Caernarfon beat Met to reach Euro play-off final
Caernarfon Town booked their place in the Cymru Premier European play-off final with a dramatic penalty shootout victory over Cardiff Met.Following a goalless draw in regular time, Swansea City loanee Ben Hughes saved spot-kicks from Eliot Evans and Matt Chubb as the Canaries won 4-2 on penalties to set up a tie with Haverfordwest County in the final on 18 May.Richard Davies' side dominated long periods of the opening half at The Oval without overly troubling the Archers.Despite a brief improvement from Met, who had not won away from home in the league since September, the Canaries continued to look the likelier to bulge the net in the second half in north Wales.Substitute Josh Lock caused the visitors numerous problems, and Paulo Mendes also headed wide.Following a stoic defensive effort from the away side, goalkeeper Hughes had to produce two vital saves to deny Ryan Reynolds and Thomas Vincent in quick succession late on to send the tie to a shootout.Louis Lloyd, Lock, Morgan Owen and Jake Canavan all scored their penalties for the hosts while Jack Veale and Lewis Rees netted from 12 yards out for the visitors, with Hughes' two saves proving decisive.Caernarfon now target a spot in the first qualifying round of the Uefa Conference League for the second year running as they battle it out with Haverfordwest - who ended the regular season in third - in the final.
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The Guardian
35 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Counties to vote on radical shake-up to cut matches from domestic cricket
The 18 first-class counties will this week finalise plans to cut the County Championship and Twenty20 Blast to 12 matches in each competition next season in a significant restructure of the domestic game. The most recent attempt by the England and Wales Cricket Board to cut the fixture list was thwarted three years ago, when a review led by Sir Andrew Strauss for a 10-match Championship season was rejected by the counties, but after three months of talks there is now widespread agreement on reducing the volume of cricket despite complaints from county members. The counties are already understood to have agreed to cut the T20 Blast from 14 group stage fixtures to 12, allowing finals day to be brought forward to the end of July before the start of the Hundred, with this week's meetings to focus on a restructure of the County Championship. A consultation process led by the ECB's Professional Game Committee (PGC) gave the counties five different options for next season, with two to be put forward following meetings of the counties this week before a final decision next month. The Guardian has been told that both proposed options to be taken forward will involve cutting the Championship fixture list to 12 matches. The most radical proposal involves creating a 12-team Division One, split across two pools of six, with a six-team Division Two underneath. Each team in the two Division One pools would play 10 games against each other home and away, plus two additional fixtures against sides from the other pool. The winners of both pools after 12 matches would then play off in September for the County Championship title, with the bottom county in each pool being relegated. The six Division Two teams would also play 12 matches, with some playing each other three times in a lopsided fixture list, and the winners of the league being promoted automatically. The second and third-placed teams would also play off at the end of the season for the right to be promoted. The alternative option to be put forward would maintain the existing 10-team Division One and eight-team Division Two format, but with a cut to 12 games. There would be no playoff title decider, but the second and third-placed teams in Division Two would face each other for the second promotion places. Other options proposed by the PGC, including three conferences of six followed by playoffs, a mid-season split similar to that used by the Scottish Premier League and keeping the current 14-game two-division structure, are set to be rejected. Sources involved in the discussions told the Guardian that the 12/6 split is regarded as the favoured format to be adopted, with the final decision to be made next month. Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion A two-thirds majority of counties is required if the matter is put to a vote, although if a consensus emerges that may not be necessary. Removing two rounds of Championship fixtures would also enable the One-Day Cup to be split, with five rounds taking place in April and another five in August during the Hundred, giving more players the opportunity to play 50-over cricket. The County Championship schedule was last cut from 16 to 14 matches before the 2017 season, but with the volume of global franchise cricket having increased significantly since, and the Hundred now taking up the whole of August, there is a growing acceptance that a further reduction is required. The players are strongly in favour of less cricket, with 83% of respondents to a Professional Cricketers' Association survey published in May citing physical concerns over their current workload, and 67% believing the schedule is detrimental to their mental health.
