Iwan’s Yma o Hyd surprise for fans

WELSH legend Dafydd Iwan has given Welsh fans a moment they’ll never forget by turning up at a hotel in Doha and leading a rousing rendition of Yma o Hyd. The singer is in Qatar supporting Wales after a whirlwind few months which has cemented his iconic status.

The song, a long-time fixture at Scarlets matches, has been given a whole new lease of life in recent months after Iwan sang it on the pitch at Cardiff City Stadium before Wales’s crucial World Cup play-off games against Austria and Ukraine earlier this year. Since then, it has grown and grown in popularity and been selected as the official anthem for Wales’s appearance at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

With around 1,600 Wales fans joining a World Cup party at the InterContinental Doha hotel on Monday, a number of them had an incredible surprise when they bumped into Iwan himself. Never one to disappoint, the folk singer belted out Yma o Hyd to a packed hotel bar in emotional scenes that will live long in the memory.

The song was written by Iwan in 1983 and released at a time of political and economic turmoil, where the age of Thatcherism saw many coal pits closing and thousands of men and women losing their jobs.