Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:53 pm on 12 July 2016.
These are the issues that we’d love to explore with sports governing bodies. The Member has refreshing candour when she says she had no interest in football until now. [Interruption.] Well, converts are always welcome, of course. It’s difficult to underestimate the publicity that this has given our nation. I was in Paris on the night of the semi-final. I was in Mametz the following day. Around me, all I could hear was people saying ‘Pays de Galles’. That kind of publicity is very difficult for us to replicate. We have to build on that, and we’re working with Visit Wales in order for that to happen.
She’s absolutely right to say as well that the team have been role models as far as young people are concerned. They will see that it is possible to be hugely successful in football—and, indeed, in any other professional sport—without carrying emotional baggage, if I can put it that way, as we have seen in years gone by. We are fortunate in Wales in that we haven’t lost many school playing fields, as has been the case elsewhere over many years, and we will look to work now with Sport Wales and the governing bodies in order to deliver as many accessible facilities of the highest standard that we can across Wales.