AN INTRODUCTION…
I was sitting in some sort of villa in the French countryside, about an hour outside of Paris, when I decided I wanted to do this. It had become a familiar surrounding for me after 3 weeks backpacking up and down France. It was the height of that beautiful and cathartic summer of 2016. I was sitting there on the top bunk of the bed, drained, physically and emotionally. Wales had just managed to make the quarter-finals of the European Championships after a scrappy 1-0 win against Northern Ireland. It was a cagey and nerve-racking affair but the sense of relief when that final whistle rang out was worth everything that came before it. We were in the quarter-finals of the European Championships. That night, as I lay awake, still buzzing, I was trying to comprehend what was happening to our country, after years of nearly-moments and pain, we were finally having our time in the spotlight. It wasn’t Wales of the United Kingdom, it was Wales, the independent football nation. We were stealing the headlines on the front and back pages, not only at home but all around the world. What happened next goes without saying and I had the privilege to be a part of it, with thousands of other like-minded people alongside me, and it was special. I wanted to show it off, I wanted every single person to know how special following Wales was, so I decided I wanted to try and capture that with this, Alternative Wales.
The idea of an “Alternative Wales'' had been floating around my head for a while. I remember first thinking about it around the time of the Bosnia & Herzegovina away game in 2015. That evening, the Welsh football team were about to qualify for a major tournament, it also happened to be on the same day as the Rugby World Cup group stage decider between Wales and Australia. Across the country, there seemed to be a split, as there always is when rugby and football clash. It’s always been something that made me connect to Welsh football, it was like an oasis within the rugby-centric schools and media that for so long undermined it. This was especially the case growing up in Bridgend, attending Brynteg Comprehensive, the school that has produced more British & Irish Lions than any other. Football became my safe place. I was surrounded by like-minded people, whether it was sport, music, fashion or politics (for the most part). It went deeper than just football. This community had its own culture, its own soundtrack, its own style. It even had its own sense of humour. It was inclusive of gender, race, age, class and even nationality (Hello Klaus!). In my head, I thought of us as the “Alternative Wales” rather than the sheep-shagging, Tom Jones singing, rugby-mad crowd that the wider world has pigeon-holed and stereotyped us as. It’s the whole of Wales, not just Cardiff and the Valleys. It’s Bala, Newtown, Caernarfon, Denbigh, Aberystwyth, Carmarthen, Monmouth and everywhere else in between, and when we join to follow the national football team, it’s truly a community from the whole of Wales. The idea of that has always been romantic to me, and it’s something I want to try and capture. And so came the idea of a zine that would go deeper than just football, but capture and celebrate this whole culture. Not just Cardiff City, Swansea City, Newport County and Wrexham but the Cymru Premier and the rest of the pyramid, all the way down to the grassroots. Not just the “news” churned out by Cardiff centric, London backed, glorified estate agents but something that could represent the ideas and the principles of people from every corner of our diverse nation. A nation that right now is going through one of its toughest political periods in our history. It’s make or break for Wales as we head into the unknown of a post-Brexit, post-pandemic, ‘United Kingdom’, a brutal majority Conservative government hell-bent on pushing their agenda of British nationalism and a rising campaign to abolish the Senedd. It’s becoming ever clearer that the only real alternative for Wales is independence, and the movement is gathering ground every day. Look, not everyone will agree with what Alternative Wales stands for, and that’s fine, this might not be for you, but there are plenty of people that I know this will resonate with, so this is for them.
It’s about more than just football, this is the Alternative Wales.
We will be releasing our first issue on March 1st 2021, it will be available online and in print. Keep an eye out for pre-order and subscription links in the following days.