001 (New York time), 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger planes in the United States.

Two planes were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City, causing both towers to collapse. A third plane was crashed into the Pentagon, just outside Washington, DC. The fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania, after the crew and passengers attacked the terrorists on board, preventing it from hitting another target thought to be the White House.

The attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives and impacted many more globally.  On 20 September, US President George W Bush declared a 'War on Terror' and stated that defeating terrorism was now the world’s fight. The US had experienced terrorist attacks previously, but none had been on the same scale, or significance.

9/11 shook the world and shaped the generation to come.

An invasion of Afghanistan was launched barely one month later, on 7 October 2001. American, British and Afghan United Front (Northern Alliance) forces were deployed to destroy Al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban regime that had harboured the terrorist group in Afghanistan.

And the Legacy, twenty years on? No more than the somewhat pathetic recent attempt to evacuate those who were desperate to escape the returning Taliban, and the Afghanistan women’s cricket team going into hiding.

But looking back through the eyes of football, perhaps the world has changed significantly in the last twenty years.

On Tuesday September 11^th we beat Thurrock 4v1 at the Rec in a season that left us missing out on promotion back to national football. But Farnborough won at Yeovil, in the Conference and Wrexham beat Bury in Division 2 (Lge 1 today)…and the developing basket case, that was Swansea, lost to Plymouth.

The decision to proceed with the Liberty Stadium development, on the back of the Morfa commercial proposals, was taken just as Swansea City won their last two fixtures in the 2002/03 season, to avoid the drop into non-league football.

Now it’s coming back to me. I do remember referring to Aldershot FC in my Morfa development business appraisal!

Our thoughts go out to all the families whose lives were tragically affected twenty years ago.