Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 7 June 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:54, 7 June 2022

Well, Llywydd, I'd like to just use the opening Adam Price has offered to pay tribute again to the team from Ukraine and their supporters in the ground. When you think of the background to that game, they were fantastically committed. The team never gave up, right to the very end to the game, and you could see just how much it mattered to them as well. I thought they were an absolute credit to their country.

And we should pay some tribute to the FAW too, under the leadership of Noel Mooney. It is an organisation transformed. The things that Adam Price just said about the FAW, you would not always have been able to say those things of it during its history, could you? But, under its new chief executive, the Football Association of Wales does see itself as playing a different part in the public life of Wales than simply running football teams. And the things that you will have heard him say—and you and I had an opportunity to discuss some of those things with him on Sunday night—I think absolutely does demonstrate an organisation that has captured the zeitgeist, that understands that this is a moment for them in which they can help embody a series of important values about the sort of Wales that we would all wish to see. And, of course, we will, as a Government, be working alongside them and with them to make sure that we maximise the opportunity that Wales's exposure on that national stage—. A first game against the USA—you know, I seem to remember President Trump saying that if Joe Biden were to win the presidential election, the USA would end up looking like Wales. I thought it played a significant part in Joe Biden's triumph in that election myself. [Laughter.] But now, we'll have an opportunity to show people across the USA just what Wales has to offer.