Club establishment 1994
A football club dedicated to promoting the Welsh language and culture is still going strong after nearly 30 years in existence.
Clwb Pel Droed Y Glannau was formed in 1994 by school teachers Moi Parry and Alun Coetmor Jones and have played at Ysgol Glan Clwyd in St Asaph since the club’s formation.
The Denbighshire team started out in the now defunct Clwyd League and gained promotion in their first season. Since then Y Glannau have plied their trade mainly in the fifth and sixth tier of North Wales football.
The club is currently run by the management team of Danny Parsons, Gareth Hughes, Dave Williams and Christian Fontana- who is of Italian descent but has been learning the Welsh language since joining the club some years ago.
Parsons has been at the club since the beginning and he remembers how it came into being after being invited to join by the founding members.
He said: “Many of us were playing for different clubs in the area and there were lots of Welsh speakers around playing for different teams in the Denbighshire coast and Flintshire area.
“Moi and Alun thought ‘why not set up a Welsh language team’ and we saw that we could attract players from around the area. The local Papur Bro (Welsh language newspaper) was called Y Glannau so they decided on that name.
“When we started out we had two lads who joined us to try and learn Welsh alongside playing for us.”
With the new criteria in Welsh football coming into force in the last couple of years, it has made progression quite challenging for the club and Parsons says they may need to find a new ground if they want to gain promotion in the future.
“Unfortunately because we don’t own the ground at Ysgol Glan Clwyd and we aren’t able to gain any of the grant funding available in order to make the improvements required to get promoted.
“Hopefully we can find some land in the next 12 to 18 months but we want to stay in the St Asaph area.”
