Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I’m pleased to be able to move this motion today. It is presented and written in a way that we hoped would have been able to attract cross-party support, quite similar to the last debate. I do understand that the Government is intending to support our motion as well, so we have an opportunity today to make a united statement as a Senedd as to how important the six nations are to us as a country.

The motion says it all: sport is important to our cultural and civic identity in Wales; we need to make sport as accessible as possible; we are concerned about the reports that Wales might have to pay for six nations games in the future; and we are concerned about the impact that that could have on the interest of young people in the game.

Rugby is very important to me personally, as it is to many of us. I’m very proud to play for the Senedd rugby team, and we’re in the middle of our own six nations championship at present and we’re unbeaten in that. I’m still a part of the coaching team in Llangefni Rugby Club youth section, and I get great pleasure in teaching the game to young boys and girls, but I also appreciate the role that the club plays within the community. We are going through a very prosperous period in the club in Llangefni at the moment. There are literally hundreds of players in the youth section at the moment and it is great to see; there is no room for us in the club at present. It’s great to see women’s and men’s rugby growing in Holyhead too, and the club in Porthaethwy is still very important.

But what creates or what generates that interest, particularly among young people? Well, without a doubt, the ability to watch and look up to and wanting to emulate their heroes, whether they are men or women. As it happens, I asked the boys on Sunday morning in the team that I help to coach—the under-16s—I asked them how many of them watch international rugby in Wales. All of them said that they watched—the majority of them wearing Wales shirts and so forth. I asked how many watch club games regularly, either on tv or watching our own first team in Llangefni. Well, very few of them were doing that. I wasn’t very happy about that, but that’s another problem. But that response told me that it was through watching the men’s national team, for these boys—watching Alun Wyn Jones, Dan Biggar, Leigh Halfpenny and George North, of course, for us in Anglesey particularly—that’s where the interest is generated. The same thing is true, as I said, in terms of the way in which coverage of the women’s team generates interest among young girls as well.

I’m very concerned therefore what would happen if those games couldn’t be an intrinsic part and a natural part of our cultural life by being broadcast on free-to-air tv. I’ve never had Sky tv in my house—that’s my own personal choice—and many people can’t afford Sky tv or can’t afford to pay to watch sport. Going to a pub or another location doesn’t work for everyone either. [Interruption.] Yes.