similarities in the ways in which football in Wales, like rugby union, has utilised an inclusive, civic approach to sporting national identity. For example, Cardiff City won the FA Cup in 192739, defeating Arsenal in the Final by a single goal, which was seen
as an extended celebration of Welsh identity (Hill, 1999). Though only three members of the cup winning Cardiff team were actually Welsh, this did not prevent the celebrations continuing, although arguably, there was also an element to the festivities that endorsed a wider British unity (Johnes, 2002). Within these terms, soccer promoted a degree of civic Welshness and consequently it was clear that ‘living and playing in Wales was enough to make them representatives of the Welsh people’ (ibid.: 181).
Duke and Crolley (1996) have argued that the limited success that the Welsh national soccer team has enjoyed at international level40 could be attributed to the dominance
of rugby union in Wales and the subsequent competition for players from an already limited pool. Certainly, football was initially more popular in the north of Wales, having been originally imported from Shropshire. The game grew rapidly in areas of north Wales that were closer to the major industrial towns and cities of the north West of England where football was already particularly prevalent (Johnes, 2000). However, despite this, Moorhouse (1996) has gone as far as to say that in Wales, ‘soccer is relatively unimportant culturally’ (58). Garland and Rowe (2001), however, are insistent that football should not be seen to be culturally insignificant even in the
39 Cardiff were beaten by one goal to nil in the 1925 final by Sheffield United. This had been the first
time that a team from outside England had played in the Cup Final since Queens Park FC in 1885. For a discussion of the FA Cup and its relationship to notions of both Englishness and Britishness see Hill (1999).
40 Wales have the poorest record of all the UK home nations, having qualified for the final stages of the
World Cup only once in 1958 and never having reached the final stages of the European Championships.
face of rugby’s dominance, particularly in the south of Wales.
In club football for example, the two main Welsh clubs are from south Wales, Cardiff City and Swansea City. Both teams play in the English Football League pyramid, a result according to Taylor (2008) of the comparatively inequitable economic relations between England and Wales. In terms of broader perspectives, the dependency of the main Welsh clubs on the structures of the English Football pyramid, and to any resultant expressions of nationalism, is best explained by making reference to two particular theorists. The first of whom is Hechter (1975). He explains the existence and expression of contemporary nationalisms in the UK using his ‘internal colonialism’ thesis. This approach focuses on the unequal relationships of power and economic dependence that are a feature of the links between the core (England) and the periphery (Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). This has clear parallels with the reliance of the main Welsh football clubs on the far more lucrative English league system. The second theorist that is worthy of mention here is Nairn (1977). Nairn focuses on the uneven development of industrial capitalism to explain contemporary nationalisms in the UK, and once again, it is clear that this can be related to the situation that the main Welsh clubs find themselves in with regard to their economic dependency on English football.
Returning now to the main Welsh clubs, both Cardiff City and Swansea City have had varying degrees of success over the years. Cardiff City not only had success in the 1927 FA Cup Final but also almost emulated their greatest triumph in the 2008 FA Cup Final, losing narrowly 1-0 to Portsmouth. Having spent many seasons in the bottom two divisions of the league, Cardiff are now near the top of the Championship.
By contrast, Swansea City have had a less successful history. Their major achievement was to reach the top division in the English League in the early 1980s, briefly topping the table for a short time before slipping back down to the lower divisions. Today, they are in the Championship and in a similar position near the top of the table as their arch-rivals Cardiff City, with whom they enjoy a fractious and at times confrontational relationship. Relative success on the field is reflected off the field too with both clubs now playing in new stadia. Cardiff’s new ‘Cardiff City Stadium’ opened in time for the beginning of the 2009/2010 season, whilst Swansea City moved into their brand new ‘Liberty Stadium’ in the summer of 2005.
