Book of the Month: Who Cares About Wales?

This is the second book I've reviewed on my blog by Will Hayward, who is now probably the most influential journalist covering Welsh politics and current affairs. (Read my review of Will's book on Welsh independence.)

This latest book, published earlier this year before Plaid Cymru's historic win in the Senedd election, was a birthday present from my friends Justin and Annabel. So, a big thank you to them!

The basic premise of this book is that Wales has been spectacularly let down by it's politicians in the first quarter of the 21st century. Whether they have been in Westminster or Cardiff Bay, the people making decisions for Wales have often got things wrong. 

Will thinks the people of Wales should get angry about this, and he certainly seems to be. There are plenty of swears to underline points of particular frustration. It gets his point across, but I didn't feel they were all necessary. 

However, he has also managed to produce the most readable explanation of the Barnett funding formula that I've ever read. That gets talked about a lot in politics chat in Wales and it's never entirely clear that people know how it works. 

I can't vouch how right he is on a lot of the issues he covers, but from my perspective of working in the NHS, the issues he identifies in the section on health are bang on. The section on transport, especially rail, is a neat distillation of how Wales has been woefully hard done by. 

There were some real nuggets of interest along the way. For example, the creative sector generates far more economic activity in Wales than agriculture does - and for a fraction of the government subsidies. 

Will is critical of all the political parties, although most of his anger is directed towards Labour as they were the party in government in Wales for the entirety of the devolution era up to the point this book was written. He is particularly scathing about how Labour blamed so many problems on having to work with a Tory government in Westminster, but since Labour swept to power in London in 2024, Welsh Labour was very reluctant to push for all the things they'd been saying Wales needs. 

There is a hopeful conclusion, with some ideas of what could change. Whether any of that will come to pass in the tricky terrain of the first Plaid Cymru government in the Senedd is yet to be seen. I'm sure Will is already working on a book about 2026 onwards!

Football sticker boycott - 2026 edition

For the second World Cup in a row I have decided to boycott it in my own small way - by not collecting the official football stickers. I boycotted the Qatar World Cup stickers, along with all other merch, because I didn't like the way FIFA was enabling 'sportswashing' on an international stage. 

And since then FIFA have gone even more grotesque, giving a "peace prize" to Donald Trump just before he started an utterly mindless war in the Middle East. It physically disgusts me.

The profiteering and price-gouging on tickets is more blatant bastardry, and I just don't want to be even a passive consumer of it any more. By not qualifying, Wales have made it easy for me not to watch any games, unlike in Qatar, where I wanted to watch at least their matches. But now I can tune the whole thing out.

However, when it comes to unofficial stickers, the boycott doesn't apply. On my recent cruise holiday, I went into a Croatian supermarket that was running a promotion of a free packet if we spent 10 euros. 

So these are the free stickers from Konzum in Dubrovnik.

There are no official markings on this or references to FIFA. The trophy is a playful cartoon that doesn't look like the World Cup. This is boycott-legal.

There are two cards or stickers in each packet. I got a shiny card in each one, with the following players: Senegal's Kalidou Koulibaly, Columbia's James Rodriguez, Switzerland's Manuel Akanji and, er, a kangaroo. 

One of these things is not like the others 

The marsupial may be representing Australia. Here's a photo of the sticker back to show it is from the right set. 

Meanwhile, back at home, another shop is running a football sticker promotion, tied into the home nations. Technically, these Cymru stickers from Marks & Spencer aren't official World Cup stickers so I've decided they would count as boycott-legal

However, when I went into M&S and did a small shop that qualified for a free packet, I was told they had run out of stock! So I may as well have decided to boycott them anyway.

On "Separatism" - a post for Star Wars Day 2026

Happy Star Wars Day. May the force be with you this May the Fourth.

I often blog about Star Wars on Star Wars Day, and this year I'm linking my post to the very current Senedd election (happening on Thursday!) 

I've decided to write about a trending word in politics here in Cymru, that always makes me think of Star Wars. Recently some politicians have started using the word "separatists" to describe people who support Welsh independence. 

