'My name was dirt' - the man who had 4 years to build the Millennium Stadium

Neil Prior - BBC NewsSat, June 20, 2026 at 11:50 PM UTC

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In 1995 the Millennium Stadium was nothing more than a pipe dream, but it had to become a reality within four years

It was 1995 and the race was on.

Wales' bid to the International Rugby Board promised a purpose-built stadium with a minimum capacity of 70,000 and a retractable roof - all for £120m and ready for the 1999 Rugby World Cup.

The hitch? At that stage they had neither the finance nor the plans to deliver anything of the sort.

It involved the demolition of four buildings, new fan access via a river walkway, and constant political and financial squabbling.

The man responsible for overseeing the chaos was project manager Pat Thompson, who described it as being "like trying to put on a duvet from inside the cover".

Thirty years later, the 83-year-old has recounted the experience in his book Make it Happen, which is being released in the autumn.

A building and civil engineer for South Glamorgan County Council - which became Cardiff council during the project – Pat was seconded to work with the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) on its joint bid.

The location in Cardiff city centre meant the roads around the stadium could not be closed while it was being built - when this photo was taken, there was less than a year left to get the stadium finished

"At first it sounded reasonably simple: We just had to build a bigger and more modern ground on the existing footprint of the old national stadium, with 50cm of extra land to play with," he said.

"Then I spoke to chief planner Gerry Phillips and after one glance he said: 'It won't fit here, we're going to have to rotate it by 90 degrees'... It didn't get any easier from there."

To add to the complexities of fulfilling the promise they made, the team had to do all the work on a city centre site that could not be shut down while construction took place.

Pat said: "It was like trying to put on a duvet from inside the cover. All the heavy lifting had to be done from four massive cranes within the existing footprint so we didn't cripple traffic in the city centre."

Glanmor Griffiths spearheaded the campaign for the ground in his role as chairman of the WRU's Millennium Stadium committee

Amid this, he said the then-head of the WRU, Glanmor Griffiths, and the city's council leader at the time, Russell Goodway, were "working furiously to secure the money which we needed to pay the contractors".

Two years after building should have started, construction began in early 1998.

The roof is held up by four massive pillars, while the stands are self-supporting, and somehow the two had to be built to meet in the middle.

Meanwhile, the WRU was locked in battle for Millennium Commission funding with the proposed Wales Millennium Centre.

Eventually, both were built, but which came first was on a knife edge in the late '90s.

While overseeing the building of the stadium, Pat also lobbied government ministers such as Peter Ainsworth, Virginia Bottomley's deputy at the Department of National Heritage

Even after £54m was secured from the government, it still needed match-funding from the WRU.

"Glanmor Griffiths horse traded between Midland Bank and Barclays, eventually securing the £70m or so needed from Barclays," said Pat.

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"The shortfall was met by the sale of £29m worth of debenture seats in the, as-yet, theoretical stadium."

Pat's main responsibility at this stage was ensuring the purchase and demolition of the BT Exchange, Army Cadets barracks and Empire Pool which stood in their way.

"My name was dirt - we were getting rid of Cardiff icons which many people loved, but that was my job, if I hadn't have cleared the land then the stadium would never have been possible."

Yet there remained an obstacle from within the sport itself.

The stadium's two 400-tonne metal roof panels were purposely designed to close in no quicker than 20 minute to stop them crashing into each other

"To complete the stadium we needed a corner of Cardiff RFC's Cardiff Arms Park ground. We offered them a new stand, a roof and £1m compensation, but they wouldn't budge for less than five million.

"In the end Glanmor said 'sod them, we'll build the Millennium Stadium around them'.

"The void between the stands remains to this day in what is known as 'Glanmor's Gap'. The gap sticks into the footprint of the Principality, like a hernia.

"If you look closely, the masts supporting the roof at that end of the ground had to lean out at a slightly more exaggerated angle than the two at the other end, purely because we couldn't place them on Cardiff RFC's land.

"I think that's one of my biggest regrets - if we could have done a deal on that land, we'd never have had Glanmor's Gap and the Millennium Stadium could have been one of the best in the world."

Pat spent 50 years engineering some of Cardiff's most recognisable landmarks

The first test event took place in front of 29,000 spectators on 26 June 1999, when Mark Taylor scored a try which helped Wales to their first-ever victory over South Africa in a 29-19 victory.

"It was a fortuitous win from my perspective", he said.

"The euphoria surrounding that match drew the media's attention away from the fact that we still had around 18 months worth of work to complete on the stadium in less than three months, before the World Cup opening ceremony in September."

In keeping with the spirit of the project, the final touches were no less stressful.

Pat said "right until the final moment" before the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup that autumn "we were waiting for our safety certificate to host 70,000 fans, installing seats and painting".

Mark Taylor scored the first try at ther newly-opened stadium, a 29-19 victory for Wales against South Africa

Since its opening, the home of Welsh rugby has also hosted FA Cup and Champions League finals, global stars including Taylor Swift and Beyonce, as well as speedway, monster truck events and even the national congress of Jehovah Witnesses.

Looking back at his career, which also included engineering Cardiff's University Hospital of Wales, the Doctor Who Experience and Roath Lock - home of BBC Wales drama Pat admits regretting working too much.

As he reflects from a care home in Penarth, just a few miles away from the stadium, and now with arthritis and Parkinson's, he said: "I have three children, eight grandchildren and a great-granddaughter, and until ill health stopped me from working, I never spent enough time with any of them.

"When I see my two-year-old great-granddaughter Amelia running around my care-home now, I wish I'd listened to my body earlier and called it a day before I turned 80.

"My family joke that both of us are unsteady on our feet and both need the loo at short notice, so that's the full circle of life."

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