Sei Williams

Coming soon: Mamaliaid Prydain Mamaliaid Prydain (British Mammals) is a short factual ebook for Welsh learners which will help you expand your vocabulary.

Welsh learners! My new book, British Mammals incl 12 animals, each with a short description, annotated illustration & vocab.

I need to raise a bit of cash to license a few illustrations, so why not preregister for my Kickstarter?

www.kickstarter.com/projects/suw...

And please do share!

[Waves from Llanelli]

422: "Visibly defined arms, shoulders and legs" | Blood & Mud Get more from Blood & Mud on Patreon

Cheers to @gwladrugby.bsky.social for joining me for this week's @bloodandmud.bsky.social.

You think I spend too much time talking about how shit Welsh rugby is usually? Brothers and sisters, strap in.

www.patreon.com/posts/422-vi...

It's also a bit of a mishmash of Wales jersey styles. Collar from the 2005 Reebok shirt, white underarm panels from the early 2010s Under Armour. I quite like it, even if it fell off the back of a lorry.

I reckon a decent clue is that the 'Cymru' in the green strip under the WRU badge was a Reebok thing. Once Under Armour took over in 2008, 'Cymru' disappeared and it became a plain green line.

So this would be a late 90s up to 2007 kit, I reckon.

If the post-holder is going to be forced to actually go to the games too, that salary needs to be doubled. At least.

Either that, or the WRU should put in place a world-beating counselling programme.

Thoughts and prayers for James and his illustrator.

Absolutely chaotic scenes.

As metaphors go for the state of Welsh rugby, it's a cracker, fair playm

What's in an answer? After a month of surveys and listening, Welsh rugby nears a decision on its radical plans to change

Great chat with Ben James this morning about our survey and what might happen next in the latest Welsh rugby saga - you can read it on the Inside Welsh Rugby Substack here: walesrugby.substack.com/p/whats-in-a...

Noson hudolus yn Rhoshirwaun tymhestlog neithiwr.

Gruff yn wych, wrth reswm. Sawl can o Dim Probs, wrth gwrs, ac ambell glasur Ffa Coffi a SFA hefyd.

Małgola, No! a Pys Melyn yn wych wrth gefnogi.

Gwerth gyrru trwy'r storm!

Some of the Wallaby handling is off the scale impressive today.

Gareth Bale, Colin Jackson, Lauren Price and Jess Fishlock are just some of the stars in my new children's book 'Wonderful Welsh Sporting Heroes' 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿/ 'Arwyr Chwaraeon Cymru' 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿.

Why not pick up a copy for a loved one or even a school? www.ylolfa.com/authors/2140... @ylolfa.bsky.social #books #kidlit

Penblwydd hapus (hwyr) Ed!

It would need to be in places with a large expat community from countries where rugby is a major sport yet one which has no pro rugby to speak of.

People, with money, starved of pro rugby, who will pay a fortune in their tens of thousands to watch a couple of friendlies.

Quite. The Baabaas iften have stellar lineups for the November and England games. Usually 6-8 years passed their best, admittedly, but recognisable names.

Yet few people can be bothered to watch.

I genuinely can't remember the last time I bothered to watch a Barbarians game. Which is basically what these teams will be, eight-fold.

The most recent rag doll game was in 2020.

Indeed. The point stands, however, that English clubs aren't implacably opposed to Welsh participation in their league. They aren't (yet?) convinced of it, but it isn't an impossibility.

I don't. Not for sure. I believe a London club was one.

Well, no you haven't.

Because, as I've just spelled out, income would be higher in the Prem, costs would be lower, squad budgets would be higher.

Whether we like it or not, money = success in pro sport. And the Prem would be a more level playing field for Welsh clubs.

So an Anglo-Welsh, or Welsh involvement in the Prem, isn't a pipe dream. It isn't without precedence. It makes a lot of sense in many ways.

It probably won't happen, because it isn't within the WRU's gift alone and would involved the ceding of WRU control.

But it isn't impossible. 4/

- away games in the URC, all bar 3 a season, are a plane trip. All games in England would be a one day coach trip, bar maybe Newcastle.
- English clubs *are* interested. They came close to supporting it last year, but the vote needed to be unanimous and 2 clubs opposed it. 3/

- there's a salary cap in the Prem, there isn't in the URC. Welsh clubs (if there are fewer) can reach £8m budgets, they can't reach Leinster's €12m+
- travel costs are way higher in the URC. Glasgow spent over £300k to get to the URC final in Pretoria 2 years ago at a week's notice 2/

There may not be a formal offer at present, but there are discussions. And for good reasons:
- the Prem have lost 3 clubs over the past 3 years. They're 6 fixtures down. 2 or 3 from Wales fills that gap 1/

As a for instance, these are from the Sunday Telegraph in May 1989. Neath's cup final win over Llanelli (cup matches counted towards these tables) secured the English-Welsh title for them, but they lost out in the Welsh table to Llanelli.

Not a formal league, as leagues pre-1987 were thought by the WRU and RFU to be frightfully common and therefore forbidden.

But there was 100 years of history of regular AW matches at that point, including long-running (unofficial) AW Championships maintained by the Telegraph and Mail.

Just one more push...

Personally, I'm just relieved everybody resisted the temptation to build a monorail to their new 90,000 capacity stadia.

I remember talking to somebody at the time who swore that John Hall's plan was for the rugby team to move into St James's Park while he'd build a new stadium for the football team.

The mania that newly-professionalised rugby would explode like football ran deep.