Which, of course, makes me think of the conflict in the Galactic Republic in a galaxy far, far away....

CIS ("Separatist") flag

Brief recap: in the original Star Wars film, there was a passing reference to Luke Skywalker's dead father fighting in "the clone wars". Very little was explained about that but 20 years later, when George Lucas wanted to write the Star Wars prequel films, he decided it would be about the 'clone wars'.

If you're going to write about a war, you need to have two sides. In 'star wars' the combatants were the Empire and the Rebels. But something different was needed for the prequels, so we had the Republic and, um, the Rebels Separatists.

In the prequel films, the Separatists were either conniving warmongers looking to make money from galactic upheaval, or were being manipulated by the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious, who was using the war as a way of gaining total power for himself. However, in later media, like the Clone Wars cartoon, Separatist characters were introduced who had nobler reasons for wanting to be independent from the Republic.

But initially we were meant to regard the Separatists as bad guys. The offical name for the Separatists was the "Confederacy of Independent Systems" (CIS). 'Confederate' is a loaded word in US-centric cultural media. So the narrative dice were loaded against the Separatists from the start.

However, like I said, later Star Wars product has introduced some ambiguity. Can there be noble reasons for wanting to be independent? In other words, is separatism automatically bad?

Well, it seems the answer to that depends on what you are separating from and why.

We see in the first prequel, The Phantom Menace, that the Galactic Republic, is ineffectual at responding to an urgent threat to the planet Naboo. Decisions are being made at a distance from the flashpoint and there are multiple competing priorities. The reported suffering of the Naboo population doesn't speed up the decision-making process.

Additionally, there are wider issues. Slavery still exists on several planets. Large areas of the galaxy are under the dominion of crime lords and gangsters. The Republic has not used its strength and power to liberate people from lawlessness or to lift up people living in poverty. 

Certainly, within the Star Wars galaxy, "separatism" can spring from noble aims. 

And the Galactic Republic's response to the separatist movement reinforces the doubt about the Republic's legitimacy. They go to war. They take control of an army of clones - disposable humans - and fight against the Separatists. Now, sometimes this is justified because the Separatists are attacking planets loyal to the Republic, but as the war rolls on, any planet in the CIS becomes de facto an enemy. 

The other thing the Republic does is centralise power. The Chancellor becomes a proto-Emperor with emergency powers that become difficult and then impossible to revoke, and the Republic becomes an Empire.

And then, ironically the 'good guys' flip. What had been the good Republic against the bad Separatists becomes the bad Empire against the heroic Rebel Alliance.

And so to the discussion of Welsh Independence or Welsh Separatism...

I don't think 'separatist' is the terrible slur that people using it seem to think it is. Because, as I've said, that depends on what people want to separate from. It's fair to say the UK has problems and part of that is weak leadership both domestically and in a volatile international setting. 

It feels like Labour's hegemony has been broken in Cymru. While canvassing I have met loads of former Labour voters, including ex-members, who say they are done with Labour. The promise of change that many people hoped for when the Westminster government changed in 2024 hasn't been delivered.

And Westminster has had decades to make life here in Cymru better. Successive governments - Labour and Tory - haven't dealt with root issues, especially poverty in both rural and post-industrial areas. Poverty is always a political choice, whether it was David Cameron's cabinet of millionaires introducing 'austerity' or Keir Starmer's Labour Party taking away financial support for disabled people.

There are structutal and societal issues behind this too. Supporters of annibyniaeth (independence) are always told Cymru is too weak and too poor to go its own way - and when we ask why Cymru is so weak and so poor, we don't get an answer.

If we always do what we have always done then we will always get what we have always got. There is no plan in any party manifesto for parties that support the status quo to bring in any structural or constitutional changes to make life better in Cymru. It's more of the same, or slightly less.

Star Wars presents the warning that overarching political structures seek to protect themselves first and foremost. They respond to threats by centralising more and punishing those they think are an enemy. That natural sense of protectiveness is easy to manipulate by people who seek personal gain. They might not be Sith Lords, but they don't have to be.