Times
6 hours ago
- Times
Forged by GAA, polished by Pep — Brian Barry-Murphy ready for Cardiff job
Jimmy Barry-Murphy was a special one, but what about his son Brian? At 46, Brian reckons he has still to realise his full potential, having moved from his father's shadow into a place of relative obscurity, changing codes, countries and constantly challenging himself in order to realise his own sporting dreams. After a perfectly respectable if unspectacular playing career, Barry-Murphy is now getting more notice as a coach. Having been appointed head coach of Cardiff City — the biggest club in Wales who were in the Premier League six years ago — Barry-Murphy is as close as he has ever been to finding out whether he is also a special one, and he is not afraid to admit it. Cardiff, Barry-Murphy believes, is 'similar to my own situation, where there is the potential to achieve something that could be really special. That is the thing which has probably excited me the most.' Of course what has attracted Cardiff to Barry-Murphy is not the father — the GAA legend who is famous only in Ireland — but the connection with Pep Guardiola and some of the bright young players who have come through the Manchester City ranks. Barry-Murphy is not a name dropper, but nor is he going to hide his light under a bushel and clearly Cardiff's controversial Malaysian owner Vincent Tan is hoping some of the Pep magic has rubbed off on Barry-Murphy. The Corkman had a highly successful two-year stint as lead coach of Manchester City's elite development squad, where he helped bring through the likes of Cole Palmer and Oscar Bobb. 'My association with players who have gone on to do what they have done probably didn't harm my cause,' Barry-Murphy admits with a slight laugh, but he knows that while it helped get him in the door at Cardiff, it could also hasten his departure should the owner feel let down. Seven of the past nine managers at Cardiff — including Mick McCarthy — haven't lasted more than a season as Tan has thrashed around looking for the right man. Instead, the owner has created a climate of chaos, with Cardiff finding themselves back in League One for the first time in 22 years after finishing bottom of the Championship. Shamrock Rovers duo Stephen Bradley and Stephen McPhail — a former Cardiff player — were linked with the job, but now was not the right time and Nathan Jones was identified as their top target, but would not leave Charlton. Barry-Murphy is prepared to take the plunge, referencing his friend and former team-mate Joe Thompson, who died in April of cancer at the age of 36. 'We spoke about this before he died, actually, and one of the things he said was, 'We don't have time to hang around or look back.' He was talking about this idea of things going wrong or what's going to happen if things don't go right. Really, it's just a waste of our time. 'We spend all of our lives proving people wrong. We have the opportunity to do something different and probably a large part of the reason I am here is a vow I made to him to do extraordinary things and fulfil what he would have wanted.' Back in Cork, Barry-Murphy consulted his father about the move to the Welsh capital: 'He said don't think twice about it. He was speaking about the stature of this club and where it is and what an opportunity it is to put the supporters and the club on a path to something completely different.' Brian played Gaelic games, but eventually found his niche in association football, playing for Cork City and Ireland Under-21, though he never won a senior cap at international level as the competition at the time was too fierce. Like Alan Sheehan, the Athlone man now managing at Swansea City who Brian knows well, he has had to bide his time, but the lessons learnt around the Barry-Murphy dinner table haven't been forgotten. 'A lot of how I work and how I try to bring people on this journey is down to what I witnessed from him growing up,' Barry-Murphy says of his father. 'I thought we could get away without mentioning him, but now that we have there was always an expectation in our household based on our father's exploits that we had to win and had to be winning trophies. That kind of stuff you become aware of from a very young age so I have lived with that my whole life.' That's why, for Barry-Murphy, the Cardiff hot seat is more than bearable to sit on. In Welsh football, Cardiff are now lagging behind both Swansea and Wrexham, who have replaced them in the Championship and become the best known club in Wales internationally because of their Hollywood owners. Cardiff's huge band of supporters are feeling hurt, betrayed and left behind, and Barry-Murphy clearly feels the need to reach out to them. Barry-Murphy does not play down the expectation of an immediate return to the Championship and is expected to work largely with what he has got in terms of the club's talented group of young players, most notably the midfielder Rubin Colwill, who played for Wales against England in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar but has since underperformed under a succession of managers. 