The Dragon On My Shirt
On the eve of the men's Euros playoff semi-final, Darren Chetty introduces his television series The Dragon on My Shirt, and we exclusively reveal the poster
When I told a friend that I was working on a documentary series about racially minoritised footballers who played for Wales, he said it sounded like someone had created my dream job for me. It’s true that The Dragon on My Shirt combines a number of interests. My work in education relates to (among other things) antiracism and multiculturalism. I’ve written a number of pieces about growing up in Wales. In Welsh (Plural), the book I co-edited with Grug Muse, Iestyn Tyne and National Poet Wales, Hanan Issa, we gave contributors the task of imagining Welshness as both distinct and inclusive. And football is my first love, since going to my first match as a six-year-old.
The success of the Wales men’s team over the past decade has been much chronicled. Wales has a vibrant fan culture with fanzines, music, fashion all getting considerable media attention. As Martin Johnes, Professor of History at Swansea University, recently wrote, football ‘has played a major role in sustaining Welsh identity and it will almost certainly have a role in contributing to its future direction too.’
We can see this historically in the resistance to reported pressures to switch to a UK team, to the battle in the 1970s to have ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’ played before games instead of ‘God Save the Queen’. The choice of Dafydd Iwan’s ‘Yma o Hyd’ for the official Football Association of Wales (FAW) song for the 2022 World Cup reflected the increased use of Cymraeg in FAW communications, while the video offered a potted history of Welsh history including the Nye Bevan, the miners’ strike, Cymdeithas yr Iaith protests and devolution. But aside from the unveiling of the Betty Campbell statue there was little to acknowledge the long history of Wales as a multiracial country. So, I think of The Dragon on My Shirt as a series that complements that video.
The series explores the experiences of some of the racially minoritised footballers who have represented Wales over the years. ‘Racially minoritised’ isn’t a phrase that everyone is familiar with, I know. I prefer it to terms such as ‘ethnic minority’ partly because ethnicity often gets used as a euphemism for racialised group, and even when it doesn’t there’s a great deal of ambiguity in its use. Are English people in Wales an ethnic group? Are they an ethnic minority? I’ve asked this to Welsh audiences and been met with laughter – but it’s less easy to articulate why. So, while race is no longer thought of as a biological reality (beyond some fringe and highly questionable academics), its existence as a social construct that has been central to how the modern world has taken shape gives it a particular reality. In the words of Gary Younge, it is a nonsense, but a very real nonsense.
In Welsh (Plural), I wrote about growing up in Swansea and included my vivid memory of watching Swansea City play Wolves at the Vetch Field, seeing a banana being thrown at Welsh international George Berry from the North Bank and the people around me laughing. I asked George if he remembers this game and he said he doesn’t and that’s probably because racist abuse was an almost weekly thing for him – and other Black players – back then. George spoke of how Black players received very little support from their clubs during his career. I interviewed George in Mountain Ash where he lived as a child before the family moved on to Blackpool. We recreated the iconic photo of George in the 1970s Admiral tracksuit. He had fond memories of being welcomed into the Wales squad. I think he was unlucky to win only five caps, given he played top-flight football for seven seasons and won a league cup. That’s similar stats to Ashley Williams, for example. George was so proud to be included in The Dragon on My Shirt and spoke of how pleased he was that his grandchildren would get to watch it.
Many people still assumed George to be the first Black player to play for Wales. But, in fact, Eddie Parris made his only appearance for Wales against Ireland in 1931. We went to Chepstow to hear more from Councillor Armand Watts and local historian Liz McBride who has researched Eddie’s life and career. Professors Martin Johnes and Uzo Iwobi did a great job of putting Eddie’s life into broader social and historical contexts.
I met Wendy Reilly in Newport. Wendy captained and briefly managed the Wales women’s team, and her career began in the pre-FAW era where the players had to borrow kits and couldn’t use the official dragon on their blazers. I’ve seen some footage of Wendy playing and she looked superb – tough tackling, with an eye for a pass and a great first touch. At the premiere of the documentary, one of her old teammates spoke of her as ‘Jess Fishlock and then some’. Wendy said she wasn’t at all bitter to have missed out on the era of television coverage for Wales women. She was just hugely proud that the game is beginning to get the recognition it deserves.
