This Q & A, with the founder and editor of Welsh Football magazine David Collins, was published in January 2019 as part of an ygemfootball.com feature. David has been watching Welsh football since the late 1980s and writing, editing and publishing on domestic football since the early 1990s.
Looking back at this article I believe there are many commentaries David offers that remain pertinent even 12 months later and looking ahead. Therefore, I decided to give those thoughts he shared another airing.
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1. Let’s go back to the beginning. How and when did your journey through Welsh football begin? Do you remember your first game?
DC: My job moved out of London to Cardiff in the 1980s, but I didn’t take a close interest in local football to start with. I would read about the Welsh League in the Football Echo every Saturday, and attended a few internationals at Ninian Park, but it wasn’t until a friend at work suggested going to Merthyr’s Welsh Cup final in 1987 that I watched a club game.
That motivated me to get out and visit a few clubs the next season, and I found I really enjoyed discovering new places and getting to know Wales. It could be a real challenge finding out where clubs played and working out how to get there.
I also found I didn’t mind spectating as a neutral, which I’d never really done before. In a crowd of hundreds at most, I still felt involved.
2. Have you always been involved as a fan/reporter/writer, or have you been involved with any clubs in the past?
I grew up in south-west London and I’ve been a lifelong Wimbledon fan (now AFC Wimbledon, of course).
I loved the fanzine culture that sprang up in the eighties and as I’d always enjoyed writing, I contributed to a few. Once I started to watch games in Wales, I would write about grounds I’d visited for the early non-league fanzines – in those days before online maps, websites or social media, believe it or not there was a real appetite just for directions to venues.
My name became known as someone with some knowledge of football in Wales, especially the south initially, so I was persuaded to get involved with an early and short-lived attempt to publish a national magazine (The Welsh Footballer), and then the Welsh Football Almanac of 1991. Those projects, and the other people involved, led directly to starting our own publication.
3. Over your time watching Welsh football, how has it changed for the better? Is there anything you feel has got worse or been lost?
The thing that has really changed above all is the sense that football in Wales is a separate entity from English football. Even in the late 1980s, we had no national league, and in the south the Welsh League was seen as no more than an unofficial feeder into the English Southern League.
Maybe as an incomer to Wales, with no historical ties, it was easier for me to see how special Wales’s status as an ‘Independent Football Nation’ was, and how important it was for the FAW to (belatedly) assert that at club level as well as internationally. So the creation of the League of Wales / Welsh Premier and its supporting pyramid has to be the biggest change I’ve witnessed.
As for what’s been lost… well I miss some of the mystery and excitement of locating and visiting far-flung places, tracking down league directories, street maps and timetables. We take the online availability of all these things for granted now and it’s so easy, but a bit less of an adventure!
There are a few venues I really miss too – funnily enough Darran Park, Ferndale is one.
4. What is it about the Welsh Football scene you enjoy so much?
There are many things I could mention here, but above all I think it’s that getting involved in football in Wales has caused me to travel all around the country, to appreciate what a diverse and beautiful country it is, and to make so many friends. Without football, I doubt I’d have come to feel such a strong sense of belonging here.
The other key point, and I think it’s one that many Welsh people have a blind-spot about, is how special it is that Wales does have independent status as a country in FIFA and UEFA. The Welsh domestic club scene is every bit as important as having a national team, and I enjoy supporting all our clubs in Europe where they’re representing Wales.
5. When you visit a new ground, do you look out for anything specific when deciding ‘where next’?
I’m not always single-mindedly looking for a new ground – it’s getting harder anyway as I’ve visited over 450 in Wales. So there are plenty of re-visits, and I’m often looking for the most interesting fixture. I do have some favourite competitions, like the Welsh Cup and FAW Trophy and the local cups in all Welsh regions can also be really enjoyable.
6. One of the features of your groundhopping tales is your use of public transport – no matter how obscure the destination or cumbersome the journey. Believe it or not, we’ve found it has a sort of cult status? Is there any particular reason for travelling this way?
It came about because I never enjoyed driving and decided many years ago I would be happier relying on public transport (plus the occasional welcome lift). Planning journeys can be quite enjoyable, and it’s much easier these days with everything online, and mobile phones for when things go wrong.
I see the groundhopping tales on my website blog as a chance to write in a different style – a bit lighter and more anecdotal than the magazine. I’ve been neglecting the blog a bit recently – if it’s as popular as you say I should probably do it more regularly.
