Cymru Wales Football Supporters Scarf

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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. We are manufacturers of quality knitted hats and custom scarves which have a diverse range of uses.

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 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.” 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.”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.’” Hughes remembers another galáctico being swept away when Wales played Poland in their final home game before the World Cup . “That night I focused on Robert Lewandowski,” he says, “and after the [Welsh] anthem he just looked up at the crowd and said: ‘Wow…wow!’” Wales’s official World Cup video carries a harder edge. Yma o Hyd is played throughout footage which splices together iconic Welsh football moments with archive film of Iwan and other activists being arrested in the 70s. Images of the miners’ strike bleed into Sheen exalting “You sons of Speed” and Iwan crying as he sings with the Red Wall.

Yet Hartley’s joy is curbed by disdain for the choice of Qatar as tournament host. “Do I feel conflicted? Yes. Do I wish it were somewhere else? Absolutely.”

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 final words come from an exultant football commentary in Welsh, when qualification for Qatar was sealed, and the video ends with an image of Iwan’s head filling the screen.

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.” 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.