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When it comes to British football, there is no question that the Premier League is the top of the tree. It is where all of the best players from around the world want to play, never mind just the best players from around Britain will head to. Whilst it is the dominant force in football in the United Kingdom, it isn’t the only football that you can watch. Each nation has its own league that local supporters tend to get behind, from the Scottish Premiership north of the border through to the Irish League, there are teams other than the likes of Liverpool that you can support if you want to.
The Welsh, as with many things, are fiercely proud of their football league. The League of Wales was formed in 1991, becoming the Welsh Premier League 11 years later and the Cymru Premier in time for the 2019-2020 campaign. It welcomes both professional and semi-professional sides and stands at the top of the Welsh football pyramid, with sides being relegated to wither the Cymru North or the Cymru South depending on where they’re based. The Welsh Cup and the Welsh League Cup offer clubs a cup competition to go for alongside the league title chase.
A Brief History Of Welsh Football
The sport that would go on to become association football was played across Britain in the mid-19th century, taking numerous forms in its formative years. It was mainly established in the industrial towns of the north, as well as the Midlands, but Welsh towns like Wrexham and Ruabon also began playing football at an early stage. As an example of this, Wrexham AFC is the oldest professional club in Wales and the world’s third-oldest professional side. In 1876, a Welsh solicitor named Llewelyn Kenrick created the Football Association of Wales, whilst the Welsh Cup came along a year later.
For the first 20 years or so, the Wrexham area was the centre of football in Wales. The south of the country was more keen on the emerging sport of rugby union, which came from the same genesis as football. It took until 1894 for an international game to be played in Wales, which was hosted by Swansea and was only the 46th football match that the Wales team had played in. No player from the south of Wales was picked for the international team for the first 66 fixtures, indicating the extent to which the north of the country was the sport’s dominant force.
Whilst football certainly grew in Wales throughout the 1890s and the early part of the 20th century, it remained a second sport for many in Wales. This was helped by the fact that the rugby team won the Home Nations Championship in 1893 and then defeated the New Zealand All Blacks in 1905. As a result, many believe that the modern era of football in the country didn’t really get underway until the 1909-1910 season, which was when the first team of six sides from south Wales joined the Southern Football League. With Wrexham having joined the Birmingham and District League during the 1905-1906 campaign.
It was thanks to sides from Swansea, Newport, Merthyr Tydfil, Ton Pentre, Riverside and Aberdare that the interest in the Southern League really began to grow. When Swansea played Blackburn Rovers, the reigning league champions of England, in the FA Cup and won, the interest in Wales’ burgeoning football leagues was cemented. The fact that Swansea were also doing well in the league also helped. There has been a long-standing rivalry between football and rugby union in Wales, though in truth most of the time it has been rugby union that has been the more dominant.
The Welsh Football League System
The football league system that is in place in Wales involves promotion and relegation between different leagues that are based in Wales. Most Welsh clubs play in the Welsh pyramid, though there are some that play their games in England, alongside some English clubs that ply their trade in Wales. We have written about the Welsh clubs that play in England in more detail elsewhere on this site. As of the latest season, there were ten levels to the Welsh football league system, with 70 separate divisions making up these ten levels of the game.
The various divisions are split up according to geographical location, such as the Montgomeryshire League Division One, which is in the fifth tier of Welsh football and has 15 clubs playing in it, or the 8 clubs that play in the Cardiff & District League Division Three, which is the only one in the tenth tier of the Welsh game. As teams perform well, they climb up through the various divisions with the hope being that they will eventually reach the Cymru Premier, which is the top-flight division of football in Wales. Here is a look at the 10 levels of the Welsh game, with the number of divisions and clubs at each level:
| Pyramid Level | Number Of Divisions | Number Of Clubs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 12 |
| 2 | 2 | 32 |
| 3 | 4 | 63 |
| 4 | 8 | 106 |
| 5 | 12 | 148 |
| 6 | 8 | 92 |
| 7 | 18 | 182 |
| 8 | 11 | 113 |
| 9 | 5 | 52 |
| 10 | 1 | 8 |
Were a team to start at the bottom of the Welsh football pyramid in the Cardiff & District League Division Three, they would then progress to the Cardiff & District League Division Two and Cardiff & District League Division One on their way up through the bottom three tiers, ending up in the Cardiff & District League Premier Division. If they were to gain promotion to the sixth tier, the league that they would play in would depend on where in Wales they were located. If we assume that the team gains promotion through the three Swansea Senior League Divisions, for example, they would then play in one of the following in the fourth tier:
- North East Wales Football League Premier Division
- North Wales Coast East League Premier Division
- North Wales Coast West League Premier Division
- Central Wales Football League North Division
- Central Wales Football League South Division
- West Wales Premier League
- South Wales Alliance League Premier Division
- Gwent County League Premier Division
Gaining promotion into the third tier of Welsh football would mean playing games in either the Ardal Leagues North East and North West division, the Ardal Leagues South West division or the Ardal Leagues South East division. From there, there are 32 clubs split evenly between Cymru North and Cymru South, all vying to gain promotion into the Cymru Premier division.