In that context, if the government feels far away and seems more interested in it's own ends, that feels dominated by the wealthy and has permitted poverty to persist, is being a Separatist so bad?

Book of the Month: A History of Wales

I have two personal connections with this book. Firstly, this copy belonged to my Dad. According to the note inside the cover he bought this in 1994, which was the year it was first published in English in paperback by Penguin. 

This is one of the few books I took from the vast collection of books that Dad left behind when he passed away unexpectedly seven years ago. There was a bookmark in it at page 505, which for a while I thought was the point where he had stopped reading. But actually it was a marker for a short bit about the Christian revival of 1904 - an event my Dad was very interested in. 

So, I'm not sure if my Dad ever finished reading the whole book. But I have. I was prompted to read it by my second personal connection with the book - recently I've got to know Anna, one of the daughters of the late author, John Davies. 

Anna is standing for election to the Senedd and is top of the electoral list for Plaid Cymru in our area. We were out canvassing one morning and she mentioned seeing a copy of her father's book in a second hand shop. I asked what the book was, thought that it sounded familiar, and later went and dug it out of the stack of inherited books in my office.

Anna gets an anonymous passing mention in the author bio. 

Anna has also told me that it was the first book that Penguin published in Cymraeg. (And it was also a lot longer than originally planned!)

The opening few chapters are easy to read at pace because, truthfully, there isn't much that is easily verifiable in Wales's history up until the Norman invasion. The paucity of Celtic relics from Wales compared to Anglo-Saxon relics from England is down to the Christian faith of the Welsh who unlike the pagan Saxons didn't fill the graves of their dead with stuff that could be dug up years later by archaeologists. So the story rattles along quite quickly.

The few written records of Welsh history from before and during the Norman occupation of Wales are frequently fanciful. John describes the unreliability of one chronicler, Nennius, in a slightly waspish fashion saying: "where it is possible to prove the correctness of Nennius's material, it is clear that his ignorance was monumental."

There are several similar sardonic comments. Regarding the legend that St David raised up a small hill to stand on so he could more clearly address his followers, John points out that in the very hilly area of Ceredigion, "it would be difficult to conceive of any miracle more superfluous". When discussing the 19th century growth of holiday resorts on the North Wales coast, he unambiguously says Rhyl "attracted a less middle-class type of tourist" than Llandudno.

While this is a history of Wales, it's not really a beginner's history. I was glad to have a rough sense of Welsh history already, as several people and events are referred to in throwaway fashion - the reader is expected to know what happened to David, brother of Prince Llewelyn the Last, with two oblique references to his execution in Shrewsbury, without any more detail given. This trait gets more frequent as the book progresses. 

I think the favourite factoid I learned from this book was that to encourage Welsh people to emigrate to America in the 18th century, a story was invented of a Welshman called Madog who sailed west centuries before Columbus and landed in the New World. Madog's descendents were a Welsh-speaking tribe living in the American hinterland, known as the Madogwys. This led to a Welsh explorer setting out to find the Madogwys and along the way he became the first European to map the Missouri River. 

That story is amusing but it shows how powerful stories can be. Earlier in the history, John writes about the growth in Welsh poetry and how the poets reframed the subjugating defeats of Welsh leaders in "a cry against the extinction of identity and against the tyranny of fact." It's an evocative turn of phrase and captures how people have always wanted to describe the world as it should be, rather than how it is.

In later chapters, where there are more reliable sources to draw from, the overall narrative gets a bit bogged down in numbers. It's instructive to compare the numbers of people employed in the coal industry between one generation and the next but there are several such comparisons - numbers of Welsh-born inhabitants, number of Welsh speakers, number of people employed on the land, number of tons of coal extracted and exported, and so on. It all gets a bit statty and less easy to read.

Overall the theme of the book is about identifying the historical processes that resulted in Wales being Wales, an entity different yet thoroughly influenced by England. This uniqueness has survived numerous obvious and non-obvious pressures, from outright conquest through to the conforming pressure of militant socialism in the miner's unions. 