The significance of these two teams is that both are able to express their Welshness regularly, in that they compete almost exclusively against English teams, which is not often the case in rugby union. Historically, Johnes (2002) argues that rather than expressing a pride in the Welsh nation, it was often a regional south Wales pride that persisted, which was an irony bearing in mind the supposed dominance of north Wales in football. In the course of playing matches in the English League, it has been noted that there does exist an anti-English element, which is significant in the way that the ‘Welshness’ is being celebrated (Johnes, 2000). One might add to this the possibility that, to a degree, both of the main Welsh clubs, Cardiff City and Swansea City, serve as ‘banal’ symbols of the Welsh nation, as proposed in the work of Billig (1995). Additionally, being represented in the English league suggested both a degree of accommodation with Wales’s position in the United Kingdom, and also ‘united Welsh workers with a wider British working class culture’ (208). Often, this has been reflected in the fact that the experiences of the people of industrial south Wales have ‘been much closer to the other industrial regions of Britain than it has to rural west
and north Wales’ (Johnes, 2005: 120-121). In this way, football in Wales can be seen to be ‘demonstrating the dual nature of national identity in Wales: a desire for recognition as a separate identity but without ever pressing for a complete separation’ (Johnes, 2000: 108).
Historically, the Welsh national football team has never been imbued with the Welshness that was afforded to the early Welsh rugby international matches (Johnes, 2005). No specifically Welsh antecedent for the game, for example, was ever suggested. Furthermore, the fact that the Welsh team has been relatively unsuccessful in international competition may also have had an influence upon on its failure to capture the imagination of the Welsh nation41. Johnes (2002) has argued that the Welsh national team, commonly assembled of Welsh players plying their football trade with clubs in England or beyond, has been of less interest to Welsh football fans than the exploits of Welsh club teams, who are represented by players living and regularly playing in Wales. This has echoes of the civic form of nationalism that was evident in the celebration of the ‘Welshness’ of Cardiff City’s cup winning team of 1927, and of the rugby union heroes of 1905.
Certainly, the FAW are keen to maintain their separate footballing status within the UK. In the early 1990s, some African members of FIFA tabled a motion ‘demanding the amalgamation of the four associations into a single UK association, and a single UK national team’ (Duke and Crolley, 1996: 19). Though the motion was unsuccessful, but with the very real possibility that further pressures would be placed
41 Attendances and interest in the national team did briefly increase significantly during the Euro 2004
qualifying tournament, when Wales came very close to qualifying for the tournament’s final stages in Portugal. Wales were eventually eliminated after defeat in a two-legged play-off with Russia.
on FIFA to address the privileged position of the UK associations, the FAW introduced the League of Wales, which they saw as ‘essential to asserting and maintaining its separate identity’ (ibid.)42. Significantly, neither Swansea City nor
Cardiff City chose to leave the English Football League for the League of Wales, which has had implications upon the quality and standard of Welsh teams representing Wales in European competition43.
The nature of this discussion of sport and Welsh nationalism has been broadly based on historic accounts of the development of rugby union and football. Very little academic attention has been paid to the ways in which contemporary Welsh sport has contributed to the ways in which Welsh identity has been demonstrated and constructed in the real lives of Welsh people. Whilst this also suggests that there is a need for work that focuses on the contribution of Welsh sport to ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig, 1995), the main concern is that only rarely does this move beyond a consideration of sports other than rugby union and football. Morgan (2005) has commented briefly on this however, and his sentiments are echoed by Williams (1991):
rugby football retains the image – by now a cliché and often a caricature – it acquired in the early years of the twentieth century as not merely a prominent constituent of Welsh popular culture but a pre-eminent expression of Welsh consciousness, a signifier of Welsh nationhood (86).
Often, this has been an exclusive vision of Welshness that fails significantly to reflect the full diversity of being Welsh. That being said, Johnes (2005) has argued that
the creation of the National Assembly for Wales signals another redefinition of Wales based upon an institution that has the potential to bestow an inclusive citizenship on
42 For a more in-depth assessment of the FAW’s introduction of the League of Wales and the problems
that were encountered see Duke and Crolley (1996).
43 Wrexham FC were also in the English Football League at the time and also chose to remain in that
people. Sport may thus become less important in defining how the Welsh see themselves and how others see them (122).