Football team
Cardiff Draconians
Club · Wales · FAW Championship
«Dracs»
Gabalfa's amateur footballers needed a name in 1963, and they borrowed one nobody was using: the Football Association of Wales granted them special permission to call themselves Draconians, a title that had belonged to the Welsh national team. The club took to it quickly. In that same debut season, 1963–64, they won the Cardiff Combination League Second Division outright.
The name did not stay fixed. Around 1984–85 the club became Gabalfa Draconians and moved to Llanidloes Road, a ground later renamed Lydstep Park — known these days, after its sponsor, as the Orange Llama Stadium. In 2000 the original name returned, along with a step up into the South Wales Amateur League.
John "JD" Dyer was there from the start, one of the 1963 founders, and he stayed on as chairman and vice-president long enough to become a fixture of Welsh amateur football, overseeing much of the club's early haul of Combination League titles. Decades later, a different kind of name arrived at Lydstep Park: Layton Maxwell, who had made his professional debut in a League Cup tie for Liverpool and gone on to play for Cardiff City, Swansea City and Wales Under-21s, took over as player-manager and stayed until around December 2020.
Across town in Canton, Cardiff Canton Liberal supply the closest thing the Draconians have to a rival, and their meetings go by a simple label: the Cardiff Derby. The club's honours board runs mostly through regional and amateur competitions — the South Wales Alliance League Division One twice, the WJ Owen Cup twice — but the most recent entry sits a level higher. In 2024–25, Cardiff Draconians won the Ardal Leagues South West, earning promotion into Cymru South, the second tier of the Welsh football pyramid.
Lydstep Park currently holds 1,000.
Latest results
Fixtures and results| 3 Oct | FAW Championship |
Newport City
H
|
1:1 | D |
| 26 Sep | FAW Championship |
Caerau (Ely)
H
|
1:3 | L |
| 12 Sep | FAW Championship |
Baglan Dragons
H
|
2:1 | W |
| 5 Sep | FAW Championship |
Llantwit Major
A
|
||
| 31 Aug | FAW Championship |
Pontardawe Town
H
|
||
| 28 Aug | FAW Championship |
Treowen Stars
A
|
Standing
FAW ChampionshipGroup stage · South
| # | Team | M | W | D | L | Goals | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 |
Pontardawe Town
|
8 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 14:16 | 9 |
| 12 |
Newport City
|
7 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 10:6 | 8 |
| 13 |
Cardiff Draconians
|
7 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 9:12 | 8 |
| 14 |
 Caerphilly Athletic
|
9 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 9:17 | 8 |
| 15 |
Llantwit Major
|
7 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 6:16 | 7 |
Team statistics
matches counted in total: 43| Metric | Total | Home | Away |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matches | 43 | 22 | 21 |
| Scored | 79 | 48 | 31 |
| Conceded | 65 | 35 | 30 |
| Scored per game | 1.8 | 2.2 | 1.5 |
| Conceded per game | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.4 |
| Difference | +14 | +13 | +1 |
Fixtures of Cardiff Draconians
-
3 Oct
Newport City
H
1:1
D
-
26 Sep
Caerau (Ely)
H
1:3
L
-
12 Sep
Baglan Dragons
H
2:1
W
-
5 Sep
Llantwit Major
A
-
31 Aug
Pontardawe Town
H
-
28 Aug
Treowen Stars
A
-
22 Aug
Llanelli AFC
H
4:2
W
-
15 Aug
Pontypridd Town
H
1:4
L
Honours of Cardiff Draconians
- Cardiff Combination League Senior Division 1968, 1972, 1974, 1980, 1992, 1993, 1997, 1999 8
- Cardiff Combination League Combination Cup 1966, 1975 2
- Cardiff Combination League Second Division 1964, 1973 2
- South Wales Alliance League Division One 2017, 2022 2
- WJ Owen Cup 2017, 2019 2
- Ardal Leagues South West 2025 1
- South Wales Amateur League Division Two 2009 1