The bedrock to sport in Newport, really, is the facilities and the grass-roots commitment the city enjoys. And the facilities at Newport Live are very important; they are some of the best in Wales. The swimming pool, the tennis centre, the Geraint Thomas National Velodrome of Wales and the international sports village activity as a whole, including the athletics track and the use thereof by Newport County Association Football Club in terms of the stadium.

The Geraint Thomas velodrome, Llywydd, obviously renamed after the Tour de France winner in 2018, one of our most famous Welsh sporting exports, will see the national track cycling championships from tomorrow. That velodrome is the only indoor venue of its kind across the whole of Wales, and it's where the team GB Olympians have previously trained. I'm very much looking forward to going along to spectate at the national track cycling championships this week, and hopefully meet some of the riders, as well as helping to make presentations. I think this event does highlight what a great sporting city Newport still is in the present day and how passionate the city is about sport, whether it's football, athletics, cricket, rugby, or a host of other sporting endeavours. And it's really good to have this opportunity this evening to highlight much good work that's taking place locally.

Perhaps I could start with rugby and football, Llywydd, and we have that proud history of Newport Rugby Football Club and, of course, the Dragons in terms of professional rugby. And they do a lot of very good work in the community, linking with grass-roots sporting community organisations, and taking a wide view of their remit, linking with Welsh Government campaigns, linking with Newport City Council, and a host of other voluntary organisations.

Newport County do similarly. They've done a lot of really good work with mental health, and men's mental health in particular, in recent times, being at the very forefront of professional football clubs and how they link with the health agenda around the challenge—the great challenge—of mental health that we all face at the current time. And they have a very active community arm that does much good work with schools and with grass-roots communities in Newport. County in the community is very, very important, and I'll return to that later.

Newport Cricket Club as well, Llywydd, is another headline in terms of what we have in the city, and they're based at the international sports village, another part of that great geographical location for sport in the city. Like the majority of groups and organisations, Newport Cricket Club has obviously been impacted by COVID-19 over the last two years, and because of changes at the sports village, the facilities they use for cricket sessions during the winter months were not permissible for a period of time, and that impacted on their ability to run junior and senior sessions, with players having to go elsewhere, to Cardiff and Ebbw Vale, to train. I've met with the Knight brothers, Mike and David, who are mainstays of Newport Cricket Club, to discuss these matters, and I really would like to put on record the amazing commitment that those brothers and all the volunteers around them have in terms of taking forward cricket on a voluntary basis, and making sure that it's available in Newport still for juniors, for women, for girls, for the men's senior teams, for ethnic minorities. It's a very wide-ranging offer that Newport Cricket Club have.

And key to taking forward their endeavours would be a new indoor training facility, new indoor nets. And I know that the Deputy Minister for sport is aware of their ambitions to take forward that project and that development, and it really would enable local talent to continue to flourish and that very inclusive agenda that Newport Cricket Club has to prosper. So, I hope very much we will see Welsh Government, Sport Wales, as well as Cricket Wales and Glamorgan, who played their Second XI games at Newport, all supporting this initiative, and, of course, Newport Live itself, recognising that Newport Cricket Club is one of the most diverse and inclusive clubs, not just in Wales, but across the whole of the UK. And the importance of that indoor facility would just be so—. It would allow so much more to develop, were it to go ahead. So, I hope, Deputy Minister, you will meet with representatives of the club, including the Knight brothers, to discuss their ambitions in more detail.