Cymru Premier
Whilst it would be far too time consuming to take an extensive look at all of the divisions that teams can play in in Wales, it is worth having a look at the Cymru Premier. It was formed in 1991 by Alun Evans, the Secretary General of the Football Association Wales, who believed that the Welsh international football team was coming under threat from FIFA. The FAW had a permanent seat on the International Football Association Board, alongside the Football Association, the Scottish Football Association and the Irish Football Association, with the belief being that other nations were resentful of that.
The new league was launched officially on the 15th of August 1992, which was the first time that the Football Association Wales had organised a national league. Prior to that, the most successful sides plied their trade in England, whilst the rest of the Welsh clubs were limited to playing in the Welsh Cup. Though transport in Wales has improved over the years, it was traditionally harder to travel from the north to the south, so it was common for clubs to travel east and play against English sides. Bangor City, as an example, helped to form what is now known as the National League.
What transpired was a disagreement between the Football Association Wales and a group of teams that became known as the ‘Irate Eight’, which was made up of Bangor City, Barry Town, Caernarfon Town, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport, Newtown and Rhyl and all wanted to continue to play in England. Cardiff City, Swansea City and Wrexham were already playing in the Football League and it was decided that they would be allowed to carry on there, playing only in the Welsh Cup for a few more seasons until that also became a practice that was abandoned.
At the time of writing, there are five teams that play in England in spite of the fact that they are located in Wales, with the teams being Cardiff City, Swansea City, Newport County, Wrexham and Merthyr Town. There are some that believe that all Welsh teams should be forced to play in the Welsh pyramid, but especially Merthyr given their status as a non-league side. Teams that succeed in the Cymru Premier play in the first qualifying round of the Champions League, whilst the bottom two sides are relegated. One team gains promotion from each of the Cymru North or Cymru South divisions to replace them in the following season.
The Biggest Names In Welsh Football
Should teams like Swansea City, Cardiff City and Wrexham be talked of as being the biggest teams in Welsh football? On the one hand, the success of the former two sides, both of which played in the Premier League, and the fame of the latter after the takeover of the club by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, mean that they are all well-known outside of Wales. Yet the fact that they play as part of the English league system means that they can’t really be included in any fair conversation about Welsh sport. Instead, it is probably more correct to talk about the likes of The New Saints.
The New Saints of Oswestry Town & Llansantffraid Football Club, to give the side its full name, is also known as TNS. Formed as Llansantffraid F.C. in 1959, the club began life in the Montgomeryshire Amateur Football League and was elected to the Central Wales League in 1990, having won the title seven times. They quickly won promotion to the Cymru Alliance and were in the League of Wales in time for the 1992-1993 campaign. A 1996 victory in the Welsh Cup saw the club quality for the European Cup Winners’ Cup, when a local company sponsored the side.
Total Network Solutions, based in Oswestry, sponsored the side for £250,000 and had its name added into the title of the club. Because clubs weren’t allowed to be named after organisations and play in UEFA competitions, the side became known as TNS. In 2003, Oswestry Town and TNS merged. The club has played in the Champions League qualifying rounds several times, most notably at the start of the 2005-2006 season when the side was drawn to face defending champions Liverpool, who had failed to make it into the top four of the Premier League but won the competition against AC Milan in ‘the Miracle of Istanbul’.
Famous names to emerge from Welsh football include Ian Rush, Neville Southall, Ryan Giggs and Gareth Bale.