Cymru’s 1-1 draw with Northern Ireland in Cardiff this week was an irrelevant friendly between two World Cup play-off semi-final losers that might have been a momentous event had the pair beaten Bosnia & Herzegovina and Italy (who defeated Northern Ireland 2-0 in Bergamo). While this non-event was happening B&H were defeating Italy in Zenica after another penalty shoot-out, thus qualifying for the 2026 World Cup and rubbing salt in Welsh wounds by underlining how winnable this play-off path was. To update the relevant stats, Cymru’s head-to-head record against Bosnia & Herzegovina is now P5, W0, D3, L2, Goals F3-A7 and against Northern Ireland P97, W45, D25, L27, Goals F192-A133.

Tournaments follow one after the other nowadays, meaning friendly matches have become quite rare. With nothing at stake, this one was inevitably passionless and dull, both countries still coming to terms with their depressing World Cup exits. The attendance can only be guessed: the fixture was a 33,000 sell-out because everyone was expecting to be watching Cymru v Italy in a World Cup decider but, at a rough guess, there were barely half that number in the stadium.

The game was a chance to give reserves a run-out but became farcical in the second-half as a perpetual conveyor belt of substitutions (Cymru six, NI eight) destroyed the possibility of any flow and pattern. It is revealing that the average age of the 11 players who started was Cymru 26.8, NI 23.6, and even when including all the subs the total average was Cymru 26.7, NI 24.7. This illustrates NI’s far greater use of youthful players, which can be partly explained by the persistently poor results of Cymru’s under-21, under-19 and under-17 teams – a worrying augury of future prospects.

Also revealing is the fact that seven of the 19 players used by NI were developed by clubs in their domestic league whereas not one of the 17 used by Cymru came from the Welsh football pyramid, all being products of English pyramid clubs and the majority of them only being eligible through ancestry. Furthermore, players in the Welsh pyramid are virtually never given a chance to play in any of Cymru’s three youth teams either (except occasionally if they’re loanees from English clubs). Given that Welsh domestic football is packed with promising young Welsh talent while the number of Welshmen in the English pyramid that Cymru solely depends on to produce players is negligible, this ridiculous policy is not just self-defeating and stupid, it is also malevolently and destructively anti-Welsh. Chew over this shocking reality: the FAW, the media, politicians and the powers that dictate and police prevailing attitudes in Wales go out of their way to thwart, isolate, belittle and harm anything that has an unequivocal Welsh identity. The enemies of Wales aren’t merely present everywhere – they’re running the show. A cast-iron rule applies throughout Welsh life, and has done for centuries: identify as Welsh and you will be punished; identify as English/British and you will be rewarded. In the case of football, nothing must ever be done to enhance, strengthen, support or even draw attention to the Welsh game, while the English clubs who operate within Wales and whose very presence weakens and devalues actual Welsh clubs must be continually lionised, publicised, hyped and pumped with £millions.

Here is another fact that many in Wales can’t bear to acknowledge: the five so-called ‘Welsh’ clubs that play in England are NOT Welsh football clubs; they are English clubs. The nationality of a football club is determined by the nationality of the football pyramid they play in, NOT by the post-code of their home ground. This is the accepted reality for FIFA, UEFA and all the football authorities around the world: for instance, when Swansea City won England’s League Cup in 2013 they qualified for the Europa League as a representative of ENGLAND, and their run to the quarter-final earned ranking points for ENGLAND. But these five clubs (plus their pals in the mainstream mass media) always insist on describing themselves as ‘Welsh’ – an out-and-out lie designed to conceal their treacherous betrayal of Wales while also serving as a way of rendering actual Welsh football invisible. This only happens in Wales. The few other clubs that, for various reasons, operate outside the country where they are based all openly embrace the country where they play their football. A good example of this is Derry City, a club based in Derry in County Londonderry in Northern Ireland. Since 1985 Derry City have played in the Republic of Ireland’s League of Ireland, not in Northern Ireland’s Irish League, and nobody in proudly republican Derry would dream of calling themselves a Northern Irish club – despite their Brandywell home being located in the UK province. Another good example is The New Saints in the Cymru Premier. Although based four miles over the border in Oswestry, Shropshire, the club is unequivocally and happily Welsh – they do not try to cowardly dissemble and deceive like the five cuckoos in the nest that adopt a bogus Welshness when it suits them. Why don’t they freely admit they are English clubs? What are they ashamed of?

Leaving to one side the questionable managerial skills he displayed in the Bosnia & Herzegovina game, one of my problems with Craig Bellamy is his absolute commitment to the unacceptable status quo that suppresses and strangles Welsh football for the sake of the selfish priorities of these greedy, narrow-minded, Cymruphobic clubs. In his own words he is a “keen supporter” of Cardiff City, a Malaysian multi-millionaire’s possession that has long since abandoned the development of Welsh players in favour of wheeling and dealing in the market for easy-come-easy-go supra-national mercenaries. However, whenever that club occasionally unearths a Welsh player who makes the first team, he is capped almost immediately – until it quickly becomes apparent he is not good enough. Bellamy’s Cardiff bias is more obvious than that of any previous Wales manager, hence the recent capping of Joel Colwill, Rubin Colwill, Isaak Davies, Ronan Kpakio and Dylan Lawlor (of whom, only Lawlor looks like he might ultimately make the grade). Contrast the Cardiff City fixation with Bellamy’s blind spot when it comes to Welsh pyramid clubs: he once deigned to attend a TNS European game and, er, that’s about it. Admirably, he has a deep interest in history and researches the history of every country Cymru plays: it’s about time he brushed up on his Welsh history – he could make a start with this book about his home town.

The key fact that Craig Bellamy and all supporters of the Cymru team must absorb and accept is this: WALES WOULD HAVE NO INTERNATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM AT ALL IF THE CYMRU LEAGUES DID NOT EXIST. Only when that is understood and internalised and acted on, will a bright, sustainable, long-term future for Welsh football become possible. But if the ignorant, blinkered, contemptuous treatment of our own football infrastructure is allowed to continue, Cymru’s precious international status is doomed. It is incumbent on the FAW and the Cymru manager to take the lead and inform the five Judas clubs that their days of having their cake and eating it too must end.