Cymru Wales Football Supporters Scarf

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We pride ourselves on quality, value and service, thereby building long-term relationships with our diverse client base. The Products tab displays thumbnails of our knitted football scarves and hats along with rugby scarves, school scarves, corporate scarves, and one-off custom made items. Hughes, the head of PR at the Welsh FA, asked Iwan to sing before the World Cup qualifiers. He says Yma o Hyd is “a political song, in Welsh, but it has a rousing tune the fans love. It has been quite a journey for Wales, politically, the last 40 years. From the miners’ strike to devolution so much has changed and we now have a renaissance with people wanting to learn Welsh. We’re also trying to reflect that, in football, it’s been a journey. There have been bad defeats and near misses but in the last [seven] years we’ve qualified for three major tournaments. Yma o Hyd and football go hand-in-hand.”

A League of Their Own does not usually feature poetic words but Sheen lit up the screen as he fused Iwan’s song with resurgent belief in Welsh football. “Yma o Hyd, Yma o Hyd,” Sheen whispered as he closed his eyes and spread his arms: The phrase ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’ – which translates to Remember Tryweryn – has become a prominent political slogan for Welsh nationalism, and is graffitied on a stone wall near Llanrhystud, Ceredigion. It originates from the decision by Liverpool city council to flood the Tryweryn Valley, including the community of Capel Celyn, to create the Llyn Celyn reservoir which supplies water to Liverpool. Hughes grimaces. “The FAW were trying to market the team in a new way and we had this strapline: Time to Believe. After that game it was: Time to Forget.” Yma o Hyd is very different to a tired old reprise of Sweet Caroline or a sentimental chorus of “football’s coming home”. Instead, Iwan and the Red Wall singing in compelling union is the sound of a new Welsh confidence in its identity and language. Hartley suggests that only 20% of the population are fluent in Welsh – but around the national team the desire to speak the language, and sing in it, is consuming and inspiring.Dafydd Iwan singing Yma o Hyd along with the victorious Wales squad after the World Cup playoff final match between Wales and Ukraine.

We create custom made sport scarves and hats bespoke to your requirements. From as few as 50 scarves or hats we provide you with something unique. Chris Coleman did an admirable job replacing Speed. His empathy carried the squad through those bleak times even if Coleman was in charge when Gunter remembers their nadir in 2012. “We had a real bad 6-1 defeat in Serbia. A major tournament seemed a million miles away.” In September 2017, Wales won a World Cup qualifier 2-0 in Moldova and two of Iwan’s four sons travelled as supporters. Iwan recalls: “One of them called me after the game and said: ‘I’m in a club in Moldova and all the fans and the players are singing your song. I’m standing next to Aaron Ramsey who is singing Yma o Hyd like nothing you’ve seen before.’”

Hartley echoes this view: “I’m hoping people choose Wales as their second team. We’re the underdogs, always have been. We’re not threatening. You could say that’s a political weakness or a cultural strength but we’re strong enough in our own skins to support Wales aloud and proud. We’re not aggressive or xenophobic. We’re just happy being Welsh.” Iwan wrote the song in 1983 when “it was a terrible time and the Thatcher regime hit Wales heavily. Coal mines and steelworks were closed and I was in the middle of a terrible divorce. Ymo o Hyd is about how we’re still here, despite everything and everyone and even ourselves. But it’s lovely that all these years later the song is driven by the Red Wall. It has become the focal point and Ian Gwyn Hughes has worked on this diligently for he believed that, to get the Welsh team giving their all, they needed a broader view of Welshness.” Chris Gunter, who plays for AFC Wimbledon in League Two, won the first of his 109 caps for Wales in 2007. For Gunter and his best friend Aaron Ramsey, the lowest moment occurred with the death of Gary Speed in 2011. Hughes left the BBC, where he had spent decades commentating on Wales games, to join the FAW in 2010. Speed soon took over as manager and in his short tenure he transformed expectations and standards. Hughes says: “Gary brought discipline and commanded such respect. He had a real presence even though he had no ego.” Over tea and scones at home, Iwan remembers some of the violent prisoners with whom he had shared a prison cell after defacing public signs written only in English in the 70s.