The history of the Welsh language is similarly a history of pressure, again not always from obvious sources. I was unaware of how anti-Cymraeg the unions were in the 19th and 20th centuries. I was struck by the irony that top-down repression of Cymraeg was less effective than the movement that preached solidarity among the workers, effectively the people of Wales robbing themselves of their language.

This (first) edition of the book was published in 1994 and the last chapter covers the discussions about a Welsh parliament in the 1960s and the failed devolution referendum of 1979. There was a second edition published in 2007, by which time Wales had an Assembly and its own devolved government. Proof perhaps that history hasn't stopped. I would like to see what got added to the second edition. 

The final few paragraphs of the version I read - before devolution happened - outline the hope that the Welsh nation will continue to endure, as it had despite everything. The last page or so are very Yma O Hyd in theme and I found it uplifting. It made me happy to think that only a handful of years after the author concluded writing his history, steps had been taken to further safeguard and establish the nation of Wales.

Dydd Dewi Sant in photos

I went to the St David's Day parade on Sunday, joining the Yes Caerdydd group. There were lots of different people taking part and celebrating all things Cymru.

We started by City Hall, walked down to Caroline Street and back up to the castle, where there was a stage, some short speeches and a performance by Nia Tyler, who was recently on Y Llais on S4C.

I took loads of photos, including with a celebrity supporter of Welsh independence. 

Maps from the algorithm, Cymru edition

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant, pawb!

In celebration of all things Cymru, here are some maps of Wales that have popped up on my social media feeds recently. (Or at least since I last posted about maps from the algorithm!)

A nice topographical map to start

A humorous guide to Wales, according to people working in call centres 

A topical one - the 16 new constituencies for the Senedd elections in May

And a relevant political one - markers of economic and social poverty combined in one map.

A rather beautiful map of the Mabinogion.

Repost - Castles of Wales

Lots of castles... but a couple of years back, the friendly guys at Welsh Bollocks provided two maps of castles to help distinguish between Castellau Gymreig and, er, other ones.

Have a great St David's Day, whether you live in Cymrutopia or not!

A drove of dragons

It's Appreciate a Dragon Day according to one of the calendars we have up. So here's a drove of dragons to celebrate.

Gradually I've gathered up quite a collection of pics of dragons. Like this selfie taken in the fanzone at the 2025 Welsh Cup Final.

Here he is in action at a Wales game.

Barry Town also have a dragon occasionally in attendance. 

Channeling Edvard Munch,
or having trouble with the costumes head?

There are lots of dragons on flags at football matches, of course.

Although sometimes other animals replace them.

There's a dragon on the flag on my Plaid Cymru membership card.

And in April last year, at the March for Independence in Barry, I got this fridge magnet from Rebel Dragon Designs, which combines the Welsh Dragon with the Rebel Alliance logo from Star Wars.

I like the way artists put their own spin on the Welsh dragon. The artist Revealist has created this "dragon in a bally" which can be seen in a few places around Cardiff. The best one is in Grangetown, though.

Meanwhile this print caught my eye at an art fair in Canton last year.

When the new Lego Shop opened in Cardiff in September they had a massive, very impressive, Lego dragon installed outside.

It feels like dragons are spottable any and everywhere!

And if you're very lucky, maybe you can grow your own pair of dragon wings!

Happy Appreciate a Dragon Day! I hope you enjoyed seeing this drove of dragons!

Book of the Month: The Road to Independence

This book is Plaid Cymru's evidence to the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales. As you might expect, it lays out very clearly a case for Cymru being an independent nation. For a political book, it's a very accessible read. (It's also shorter than it looks because it's bilingual!)

The book starts with a compelling case why the current political status quo is unsustainable and why half measures like "federalism" won't work. And then it gets into the guts of the argument and directly addresses whether Cymru could afford to be an independent nation in its own right.

That is almost always the first question people ask me when I start talking about annibyniaeth for Cymru. My answer is usually that I don't think Wales can afford to remain trapped in the current union either. Neither can most of England, for that matter. The so-called "fiscal deficit" in Cymru occurs in all the regions of England outside of London and the South East. 

