Welsh Football Data Archive

• Apologies for the long delay since the last bulletin, but rest assured the project is still alive and kicking!
• Time has been at a premium for me personally and I have not been able to do as much research as I would have wished. However, others have carried on the good work with Ian Garland chipping away at the internationals and Terry Grandin building up a full record of our clubs in Europe.

• We have new additions to our group:
Rob Culley is doing great work on the old Ammanford and District Football League and some tables are ready for upload. He is also putting together an article to cover the League’s history.
Richard Huws has promised to look into the Aberystwyth & District League’s “missing” list and hopes to enlist some help from his colleagues at work.

• Completion is near for some Leagues and I hope to be able to tie these off during the summer months but we are still desperate to complete the Ceredigion and Aberystwyth Leagues. Again an appeal for help on this one!

• I have made inroads this week into the Mid-Wales (South) League with Mid-Wales Journal editor Mike Robinson offering to assist. During my research through the Brecon & Radnor Express I managed to pick-up the restart of the Brecon & District League which completes the Mid-Wales set of leagues.

• The aim for this summer is to complete research into the leagues of Mid-Wales and an article on the senior leagues of the area by Ian Garland will soon appear in Welsh Football magazine.

• There is also missing data from the Clwyd, Halkyn and Dyserth Leagues in the nort east of Wales which we hope will be cleared this year.

• It was hoped that there would be more involvement from existing leagues in the South to help build our records of their Leagues but this has been somewhat disappointing. If anyone out there can take on their local football history or know a man who can…. Please help us out.
• I will be contacting Leagues and area Associations in the coming weeks with a view to persuading them to help with the research involved in their particular area.

• I have been informed that there may be funding available for the WFDA but it would involve too much to set the group up as a formal body at the moment.

• I’m hoping that our colleague Gary Pritchard at BBC Cymru in Bangor will be able to get us a mention on their Saturday morning football slot “Ar y Marc”. I’ll speak to him formally before the season starts.

• We are constantly getting e-mail enquiries on various matters including people researching family history! We (Ian mostly!) try to help where we can. Our website has had over 46,000 visits since its launch and is proving to be a starting block for many a club history project.

UPDATES
Senior internationals A long haul on this one with pre-upload data inputting the main delay. Ian’s taken this research on.
Wartime internationals Ian has now almost completed this research except for a couple of missing
referees.
Amateur internationals Again Ian’s patch with research progressing
Clubs in Europe Terry Grandin has almost completed this record single-handedly and with
the inclusion of UEFA Cup data to the site soon to be carried out this section will near completion.
Leagues Progressing slowly but all 2007-08 tables should be available on-line
within the next days.

Finally, don’t forget photographs. If you have any photos of champions or our national team throughout the ages please send a scanned copy to our webmaster Andrew at webmaster@welsh-premier.com
Best wishes
Mel 27/07/2007