Thank you very much. I’m going to speak about rugby as the game of the whole of Wales. And as everyone else has done, I will declare a series of interests. As one who is going to speak of rugby as a pan-Wales game, I will declare that I was born in the south Wales Valleys and brought up in Merionethshire and on Anglesey. I will also declare that I am a youth coach and a volunteer at Llangefni Rugby Club. I will also declare that I am a flanker for the Assembly rugby team, fresh from our victories over the House of Commons and the House of Lords and the Scottish Parliament.

Yes, rugby is a game that permeates every community in Wales, including this community, our parliamentary community. And I’ll take a swipe at Dai Lloyd here, I think—on occasion, we can be guilty of putting up false walls in Welsh sport. I am not one who likes to question which is our national sport; I happen to be a great rugby supporter as well as being a great supporter of football. I was excited just as much by seeing Wales beat Slovakia last Sunday at the beginning of our European campaign as I was seeing Wales winning the Grand Slam this year.

I also believe that we are guilty of perpetuating this perception, somehow, that rugby, although it is seen as a national game on one level, is also seen as a game that isn’t perhaps as relevant to north Wales. Well, I can tell you that I have had a very fulfilling life in rugby as a north Walian. We have stars that we’re very proud of in George North, who is playing for Wales at the moment, and Robin McBryde, who is a key part of the coaching team. I remember Stuart Roy from my own school winning his international cap, and Iwan Jones too. And I was excited to see Rhun Williams playing superbly as a fullback. As a child, I played for Menai Bridge and for Bangor. I reached the final of the Gwynedd Cup with Ysgol David Hughes. Unlike Dai, I know why the selectors didn’t choose me,  because I wasn’t particularly good—[Laughter.] But I did enjoy playing rugby.

At our club in Llangefni, we have teams and a six, seven, eight, nine and 10, all the way through to under-15s, and a youth team and a first team and a second team. We play across north Wales, from Pwllheli, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Caernarfon, Bangor, Bethesda, Colwyn Bay, Llandudno, Rhyl, Denbigh, Mold, Shotton, Wrexham—that is, it is a game that permeates the whole of north Wales.

Let us bear in mind that part of this plan that caused such discord and so many arguments a few weeks ago was to bring professional rugby to north Wales. I’m not going to be drawn into argument as to whether there should be a merger of the Scarlets and the Ospreys, or any other teams. In my own area, there are many people—. I would say that there are more Ospreys shirts then there are Scarlets shirts, as it happens in my own area, but what Mike Hedges said says it all, doesn't i?