7. What have been the most memorable journeys, good and bad?
Some of the away trips in UEFA competitions stand out, like Slovenia with Inter Cardiff, and Hungary with TNS.
In Wales, there are just so many memorable ones. In recent years Borth United stands out in the memory, and this season a lovely day out at Tintern Abbey FC.
I’ve had my share of disastrous journeys too. Travelling long distance to find a postponement is always a risk and I remember going to Hay-on-Wye for an Emrys Morgan Cup game back in the nineties and finding that the visitors from Cardiganshire had withdrawn.
Closer to home, I remember slipping and breaking my shoulder up at Cyncoed back in UWIC’s Welsh League days, so that was a bit memorable for the wrong reasons too.
8. Turning to WFM. When you started out, what was your aim? How has it evolved over the years?
We started Welsh Football Magazine because we thought Wales ought to have its own football publication – in 1992 the League of Wales was about to commence so it was a time of change. We didn’t have long-term aims and it was only ever a side-line, done for enjoyment rather than income – faithful to ‘fanzine’ roots.
It has always been important to me that the writing in the magazine is of a high standard. That’s probably easier in a print publication, where I can prioritise quality over quantity of output. Over time, it also became possible to develop into a more professional-looking product, and less like the traditional fanzine.
As long as it hasn’t lost money, I’ve been happy to keep it going, because that original aim of a national publication is just as valid today.
The magazine has evolved thanks to technology as well. News and so forth is best covered by more new media, so it’s a question of concentrating more on features, in-depth analysis and the historical articles that we now include. But actually, I’ve also found that people still really appreciate having all the up to date domestic league tables etc. in printed form.
9. It’s being going for more than 25 years, that’s incredible success. Has it surprised you how popular it is among your readers?
That’s the only reason it’s been going so long. We do get a lot of appreciative feedback from all quarters, which makes it easier to justify devoting so much of my time for no monetary gain.
Part of the success is down to appealing to several demographics: people involved in domestic football, along with the proud Welsh nationalists and Exiled Welshmen, and then also the groundhopping community outside of Wales – you’d be surprised how many subscribers we have beyond Welsh borders and even outside the UK.
At one time, it seemed that digital media might replace print, but actually demand for a printed product remains high. In fact, social media etc. have helped, in spreading the word and helping customers to find the magazine.
10. There’s lots of independent media coverage of Welsh football now, although disappointingly the mainstream sources in Wales remain uninspiring with the coverage they provide. How do you feel about this? Do you feel it is indicative of growing interest, or just the product of more accessible media platforms?
Yes, anyone can be a publisher nowadays, which certainly means more content is out there. So it’s good that the domestic game gets more coverage, but is it attracting new interest or just “preaching to the converted”? These days because we can tailor our news and social media feeds to reflect our interests and views, we all exist in a personal ‘bubble’ to some extent. So I see all that new coverage because I follow the right accounts on Twitter etc. – but it’s not people like me that need to be convinced.
I think there’s a bit more interest in the Welsh Premier, thanks to improving standards and the S4C coverage, but it is still ignored by the media that the wider public consume. Just a brief preview and review of weekend WPL games on ‘Wales Today’ would have far more impact than all the independent coverage, but that seems as far off as ever, sadly.
11. The future for Welsh football. What are your thoughts of expanded licencing and the restructure of the pyramid in tiers 2-4?
I do support what the FAW are trying to do. It is forcing clubs to decide whether they see themselves as part of the senior pyramid, with the spectator facilities that entails, or whether they’re happier in recreational football.
The top levels of football in Wales needed to be made more spectator-friendly, though there’s still a long way to go. Even in the Welsh Premier, too few clubs really work at understanding what it is that deters potential spectators from turning up, and how to get the casual visitor hooked on coming regularly.
I do despair when I hear clubs saying “why do we need 100 seats? – we never get crowds of more than 30” – as if that’s something to be proud of. Make grounds more pleasant places to spend a couple of hours, and not just for the ‘traditional’ male fan, help people in the community to see the local club as ‘theirs’, and support can be grown.
Having said that, we’ll see how the new pyramid works. I worry about the move away from regional boundaries at tier 2 and 3, and whether that will really work given the geography and infrastructure in Wales.
Jordan Forster 