'Everybody will be clear that we expect to be at the top of the table and looking to win the league, but the danger of that is that you don't have a clear idea of how to do it,' Barry-Murphy says. 'I have a very clear idea in my mind of how I want to do it and it involves a very clear way of playing and for the players to be super clear of what that looks like.' There is an obvious split about the appointment, which I put to Barry-Murphy when we spoke in Cardiff on Wednesday. One media outlet called it 'obscure' while another said he was 'well-qualified'. Barry-Murphy's only other experience at the sharp end of league management was at Rochdale, when the club was very much a League One underdog trying to compete with a much smaller budget, a job he held before going to Manchester City's academy. 'We were trying to defy the odds and compete with the bigger teams and we thought the best way to do that as a club was to do something different and dominate the ball completely, but there were times when we weren't as progressive or effective as we should have been. It's like life. I wish I knew back then what I know now,' Barry-Murphy says. 'When you go somewhere like Man City you see how to turn that possession-based football into effective football where you have to serve the ball to a certain calibre of footballer who want it quicker. I always knew what I wanted to do, I didn't always know how to do it. 'That is what I got from Guardiola in terms of that training programme where you keep that ball for long periods, but for what reason? The longer you keep that ball the less effective you are at arriving at the last line of the opponents effectively. 'We have the calibre of player here who can attack quickly and if you link it back to a Cole Palmer or an Oscar Bobb, if you spend loads of time keeping the ball at the back with those players by the time it comes to the last line, the opponents are really well structured and organised and it becomes quite a sterile, negative experience. The way I want to see my teams play is to arrive much quicker and, once we have arrived, to finish attacks in a much more effective way.' It is a message he has sold to the owner and the initial reaction of the Cardiff fans has been positive. If the players also get the message, Barry-Murphy could be on to something.
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
Wales women head for Euro 2025 wanting to scale heights and leave legacy
The rain cascading down on the Vale of Glamorgan is so heavy, so incessant, that the hotel's reception has run out of umbrellas for guests to borrow and frustrated golfers crowd the lobby. Only two sets of residents seem oblivious to the weather; those heading to the spa and the Wales Women squad. It is late May and with Rhian Wilkinson's players flying to Switzerland for Euro 2025 at the end of June far too much is at stake for anyone wearing a national tracksuit to be at a loose end. Charlie Estcourt has travelled to the sprawling Vale Resort from the United States where she plays for Washington's DC Power, but the midfielder is not about to succumb to jet lag. Instead, she is focused on impressing Wilkinson as the team trains at the Welsh's FA's centre of excellence within the hotel's verdant grounds. 'We have a no-excuses culture now,' says Estcourt. 'It's something Rhian's brought in and it's really helped us get to the next level.' That change enabled Wales to qualify for their first major tournament while opening a window to social change. 'A really big thing for us as a collective is that we want to leave a legacy for Welsh women,' says Estcourt. 'To create the sort of opportunities for girls growing up in Wales today that we never had.' The squad's Euro 2025 slogan is 'For us. For them. For her'. They are entering a formidable group containing England, France and the Netherlands motivated by a desire to reach the knockout phase for not just themselves and their families but every aspiring female footballer in Wales. 'We're want to show how empowering women's football can be,' says Estcourt, speaking with the assured fluency of having completed a sports broadcasting degree. 'One of the most amazing things about the game is all the people you meet, the places you visit, the connections you make. So we're trying to do our bit to grow women's football here. We go out to schools and when you talk to the young girls in their replica kits they're so excited. We don't want them to lose that feeling.' To place this in context, it is only recently that Wales Women acquired parity with the men's team in terms of not merely equal pay but training facilities and support staff. The squad did not acquire their first full-time manager until 2010 and wore shirts with numbers but no names on the back until 2019. Dave Adams, the Football Association of Wales's technical director, says 'We're doing a lot of catch up. You'd hope your daughter would be afforded the same opportunities as your son.' In Wilkinson's case, the personal and the political are inseparable. Although the Wales head coach was born and brought up in Quebec