Call for ban on alcohol at rugby games
AFORMER chief executive of a recovery centre has called for the Welsh Rugby Union to ban alcohol during international games.
Former actor Wynford Ellis Owen said he was concerned with the number of rugby fans that visited the bar at the Principality Stadium during Wales’ defeat to New Zealand on Saturday.
Mr Owen is a recovering alcoholic and is celebrating 30 years without drink this year. He now works as a specialist counselling consultant at the charity Adferiad Recovery, which provides support for people battling with substance misuse conditions.
In the summer, the WRU stopped selling alcohol during internationals due to Covid restrictions but bars at the stadium have since reopened. The WRU has introduced non-alcohol sections, but Mr Owen believes more should be done to improve people’s experience watching the games.
Speaking to Golwg360, he said he initially had tickets to sit at the alcoholfree section, but gave them to his family as gifts and sat elsewhere.
He said: “I just noticed one or two going back and forth to the bar. They were getting more and more drunk as the game went on, and they were showing no respect towards the players or anyone else that was watching the game.
“They spent most of the match at the bar, and would go back and forth to the toilets. I understand the [Welsh Rugby Union] is dealing with financial difficulties, but when money comes above all else, there’s a problem. The only reason they keep the bar open during the game is to make money.
“It’s such a shame that they wouldn’t just stop selling alcohol during the game. It has now become a culture where it’s normal to go out and drink before the game, drink during the game and find a bar after the game.”
Mr Owen has said the experience has made him reconsider going to see a match again.
The WRU announced in 2019 its alcohol-free zone at the stadium would become permanent.
At the time, it said: “Our alcohol free zone (AFZ) trial has proved that there is a demand out there for this kind of offer and also that the current 4,200 seat provision is meeting that demand, so we are delighted to announce the zone will be here to stay at all future Welsh rugby internationals and WRUowned events at Principality Stadium.”
It added: “The AFZ trial is a great example of our modern iconic stadium reacting to customer feedback and finding a workable solution which caters for a varying range of supporter requirements.”
APORTRAIT of Welsh slave owner Sir Thomas Picton has been removed from Cardiff’s national museum.
The portrait of the LieutenantGeneral has been taken down from the Faces of Wales gallery at National Museum Wales in Cardiff and will be kept in storage before being redisplayed and reinterpreted in the coming months.
Picton had previously been celebrated as a Welsh war hero and was the highest-ranking officer to die at the Battle of Waterloo, but awareness has grown of his role in the slave trade.
As governor of Trinidad in the 1790s and early 1800s, he was renowned for cruelty and reportedly authorised the use of torture on a 14-year-old girl.
The growth of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 saw scrutiny of memorials celebrating Picton intensify, with Cardiff council ultimately voting to remove a marble statue of him from its Hall of Heroes at City Hall.
The decision to remove the portrait from the museum was made as part of Reframing Picton, which is a youth-led initiative involving Amgueddfa Cymru and community partner the Sub Sahara Advisory Panel (SSAP).
The project team has spent more than a year examining the history and legacy of Picton and his place within the museum and how he has been traditionally remembered.
Trinidadian and Tobagonian multi-disciplinary artist Gesiye and UK-based Laku Neg, a group of four members of Trinidadian heritage that promotes expressions of African diaspora knowledge through the arts, will produce two new artworks to reinterpret Picton’s legacy.
Kath Davies, Director of Collections and Research at Amgueddfa Cymru, said: “This is another important step for Amgueddfa
Cymru in examining our national collections and thinking about who we display in our Faces of Wales gallery and why.
“This project replaces one artwork – which assigns great importance to someone whose actions as Governor of Trinidad even at the time were seen as cruel – with a celebratory portrait of a worker, someone we could today consider to be a hero.
“Looking ahead, Amgueddfa Cymru will be creating educational resources on the history and achievements of communities experiencing racial inequalities within our society.
“These will support the recently announced changes to the curriculum by the Welsh Government.”
The portrait of Picton will be replaced by Hedger and Ditcher: Portrait of William Lloyd, painted by Albert Houthuesen, a Dutch artist who became fascinated with the working life of the colliers in Trelogan, Flintshire, while on holiday in the area with his wife in the 1930s.