As the needle clicked into the grooves of the last track on side one of 2025, we headed to North London for a celebration of the brand that launched a thousand bucket hats, Spirit of 58.
When I was a boy they were called bush hats. At some point along the way, possibly when they became fashionable in the 1990s, with bands like the Stone Roses often sporting them, they became known as ‘bucket hats’.
Bucket hats for breakfast.
In 2010 Northwalean Tim Williams started producing bucket hats in the colours of the Wales national football team, red, green and gold (yep, also double up as cool reggae hats) under the brand Spirit of 58 (1958 being the year Wales had last qualified for a major football tournament – the World Cup in Sweden). To say they ‘caught on’ would be the understatement of the century. They quickly became the garment to be seen in for any self-respecting Wales football fan. Even by people who don’t normally wear hats. With Tim running a small independent company, there was no way he could keep up with demand. Soon, all sorts of cheap imitations were appearing in pound shops, on street corners and in souvenir shops next to the fridge magnets. If you look at photographs of Wales football crowds in the last ten years or so, almost the entire crowd will have a bucket hat on. SO58 is still considered to be the only ‘real McCoy’ though. You can tell an imitation bucket hat a mile off (says he snobbily – as if he was some sort of fashion guru). Rather than try to knock them out in bulk, Tim has come up with a wide range of limited edition versions, including away colours, Patagonian colours and historic kit colours.
As well as the hats, SO58 produces a wide range of branded kit including shirts, short, coats, bottle openers and bobble hats. All with attention to design and quality.
Fifteen years on, Tim is holding a party in London, along with another recent Wales football success, Alternative Wales zine, run by Ryan March and a team of passionate football scribes and snappers.
We were in London for the weekend anyway, so just had to jump on the train from south of the river.
We started with a healthy breakfast to soak up the days’ beer, then headed to the station. We were in good spirits till I sat down on the train. The seat was wet. Luckily I was wearing my quick dry drinking shorts, in case I piss myself later. Although I hadn’t factored in them getting wet with someone else’s piss.
Just a short walk from Old Street Station is The Volley. Not a sports bar, literally a football bar. It’s tucked away in a little precinct and is adorned with football club scarves from all over the world.
There’s plenty of places in London where the beer’s great.
There’s a lot of places where watching the football is amazing.
We couldn’t find somewhere that did both really well. So we opened the Volley.
It’s used as a meeting point for many London-based supporters clubs – of clubs that are not London based, such a St Pauli and various Milan clubs.
When we arrive, footage of the classic 1980 Wales 4 England 1 game at Wrexham is on the many screens around the pub. The venue holds around 200 people but much of that is up on a balcony that means a limited view for the talks about to take place on the ground floor.
We were the first to arrive and have a quick catch up With Tim 58 and Alternative Ryan. I was going to bend Tim’s ear about not doing shirts for fat bastards, but it turns out he can do up to 5XL if necessary. He advises me that most of the orders he gets for gentlemen with a fuller figure come from the South Wales Valleys.
Tim, selling raffle tickets that would later raise £400 for children’s charities.
At first we soak up the rays outside, but then we bagsy ourselves a good seat ready for the speakers before the crowds arrive.
Then the crowds arrive.
Welsh Football and the Media
First Panel – The Media
First panel of the day features Ryan (Alternative Wales), Dafydd Pritchard (BBC Journalist), Katie Owen (DJ, Presenter and daughter of Johnny Owen) and Danny Gabbidon (BBC Football Pundit).
Danny played for Cardiff City back in the golden era when the Wales team had an incredibly high percentage of Cardiff players in the first team. In 2005, when Cardiff owner Sam Haman realised he was living beyond his means, Gabiddon was one of the star players that had to help lighten the wage bill – and went on to a successful career at West Ham.
Danny was part of the Wales squad that qualified for the legendary Euro 2016 tournament, but by the time the tournament itself came around he was not getting regular time on the pitch so was not part of the squad that headed out to France for the summer.