her mother is Welsh and her late father was English. Between 1989 and 1991, the family relocated from Montreal to their beloved south Wales. Y Bont Faen primary school in Cowbridge is six miles from the Vale Resort, but it is where the move soured when it barred Wilkinson and her sister from playing football, a sport they had enjoyed in Canada. Although her parents, in Wilkinson's words, 'went into battle for us and took on the governors' only minimal changes were made and the family, reluctantly, returned to Quebec because the girls 'weren't going to get the same opportunities here'. For Wilkinson, that parental sacrifice paid dividends in the form of 183 caps for Canada, two Olympic bronze medals and the foundation of a coaching career that peaked in 2022 when Portland Thorns won the US's National Women's Soccer League title. It also dictates that she views the Wales job as more akin to a crusade than a mere entry on a CV that briefly became clouded when she and a senior Portland player informed the club they shared a mutual attraction but had done nothing inappropriate. Although an investigation cleared the manager of any wrongdoing while exonerating her conduct, Wilkinson resigned during a sanctimonious social media storm. 'I was completely vindicated, but I was very hurt. I was made an example of,' she said when becoming Wales coach in February 2024. 'It was very public and very painful. Safeguarding is critical but when anyone's investigated people assume they've done something wrong because there's so much wrongdoing in sport.' Returning to Wales has proved restorative. 'This is a special team,' she says. 'They're strong and don't quit on each other. I've never been prouder. But my arrival maybe came just at the right time to ask these players to do things that in the past they weren't ready for.' After a morning on the training pitches, her squad return to the Vale Resort for lunch before disappearing into a series of conference suites repurposed as video analysis studios and media rooms. When Jess Fishlock emerges from one meeting and walks down a staircase into a public lounge a couple of guests sitting in the lobby quietly nudge each other. Fishlock remains the team's most recognisable face and her enduring presence is at the centre of preparations for Switzerland where she is convinced Wales will escape their group of death. Sign up to Moving the Goalposts No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women's football after newsletter promotion At 38, the Seattle Reign midfielder remains world-class, with her on-field partnerships alongside the Wales captain, Angharad James, a Reign teammate, and the former Chelsea enforcer Sophie Ingle key to shocking Europe's elite. 'Jess is so important,' says Estcourt. 'She's so experienced, so knowledgable. On the pitch she's invaluable; she controls the tempo, she brings goals, she brings assists. She also brings that calm head when things get a bit chaotic.' Wales arrive in Switzerland as the lowest-ranked team but they rarely lose games by more than a single goal and are awkward opponents. 'We're used to being underdogs, but we're not going to the Euros to make up numbers,' says Estcourt. 'We've shown we can compete. Rhian's made us very adaptable; we can change our style depending on who we're playing and we understand all the different systems so well. We're such a tight-knit group. We chat all the time; that closeness definitely pushes us on.' Fast forward one month to 9am last Thursday and it seemed fitting that Wilkinson named her final 23-strong squad on the summit of Yr Wyddfa, or Snowdon. While her staff and media ascended by a tourist mini railway the Wales coach marched up in 90 minutes. Significantly, the squad's meeting and dining rooms at the Vale Resort are routinely studded with pictures of the Welsh mountain superimposed with the team badge and a fixture list. The former Real Betis defender Rhiannon Roberts explains that as Euro 25 qualifying games were ticked off the badge was regularly re-pinned on its climb towards the summit. If some of the squad were sceptical when Wilkinson introduced the Yr Wyddfa metaphor after taking charge, they are now looking forward to images of a Himalayan peak at the training camp on Portugal's Algarve and, then, their Swiss tournament base near Lake Constance. 'The mountain was used as a theme because qualifying was always going to be an uphill battle, with setbacks,' says Wilkinson who has also introduced a mental performance coach and invited the Wales men's manager, Craig Bellamy, to address her players. In recognition of the scale of the challenge ahead, the squad's Swiss base is every bit as high end as any occupied by Bellamy's players. A luxury hotel has been block-booked by the FAW and a purpose-built training ground media centre constructed along with a new gym and freshly laid pitches. As Estcourt reiterates, there are no excuses for underachievement. 'We're so inspired by what Wales men did in reaching the semi finals of Euro 2016,' she says. 'They also went as underdogs and I think we might surprise a few people too.'
