Art installations depicting the iconic bucket hats worn by Welsh football fans will light up Wales' cities and towns during this winter’s World Cup.
Addressing a meeting of Cardiff Breakfast Club, chief executive of the Football Association of Wales (FAW), Noel Mooney, said the structures, which will light up in the colours of yellow, green and red, will appear at five locations across Wales for the tournament in Qatar which starts in November, after the men’s national side qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 1958.
Mooney said: "We are going to be building five 10 feet by 10 bucket hat installations that will light up at night time during the World Cup. One will be in Central Square in the centre of Cardiff, as well as those in Swansea, Aberystwyth, Bangor and Wrexham.”
During the 2015 Rugby World Cup, which saw matches held in Cardiff, the 'ball in the wall' installation at Cardiff Castle became a huge focal point for fans.
Mooney said that Welsh fans, the so-called Red Wall, had developed their own identity, symbolised by the distinctive bucket hats. He added: “We have done very little, to be honest with you. They have built up their own fashion and things like the iconic bucket hats. I was at the Green Man Festival over the summer and bucket hats were everywhere, which was fantastic”
During the World Cup the FAW will also be holding its 10-day Gwyl Cymru Festival, which you can read about here.
Mooney, who took up his role with the FAW last summer from an executive position with European football governing body Uefa, also revealed he was first unsure whether to try the singing of the Dafydd Iwan cult song Yma o Hyd, before Welsh games. It has since become the iconic unofficial anthem of the Wales football team.
He explained: “When I came to Wales I didn’t understand all the nuances and the culture and I remember being at a meeting where someone said 'there is this song and I think we should try it'. I said 'what is it called?' They said Yma o Hyd, and to be honest I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. I asked whether it might disrupt the players’ warm-up before the match, but we decided to try it and if it didn’t work it didn’t work.
"So we explained it to the players and then all the stadium were singing in Welsh. I was thinking if I was the Welsh Government and you wanted to promote the language and culture of Wales, it was a pretty spectacular moment for them. We have notes from hundreds of kids and parents since saying they had not been interested in learning Welsh, but because Gareth Bale sings in Welsh they have become interested.”
He described the bond between the players in the national squad as "extraordinary", adding: “Some of the players weren’t born here , but in places like Surrey, etc. So, we bring them to places like Aberfan and St Fagans to understand their history and we had the actor Michael Sheen coming in to talk to them about what it means to be Welsh... and it means a phenomenal amount to them.”
Cardiff Breakfast Club is sponsored by The Western Mail, Effective Communication, Stills, Darwin Gray and the Resolute Group.
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