One of the nicest elements of working on The Dragon on My Shirt was the connections that we discovered along the way. Wendy showed us a photo of her and her brother with George Berry in 1979. She reflected on how seeing George play for Wales was a big deal for them, just as it was for me. Wendy moved to Ringland, Newport as a child and lived on the same street as Nathan Blake. Nathan didn’t want to talk about his own experiences of racism, saying they are already well-documented. However, he agreed to an interview to speak about Wendy, whom he described as ‘the best footballer on the estate’. Manchester United’s Safia Middleton-Patel was very proud to be part of a legacy of racially minoritised players representing Wales. We filmed at Colliers Park and the first-class facilities there provided a strong visual contrast with the photos Wendy shared with us.
Robert Earnshaw returned to his secondary school in Caerphilly and then took us to interview his Mum who told me about playing football in Zambia before the family relocated to Wales. We also visited the Millennium Stadium where Rob talked me through his debut winner against Germany – and the somersault that followed! Rob spoke of how Nathan Blake had acted as a mentor figure when he first joined the Wales squad. I told Rob I sometimes described myself as a Welsh Indian South African Dutch Londoner, and asked him how he described himself. He opted for Welsh Zambian. He told me afterwards that he hadn’t been asked about that before and that it was a refreshing change.
I spoke to Neil Taylor about his work with the Professional Footballers’ Association’s Asian Inclusion Mentoring Scheme. Neil was very solution focused and spoke of the danger that talking about racism in the game too much can exacerbate the problem as parents will not want their child to have a career in the sport. It was interesting to hear from someone who has achieved so much in the game and who is immersed in the world of sport psychology with its focus on people over-coming barriers. The emphasis was very much on individual agency, whereas academic work tends to foreground analysis of the structural barriers to equality. Also in the final episode, I spoke with Sean Wharton, the first Black manager in the Welsh Premier League, referee Eleeza Khan, Yusuf and Shaqi from Unify, and the Cardiff Bay Warriors, winners of the Somali British Champions League in 2022.
Reactions to the series so far have been very encouraging. Reviewing The Dragon on My Shirt on the Socially Distant Podcast, Steff Garrero commented on the framing of the series and observed that very often ‘sport defines you as one thing’. He and Elis James also noted what they described as ‘a creeping one way of being Welsh coming through’ and saw the series as a positive response to that.
We had great feedback from people who came along to the screening at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. It was good to have people from sport, education, and music all in the same room together. The soundtrack includes Welsh artists Carwyn Ellis & Rio18, Lemfreck, Sage Todz, Juice Menace and Don Leisure. George Berry and I were interviewed pitch-side at half-time at the Wales v Croatia game. It’s been lovely seeing Wales fans approach George at the game and at Green Man festival, where we did a panel with director Vicky Morton. We also screened an episode at Wal Goch Festival, and George Berry and I were in conversation with Megan Feringa.
As far as I’m aware The Dragon on My Shirt is the first documentary series of its kind. In some ways it feels like an extension of Welsh (Plural). It sits alongside the growing number of football documentaries on Red Wall+ as well as the recent BBC documentaries Black and Welsh, Black Music Wales, and The Rugby Codebreakers which have shone a light on Black Welsh people. But there are plenty more stories to explore. Given the importance of Welsh football in conversations about Welsh identity, I very much hope that I – and others – will have the opportunity to build on this work. In the meantime, I’ll be talking to secondary schools in Wrexham next month, using the discussion resource I wrote to accompany the series. And fingers crossed, I might have cause for a trip to Germany in the summer…
Cwlwm is proud to exclusively reveal the promotional poster for The Dragon on My Shirt. The poster was designed by Mike Miles-Boardman of Visually Speaking, the designer behind the posters for recent Wales matches. The Dragon on My Shirt is a five-part documentary, free to view on the Red Wall+, FAW’s online platform.
Darren Chetty was born in Swansea and lives in London. He is a lecturer at University College London and taught in primary schools for over twenty years. He is co-editor of Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales (Repeater) and Critical Philosophy of Race and Education (Routledge), and co-author of What Is Masculinity? Why Does It Matter? And Other Big Questions (Wayland) and How To Disagree: Negotiating Difference in a Divided World (Quarto). Darren writes, with Karen Sands O’Connor, a regular column for Books for Keeps examining racially minoritised characters in children’s literature, entitled ‘Beyond the Secret Garden’. A book based on the column will be published in 2024.