Having travelled to various parts of England for work (and football matches) in the past couple of years, I found it very interesting to see financial figures that back up my hunch that there is poverty across swathes of the country and many communities are on a knife edge. Clearly Westminster isn't working for most of England either. 

The writers deconstruct the various figures used to argue for the unaffordability of Independence. Many of those figures are guestimates; several of the figures presumably wouldn't apply or could be traded off - for example if the coming Republic was expected to inherit some of the debt racked up by the UK, then Westminster would be liable for public sector and state pension payments to people who worked for the UK institutions or have moved to Wales in their retirement. Those costs kind of balance each other out reducing the fiscal deficit significantly. 

The answer to whether Cymru can afford to be independent is therefore 'probably yes'. Much would depend on the terms of leaving the UK - and as seen with Brexit, there are good ways to leave a union and terrible ways to leave a union. Being optimistic, it's definitely possible and hopefully the parting could be amicable. 

Another pressing reason for Independence is the sheer lack of constitutional protections for citizens and institutions in the current UK system. Parliament in Westminster is ultimately the source of all rights and freedoms for individuals, and the source of authority for the devolved Parliaments in Cymru, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Senedd's continued existence relies on Westminster granting powers to it. A different flavour of government in the UK could abolish the devolved Parliaments even if every MP from outside England voting against abolition. 

This shows just how marginalised Cymru is in the UK. There are 32 MPs from Wales in the current Westminster parliament compared to 543 from England. (Scotland has 57 MPs and Northern Ireland has 18.) The number of Welsh seats dropped from 40 in 2019 to 32 in 2024 - a reduction of 20%. This was because the population of the UK grew disproportionately, with a bigger increase in England. Rather than increase the number of MPs, constituency boundaries were redrawn with larger populations. Effectively, Wales lost 8 seats to England. 

Within that context, there is no real hope of the particular needs of Wales being anything but a minor concern to the Westminster Parliament. Decisions can continue to be made that affect Wales without representatives from Wales being able to influence them - see for example the scandalous decision to class the High Speed 2 rail investment as an 'England and Wales' project thereby diverting funding that should have come to Wales, or the decision earlier this year not to devolve the Crown Estate income to the Welsh Government despite the Scottish Government controlling the income from Crown Estate in Scotland. 

The democratic argument for Independence is quite clear.  There is no written constitution to protect the people of the UK from a capricious or malevolent government. Money is withheld from the people of Wales on the whim of MPs elected elsewhere under relatively benign governments. Wales is not safe in the Union. (And there is a good case to say people living in England are a lot less safer than they think they are.)

So in conclusion, I think this book should be required reading for anyone with views for or against annibyniaeth. It's level-headed, reasonably argued, succinct and accessible. And very compelling. 

Book of the Month: Rebecca's Country

The 'Rebecca Riots' in south-west Wales in the 1840s have always fascinated me - the theatre of the piece, men dressing as women to disguise themselves, converging in the dead of night on toll-gates and smashing them to pieces, with the group leader designated as 'Rebecca' all seems fantastical. It's a credit to historian Rhian E. Jones, that she manages to write a solidly-researched and grounded account of the events with a story-tellers grace that loses none of the theatre. 

The Rebecca Riots weren't just riots. It was a multi-faceted popular uprising against a series of injustices perpetrated by the rich and powerful against the poor and powerless. There were some actual riots, including the storming of the Carmarthen workhouse, but most of the actions were carefully planned and targeted attacks that dismantled the apparatus of oppression - the toll gates - while retaining sympathy among the wider population. 

And there is some story to tell. These mobs featured hundred of individuals, led by a 'Rebecca', sometimes accompanied by her daughters. The origins of her name are unknown and there are a few plausible theories. Rebecca and her followers struck in the middle of the night. And they carried on taking down toll gates and toll houses even as thousands of armed troops were billeted across Carmarthenshire to try and snuff out a rebellion that even troubled Queen Victoria and the ministers of the Crown in far off London. 

