Baby named after Vetch

James Price hopes his daughter will be the last Vetch mascot

A Swansea City football fan has named his baby girl after the club's Vetch Field stadium.

Little Imogen Chloe Vetch Price was given the striking middle name because her father James spends so much time at the football ground.

He celebrated her arrival by enrolling her in the junior supporters' club within 19 hours and went a step further when registering her birth.

Swansea will move to a new ground next year but Mr Price says his daughter will remind him of his 'second home.'

It's the focal point of my life and something I've grown up with James Price

He also hopes Imogen, who is three weeks old, will be a mascot when the Swans play their last Vetch match before going to the city's new White Rock Stadium.

Mr Price, 29, who lives in Llanelli but was born in Swansea, saw his first Swans' game at the age of three.

"I play football on a Saturday but I won't miss an evening game for anything," he said.

"It's somewhere I've been going for the last 25 years - it's the focal point of my life and something I've grown up with."

'Tear or two'

His wife Helen follows the results but is not a big fan although she was expecting her husband to show his devotion to the Swans in some way when their first baby arrived.

"Everyone who knows James was expecting something," she said.

"If she had been a boy then he would have been called Jack.

"James went to register her birth on his own and told me what he was going to do but I didn't think he would go through with it."

Mr Price, a civil servant with the Ministry of Defence, said he would miss the Vetch badly when the Swans moved at the end of next season.

"It's got to happen because football has got to move to the next century but it will be a very sad day when the time comes.

"There will probably be a tear or two shed when it happens."