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Everything Welsh football. Magazine, podcast & more. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

11/06/2026

“We aren’t there, and I should be feeling dreadful about it, but I’m not. I actually don’t care. And that pi**es me off.”

We’re on Substack. Get over there and read some stuff.

09/06/2026

A tribute to Matthew Collins.

It’s bittersweet that it took Matt getting ill for our paths to cross. I had met Matt’s two best mates, Luke and Sean, while living in London, in that way Welsh people tend to gravitate towards one another. Luke mentioned Matt’s devastating diagnosis after a game of 5-a-side one evening. It’s the sort of news that stops you in your tracks. It feels very close to home, even though, at that point, he was still a stranger to me.

Not long after, Matt reached out about writing something for the magazine. It was an honour to share his story and how the power of the Welsh football community had filled him with so much love and hope. After his diagnosis in the autumn of 2023, his aim was to make it to Euro 2024. Wales didn’t make it, but Matt did. And then he made it through 2025. But, sadly, just over a week before the next major tournament that Wales also failed to qualify for, Matt passed away.

You don’t know how you’ll react when faced with an essentially terminal diagnosis. But I hope that, if I’m ever faced with it, I’ll grab life by the scruff of the neck and come out fighting, just as Matt did. It was inspiring to see him carry on and live his life. Whether it was seeing him at the Canton Cross Vaults on matchday for a quick chat with him and his lovely partner, Claire, or following his life on social media, he never let anything stop him.

Not long after meeting Matt, Luke and Sean, we decided to put on a football match to help raise funds for his treatment — get some friends together, rope in a few big names, and have a right old knees-up in Merthyr.

It poured down on the day. But 30 hardy souls, including Angel Rangel, took to the pitch anyway and put on a spectacle even worse than the weather. It was the perfect day.

I’m gutted I didn’t meet Matt earlier in life, but I’m glad I met him when I did. Despite the terribly sad circumstances, Matt’s final years brought so many people so much joy — whether through new friendships or as a reminder that life is for living. He’ll leave a big hole in a lot of people’s lives, but he’ll also leave a legacy.

Matt, you made a hell of an impact. Rest in peace.

✍️

07/06/2026

Wales (a) in Bucharest 🇷🇴

After seven months without a trip, Wales Away™️ returned with a few days in Bucharest and our first visit to Romania in 34 years.

A disappointing outing on the pitch won’t take too much shine off a lovely few days of drinking Eastern European lager, sunshine, exploring brutalist belters, and all the joy Wales away has to offer.

📸

29/05/2026

On Wales, Football, and Having Your Heart Broken By The Thing You Love, by | Read in full by joining the Alternative Wales Social Club (link in bio 🔗)

—

We like to think that we know what it is to be Welsh. Ask your dad, or your Nain, or the lady stood next to you on the Canton. They’ll tell you.

And nowhere do these ideas feel more alive, than in the skin-peeling cauldron of Welsh football fanaticism. It is truly an extraordinary thing… to point to a living, breathing entity and say, “see! I told you! It is real, I didn’t imagine it”.

And that’s why it hurts so very much when it lets you down. When it betrays that undying faith.

Because, the trouble is, life is pretty rubbish at being the escapism that football promised us it would be. If you constantly jump from one to the other in the hope of finding an escape, there isn’t much space left for living.

And for a brief moment on a Friday afternoon in May, life seemed to repay some of the karmic debt that we’ve seemingly been accruing for months on end. Wales appeared to have voted with its feet, for a future and a nation built upon the very ideals that we swear to life by.

But, like the feeling that arrives on a Sunday evening, a second truth lies just fractionally below the surface-level celebrations.

This election revealed that 29.3% of Welsh voters would politically align themselves with a party who, in the words of their own manifesto, want to “make government policy on the basis of biological sex”, and “stop illegal migrants jumping the queue for (NHS) treatments”. That’s almost a third of Welsh votes; almost twice the proportional percentage of voters in Scotland, for example.

We do truly stand at an inflection point. In a moment of true uncertainty. And in that uncertainty, there is much reason to celebrate, and much reason to be hopeful. But as Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau bounced off the slate and granite in Cardiff Bay on that Friday afternoon, it didn’t feel right to pretend that there was total cause to exultate.

07/05/2026

“We love you Sorba just the way you are” 🕺

Massive tune, great suggestion by Mac Davies and the Train Boys.

06/05/2026

MAKE WALES A LAUGH AGAIN!

Senedd Election special of the Concourse is available to watch/listen now.

27/04/2026

A weekend at the JD Cymru Premier play-off semi finals. 📸

Sunshine, drama, penalty shootouts, big crowds, elation and despair. Just another weekend of a glorious Welsh football. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

25/04/2026

Valleys residents look away now. with a stinker of a Concourse Confession. Straight to hell he goes!

The Concourse is available to watch and listen every week wherever you get your podcasts 👂

15/04/2026

The Cofi Army enjoyed their day out in Newport on Saturday. Welsh Cup winners and a European tour on the horizon. 📸🔰

14/04/2026

The dilemma of Aaron Ramsey: My favourite Welsh footballer | A Welsh Tottenham fan laments

By .thomas_

Aaron James Ramsey, the Boxing Day miracle of 1990, ran his way through the Rhymney Valley, up Caerphilly mountain, down the B4263 and across the M4, captivating much of the footballing world by the age of 18. Just as I was getting into football properly, and he gave me hell.

The dilemma of Aaron Ramsey for me, obviously, is that he is a gooner. I have the same issue with Wenger, my favourite manager. And so, while I had settled on my loyalty to Bale at the Lane, I found my eyes constantly drifting down the high road toward the Emirates, where Ramsey kept quietly being electric. And despite being a Welsh Tottenham fan, where Gareth Bale was being a superhuman powerhouse, Aaron Ramsey quickly became my favourite Welsh footballer of all time.

A journey needs peaks and troughs, calms and storms, hopes and fears, glory and despair, lots of weird and wonderful peppered in there too, they call it lore. Genius obviously: The moments that make us question reality, the limbs generators, the fervent tournament runs, the whatthehowthef**khashedonethat of it all. And crucially, to me, this has to all be fun to watch. It needs flair, a long-sleeve shirt, peroxide blonde hair perhaps, and the irresistible cool of being understated and calm, maybe even underrated and cult. I’d take Dustin Brown and Nick Kyrgios over Djokovic and Nadal any day. And yes, Federer above them all.

A rich and fulfilled life as a football fan needs all of these moments, emotions, and dynamics, playing out across minutes, seasons, and entire eras. The players I love embody all of these traits, and Aaron Ramsey ticked these boxes better than any other Welsh footballer for me, and from the very beginning. Despite it all.

Join the Alternative Wales Social Club to read in full. Link in bio. 🔗

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