Entire North Wales Coast West League fixture schedule scrapped due to international – an appalling decision

What a ridiculous decision by a senior North Wales football league to cancel its entire fixture list on an international weekend so late in the season.

No matches will be played in the tier 4 and 5 North Wales Coast West League this weekend due to the Wales v Kazakhstan World Cup qualifier taking place on Saturday.

Scrapping an entire league fixture schedule because of internationals is reasonable early in a season, but at this stage of the 2024-25 campaign it’s shocking.

This particular league has quite a backlog of games. For instance, we’re heading towards the end of March, and Premier sides Gwalchmai and Bethesda Athletic have respectively 13 and 12 matches remaining.

Yet the North Wales Coast FA still see fit to call off a whole schedule and only exacerbate the congestion problem.

I may be in a minority here, but I do not believe in scrapping domestic football when internationals are on.

Surely it should be down to the individual clubs if they’d rather play their own games instead.

It is hardly a short trip from North Wales to Cardiff – expensive in car or coach fuel or on trains too.

I wonder how many players/officials from the 28 North Wales Coast West clubs will make the journey to Cardiff, or will instead watch the game at home or in the pub?

After all, Wales kick off at 7.45 pm, so that leaves plenty of time for North Wales clubs who play in the afternoon to complete their matches and get back to where they want to be.

With full fixture lists – or at least some action – for all the other leagues, the North Wales Coast West stand out like a sore thumb.

No announcement or explanation that I could find. These people just do things, they don’t communicate.

No emails to the media (or to my website at least), no message on the NWCFA website.

The only indication of what might be happening is the lack mention for the NWCW in the Cymru Football App fixtures. I sent out a few messages today to clubs and individuals, plus the Association, asking what is going on.

Just ONE club had the courtesy to reply to inform me there are no NWCW fixtures this weekend.

The NWCFA does not reply to any of my questions ever. Messages I’ve sent on social media or via emails, a whole pile of them ignored.

The thing is, I want to hear from them for their own good. The more free publicity the league and its clubs get the better, but these people just blank you.

I believe bad feelings still exist towards myself because of an article I wrote a few years back where the FAW heavily criticised the NWCFA for poor practise in inspecting ground facilities.

This was a PUBLIC document, published by the FAW. I found it, no other journalist seemed to, but I had every right to publish it as it was in the public interest.

However, since then Grassroots North Wales has become persona non grata.

No bother, I continue publicising this league despite their lack of cooperation and work well with most of the clubs.

The North East Wales FA are not much better. Because I criticised them choosing Brymbo for last season’s Betty Pickering Cup Final between Llangefni Town (of Anglesey) and Pwllheli (Llyn Peninsula) rather than choose a closer location suitable for the finalists, the NEWFA saw their a**** and told me they would deal with me no more.

Despite these childish stances from the two associations, I still manage to get fixtures, reports and features done on these leagues.

I do it for the clubs, not the associations.

So this weekend there will be no reports from the North Wales Coast West Football League as the NWCFA decided to scrap all fixtures.

If your view is what they have done is fair then that’s fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I think doing this at a latter stage of the season is appalling.

These associations are accountable to no-one it seems. I’ve informed the FAW about the lack of cooperation I receive and they refuse to get involved.

Sometimes I think the FAW show little interest in grassroots football, but there are other times they do and I applaud that.

Covering North Wales football has become much much harder than it should be, but while I’m alive and breathing, we’ll never give up.