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I think it's a fair shout to say it's Welsh Premiers biggest ever game. The conference league group stage prize money would knock others out of the park. It would also help TNS to compete with Irish, N.Irish even some Scottish clubs for players.
The irony is a win for TNS would also be one of the worst results as their domestic dominance would only grow
Yeah it's definitely a bittersweet thing for me, I want TNS to do well so it brings more money into Welsh football but also don't want them to because everyone else already can't compete.
Briton Ferry had around 1400 last weekend for their Cymru Premier debut which is a positive, ex-city James Crole scoring 2 on his debut
Is the TNS game on telly ?
Yeah I saw that crowd. Very impressive, and at a club that doesn't really have a history of big crowds.
It is tricky really but on balance I want TNS to win. It's good for the league and would help to improve the Uefa Coefficients etc. That kind of funding you would hope would see some trickle down to other Welsh Premier teams too
Red card for TNS just before half time. Really silly.
And now a red for Petrocub
Shame really. I think they have a tough play off to get into the conference league now. I can't remember who but I did check earlier, so it seems less likely to happen
https://faw.cymru/cymru-leagues/news...ory-in-europe/
"Meanwhile, the losers will have one more opportunity to reach the UEFA Conference League league stage in a play-off in that competition against the losers of the UEFA Europa League third qualifying round tie between Lithuania’s FK Panevėžys or Maccabi Tel-Aviv of Israel."
The second leg of that one is on Thursday evening in Hungary, with Maccabi Tel Aviv 2-1 up from the first leg, so it's likely to be against FK Panevėžys.
Also - FK Panevėžys were Lithuanian champions in 2023 (it's a summer league) but are currently having a poor season and are 9th out of 10 with 24 matches played.
"Meanwhile, the losers will have one more opportunity to reach the UEFA Conference League league stage in a play-off in that competition against the losers of the UEFA Europa League third qualifying round tie between Lithuania’s FK Panevėžys or Maccabi Tel-Aviv of Israel."
Two big games tonight.
TNS first leg which is winnable. Also Larne from Northern Ireland, who are traditionally one of the smaller clubs also have a winnable first leg tie.
Winners go into the conference league and receive around £3m apparently. A huge sum at their level
Benefits of your biggest clubs playing in it I guess
Sometimes wondered what the development of Cardiff would have been like had we not joined the EFL and instead always been part of a Welsh system. Would it still be Cardiff City, Swansea City etc or would there be a number of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea clubs in the top flight like NI and ROI? Think Belfast has 4 of the 12 NI top flight clubs and 5 of the 10 LOI clubs are based in Dublin
Would half of us be Ely Rangers fans?![]()
I'm inclined to agree
I think its an interesting counterfactual though, would a large Cardiff club eventually have developed or would, say, Riverside, Cathays, Ely have larger semi pro/pro clubs like you see in Ireland? What happens to Valleys clubs without Cardiff drawing a lot of their support?
I've pondered this before. I've always concluded that an established Welsh league would have been somewhere in-between the Scottish league and the Northern Irish/Republic of Ireland league. I think proximity to English cities would have helped with the quality of players against the Irish leagues, but the population and lack of population centres etc would have meant we didn't evolve to be as strong as the Scottish league.
TNS 2-0 up away to Paneveys, Daniel Williams just scored an absolute cracker. Its live on S4C website.