by 112-1077774096 » Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:04 am
The creation of the first national football league for Wales in 1992 was a rather traumatic event. Because of geography, it has always been much easier to travel east-west than north-south, so it was natural for clubs to tend to look east to England for competitors, and the principal non-Football League teams such a Bangor City and Barry Town played in the English non-League pyramid. In the early 1990s UEFA insisted that clubs should not play in a "foreign" league (and arguments about the United Kingdom being one country do not wash with UEFA because all four countries participate in international competition in their own right), thus came about the creation of the League of Wales. Many of the northern clubs refused to participate in the new league initially, and for a time played their "home" English league games in exile at grounds to the east of the English border. Eventually the new order was accepted, although the presence in the English League of the professional Welsh teams, Cardiff City, Wrexham, and Swansea City, remains an anomaly in the eyes of UEFA, ameliorated only by their being debarred from competing for the Welsh Cup which used to provide one of them with near-guaranteed European competition each year.