Wales is on the verge of its Italia ’90 moment. There is a rumbling in the valleys. The national football team will play in the World Cup, and the remastering of the anthemic Yma o Hyd, a stirring celebration of the Welsh language, has quickened pulses, even in the rugby citadels.
Three decades have zipped by since the Republic of Ireland football team made a carnival of the 1990 World Cup, in Italy, unbottling a euphoric and uncomplicated celebration of Irishness across the country that lasted weeks, if not decades.
The mood then was joyful and undeniably boozy; the unofficial anthem of that year was the antic Put ’Em Under Pressure, which set Jack Charlton’s abiding football principal to a medley of choruses. This time it is Cymru’s turn, and the song is better. Much better.
But Yma o Hyd, adopted as the country’s official Word Cup anthem, has tapped into the Welsh ancestral spirit and an ascendant nationalist movement. The accompanying video is a moving collage of contemporary and old Welsh football teams, grainy clips of legions of men leaving the coal mines, of civil protests and, most prominently, of the young Welsh belting out the words in their native tongue.
The words point to Welsh ancientness. “You don’t remember Macsen?” is the opening line of an epic sweep of Welsh history and a prevailing tone of defiance against oppression. It’s a reference to Magnus Maximus, Roman emperor for five years beginning in 383 and a far cry from the usual World Cup pop song.
Wales has always been about the voice. “I don’t know whether it is the coal dust in the air or the eternal rain,” mused Richard Burton – a man with a famously velveteen set of pipes himself – on The Dick Cavett Show back when talkshow hosts were happy to sit back and allow their stars to digress on the local prestige of the coal miner as figurehead, as local god.
Michael Sheen belongs to the rich tradition of marvellous Welsh orators: he could read the small print on a tin of beans and make it sound poetic
Even then, in the 1970s, the pining for a lost Welshness had begun in earnest. Post-Brexit, its cause has been taken up by increasing numbers of national figures. Michael Sheen has emerged over the past number of years as an impassioned advocate for Welsh nationalism.
He captivated viewers on his recent appearance on the Sky gameshow A League of Their Own with a stunning speech he imagined giving to the Wales football team. Sheen belongs to the rich tradition of marvellous Welsh orators: he could read the small print on a tin of beans and make it sound poetic and gorgeous. And he is an actor.
Still, it became apparent that he was locating something primal and deeply felt as he set the achievements of the current team – “You sons of Speed” – against the lone, sparkling success of another team from another time: “A red storm is coming to the gates of Qatar. It crackles with the spirit of ’58 and Jimmy Murphy’s boys.”
Murphy was another one: Matt Busby happened upon the Ton Pentre man giving a talk about football to troops on furlough during the second World War, and he made him his assistant manager when he took over at Manchester United. The only reason that Murphy was not on the doomed United flight in February 1958, which crashed upon take-off in Munich, killing 23 people, was that he was on duty as Wales manager.
Wales qualified for that year’s tournament, in Sweden, and made it to the quarter-finals. Since then their football teams – and a succession of smashing individual talents – have been frustrated, disappointed, demoralised, locked out of the party. Until now.
A poll taken last year found that 39 per cent of Welsh people support independence – the figure stood at just 3 per cent in 2015
Over the same period of time, the hollowing-out of the mining and industrial strongholds; the threat by the Plaid Cymru politician Gwynfor Evans to go on hunger strike just to secure the native-language television channel that became S4C; and the grappling to sharpen and maintain a national identity within a rapidly changing United Kingdom: all of that frustration and pride is somehow contained within a tune that is, in the best Shirley Bassey tradition, an out-and-out belter.
And it has arrived at a serendipitous moment. A poll taken last year found that 39 per cent of the nation supports Welsh independence – the figure stood at just 3 per cent in 2015. For all the reservations about Qatar as hosts, try telling the Welsh that this World Cup does not matter. They will play the United States and Iran before their November 29th showdown against – who else? – England. That match will hold the same significance for the Welsh as those long-ago Ireland games in the European Championship of 1988 and in Sardinia in 1990.
No matter what deals we thought we had made, the Pied Piper of Britishness danced us down to the river and then left us there
A few years ago, Michael Sheen gave a talk in Wales in which he laid his feelings about the United Kingdom and Brexit bare. “The coalfields and the ironworks have been beaten down and forgotten about, seemingly even by the political parties born out of its struggles,” he said, “as our squares and high streets are littered not only with cheap chicken and pizza shops but also thousands of empty chapels and darkened welfare halls.
“And as the dazzling promises that the offer of Britishness made seemed to ring ever more hollow with each passing budget day, we are left with the realisation that the world did indeed reshape itself and we were left behind. No matter what deals we thought we had made, the Pied Piper of Britishness danced us down to the river and then left us there.”
In the past few days, Sheen has provoked a national debate over his criticism of Prince William’s visit to the England training camp, where he presented the players with their shirts without, as Sheen put it, “a shred of embarrassment”.
Wales’ progress in Qatar and the popularity of the anthem will further stoke the fires of nationalism. A recent poll estimates that about 30 per cent of Welsh people can speak Cymraeg, and the language is enjoying a concerted revival: the plan is to have up to a million native speakers by 2050.
Certainly, the ancient language is on all tongues this weekend. If rugby has always been Wales’ natural mode of sporting expression, the revived romance with its football team promises to breathe dragon fire through the Welsh hearts and minds as all eyes fix on Qatar.