Rhian takes a scholars eye to paint a compelling picture of what life was like in rural, yet cosmopolitan, south west Wales. Carmarthen was a large and important market town. The many farms and manors around it were considered idyllic and peaceful. So, for a movement that upset social conventions - with "women" leading the fray - as much as it upset the political status quo to erupt here of all places really shook up the wider establishment in the UK. The 'peaceable' Welsh were causing mayhem and that scared the people in power. 

It's quite clear from the way the book is framed that Rhian Jones sympathises with the righteousness of the Rebeccaites cause, although she stops short of explicitly approving of their methods. It's hard not to read this book and feel on Rebecca's side. But Rhian is very fair-handed writing about the land-owners,  magistrates and generals trying to stop the chaos. She is also greatly helped by the columns written by a Times journalist who became embedded in the Rebecca movement and was thus able to explore the grievances and motivations of the people in real time - this was probably one of the earliest pieces of journalism from a 'front line' in a conflict. 

Rhian also avoids the temptation to draw any direct parallels with current politics or contemporary issues. Those would quickly render this story out of date; instead I think this book will remain relevant. The story of how the movement lost momentum, became the locus for bad faith actors who turned it to their own criminal advantage, and eventually petered out when some limited reforms were introduced is, in it's own way, timeless. 

Rhian's conclusion, though, was something I found inspiring: "The extent of their success is perhaps less important than the fact that they made the attempt." That is the key to why the mysterious Rebecca and her followers are remembered at all. 

And that was the Euros...

England won it the hard way, didn't they? And being honest, after losing their first game in the group stage, they looked very unlikely winners. In fact, my hunch was Spain would win. 

And yet, and yet, England somehow won all three knockout stage games while only holding a scoreline lead for one minute in six hours of football. Somehow they survived a penalty shoot out where three players in a row missed their spot kicks. Somehow they kept coming back and kept coming back and grubbing wins. Until they lifted the trophy.

My overall feeling is that there is something more heroic in not being the absolute technical best football nation and yet still dragging yourselves over the winning line time and time again. It makes for drama at least. 

And we did have drama. The two goals in three minutes against Sweden, Lucy Bronze strapping herself up like a warrior and then hammering home a penalty in the shoot out, the beyond late equaliser against Italy and the last gasp injury time penalty that won the game, Beth Mead's slip in the shoot out at the end of the final and the missed retake, and then another comeback to win the game and the tournament and the trophy. 

These are all memorable moments from a thoroughly enjoyable tournament. It took 30 games before we saw a 0-0 score-line and that game was settled by a goal in injury time. Compared to the turgid men's tournaments we have had recently, this was non-stop action. 

I may have been a bit dismissive of Cymru's Euros campaign in my previous post about the Euros. One thing that did occur to me was that the women's team have managed something the men's team never did and that is to qualify for a 16 team Euros finals. The men's team first qualified for the finals in 2016 - when there were 24 teams in the competition meaning eight more spaces up for grabs. (Soccer nerds will tell me that Cymru also qualified in 1976 because they were eliminated in the quarter finals, but only four teams appeared in the "finals" that year so quarter finals were effectively the last qualifying round for the finals.)

I asked Cathy what her most memorable moment of the Euros had been and she said Jess Fishlock's goal for Cymru against France. It was super fitting that Jess scored Cymru's first ever goal at a finals tournament, as she has been a superb leader for the Cymru women's team for many years. There was an interview with her dad on the BBC a couple of days later and seeing him trying to keep his emotions in check while on camera brought a lump to my throat. 

Hannah Cain's goal against England was a better goal than Jess's toe poke against France. But it came at the wrong end of a hefty defeat. Although, I still maintain the penalty that set England on their way to victory was a terrible decision. England got very lucky to be gifted the lead there and I think that changed the entire direction of the match. 

I'm not sure what my most memorable moment was. I didn't see Jess Fishlock's goal because I wasn't able to watch the game. I've mentioned some of the England moments already. Germany's Ann-Katrin Berger's incredible save to prevent an own goal against France was an immense display of goalkeeping - possibly one of the best saves I've ever seen in a live televised game. 

The real test of how good a tournament has been is how you feel at the end. I enjoyed England's win. But I also felt sad that the finals were over. It's been brilliant football, engrossing entertainment, nail-bitingly tense, and now... it's over. But always to be remembered as a captivating tournament to watch. 

One game left of the Euros

Euro 2025 been a very enjoyable tournament and, now, the wall-chart waits for one final update.

Cymru had a difficult group and were always going to find it hard to get any points. They scored their first ever goals at a Euros final, including a beaut against England, but there wasn't much to cheer. 

After Spain's first match, I thought they looked likely tournament winners. However, Germany pushed them all the way to extra time in the semi-final. Germany were the highest ranked team Spain had faced, so maybe Spain aren't so fearsome after all.

I didn't think England would make the final, especially after they lost their first game in the group stages. They actually went into their final group game with a microscopic chance of going out, but made no mistakes with a comprehensive victory over Cymru.

England's quarter-final against Sweden saw them claw back a two goal deficit and win a truly awful penalty shoot-out. Then in the semi-final it took a 95th minute equaliser and a 119th minute penalty to edge past Italy. Two games where they came from behind to win the hard way. 

Will their fortune hold out on Sunday in the final? It's a rematch of the World Cup final two years ago. I'm hoping for a good game!

Football season 24-25 review part 2

Last week I went to two international matches - watching Wales women lose to Italy in Swansea and Wales men winning in Cardiff - and with those two games I've brought the curtain down on my 2024-25 football season. In part 1, I wrote about the fortunes of the three clubs I follow most - which included a promotion, a relegation and a nothing-particularly- memorable. 

But now the season is finally over here's my Futbology round up of the season:

My total of 61 games is a few less than last season's 65, but is still my second highest total ever. In the four seasons since football restarted after the pandemic, I've been to 60, 57, 65 and now 61 games. It's been four years rather full of football. 

Some highlights - four cup finals, one play-off final, only one penalty shoot-out (very early on in the season). The highest scoreline I saw was an 8-2 win for Cardiff Dracs, which edged out Barry's 9-0 drubbing in a friendly at Oxford City right at the start of the season. I made it to a game in Scotland, which was also my nephew Finlay's very first football game (as mentioned in my post about my weekend in Edinburgh). That game was the most northerly of the 15 new football grounds I went to in the season. Here they all are on a handy map:

You can see from the map that most of my new grounds were in South Wales. I haven't quite got to saturation point there, but I'm close. I'm not far off totalling 150 grounds and I might need to start travelling further afield to tick them off next season. Hitting that total is one of the, admittedly modest, ambitions I have for next season. I'm not going to list them here, but I might put them in a kick off post for next season.

And so, as the curtain finally comes down on my 61 game season, I want to give a shout out to the many people who kept me company at all kinds of random grounds watching all kinds of random games. So here you go -  if your name isn't on the list and it should be, then let me know and I'll add it in! 

So, thank you for your company Steve, Paul and Val, Paul (Podge), Dave, Joy, Zac, Dan, Finlay, Ella, Scott, Sara and Leanne (and Cadi and Payton), Tom, Matt, Jim and Nik, Dan R and Emma, Jon D, and the Barry hoppers: Tim, Ian, Joe, John, Nick. I'm looking forward to seeing you all again next season!

A cautionary tale about not checking with experts

In my book of the month post about the autobiography of Billy Meredith, I included this picture of a Wales team for a fixture that my great uncle, Tommy Matthias, played in.

However, when I sent the link to blog post to Anthony, who I've recently met through a vintage soccer memorabilia group, he almost immediately told me that the player I thought was my great uncle was someone else.

Anthony also said the photo was mislabelled in the book, as it was taken at the Racecourse in Wrexham. The pub in the background is The Turf, which is still present right next to the stadium. 

In hindsight, I should have known something was off because Fred Keenor should have been in the line up and he had a very recognisable face. 

I'm not sure who the guy I circled was. Anthony said he hadn't seen that photo before (so at least it was something new for him!) but it most definitely isn't the line up for the game in the caption. 

All this is a cautionary tale - I could have checked with an expert before posting. Next time I will!