Danny Gabbidon, former Cardiff City, West Ham, QPR and Wales player. Now TV pundit.
He hadn’t given much thought to punditry but…
DANNY GABBIDON: I kind of got scouted. When I finished playing football I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. From playing I had built up a relationship with the media and Rob Philips approached me to do commentary for QPR v Cardiff City, as I had played for both clubs. I really enjoyed the vibe of being around the match day experience so I thought I would give it a go.
That coincided with me giving up playing and I was able to go over to France for the Euros and have five of the best weeks of my life.
Talking about a game is certainly a lot easier on the body than playing the game.
It’s a tough transition because as footballers we are not very well educated. We tend to leave school at sixteen, so you don’t get to go to university and do more academic learning. There are kids in football academies now at eight years of age. They do try to maintain the schooling alongside it but it’s not the same.
I was very shy at school, but this has brought me out of myself, helped built my confidence and help me hold conversations, so it has been great for me.
Dafydd Pritchard works for the BBC and tells of how the Welsh media were obsessed with rugby and didn’t really think football was worth covering. This was only a few years ago. How times have changed.
Ryan has been part of that change. Dissatisfied with the lack of a cohesive media ecosystem in Wales he set up Alternative Wales, who are …
…on our journey into the heart of Welsh football. We do it all, from the international stage to the grassroots, exploring the culture, unique style, soundtrack, and sense of humour, then bring it all together in one place. Alternative Wales
They started out with a zine, which is now on issue seventeen. They also do podcasts, events of their own and host parties alongside Spirit of 58.
Ryan March, founder of Alternative Wales.
The line up of this event and the caliber of some of the people they have interviewed in the zine is a reflection of how respected they have become very quickly. But where did it start?
RYAN MARCH: I wasn’t good enough to be a footballer and I wasn’t good enough to be a musician either. So, the next best thing was work adjacent to both.
I think I learned during COVID that I probably don’t like the sport as much as like actually thought I did. I love the culture around it. What got me into football was going to Ninian Park – the songs and the food and the way people dressed, the way people acted and stuff like that.
I can’t believe I just gave a shout out to the food in Ninian Park! It was a corned beef pasty or a Peter’s Pie every week.
I’d always had this idea of what football was to me, and Wales were close to qualifying for Euro 2016. ‘Wales Away’, as a thing was booming. And it was becoming quite noticeable, through the rise of social media, that people have a platform to be themselves.
I thought, there’s loads of really creative, funny people and it would be great to bring it all together into something.
Being a big music fan, I love punk music and would watch a documentary about punk in the seventies or east coast punk in America. And there would always be a fanzine. So I thought it would be cool to do a fanzine about football because, for me, that was my culture. So I decided to do it, I just didn’t do it for years.
Then COVID happen and I thought, let’s give it a go now.
I think Welsh football needs it. I think Welsh football deserves better than what it has got. I think we’ve always had really good journalists like Dafydd and his colleagues but we’ve never have that extra content. The BBC do what they do really well, but in Wales, we don’t have a full media ecosystem. I would always read Four Four Two magazine or Match magazine. And if there was a little snippet in there about Wales, I would think it was brilliant. So the idea was to put it all together and it became the magazine, but now it’s grown into something more. I’ve brought in two very talented people. Greg and Charlie, and we’ve been able to take it and grow it into something bigger. We want to just basically serve Welsh public stuff that maybe they don’t get elsewhere. And it is constantly evolving.
FASHION AND FOOTBALL
Panel number two. Fashion
Second panel of the day features Tim Williams (Mr Spirit of 58 himself) Tony Riviers (author and dedicated follower of fashion) and Ioan Bowen-Pickett (founder of Welsh fashion house Cambrensis).
Whilst many sports have passionate followings, football is probably unique in that it embraces and influences a wide variety of cultures in a way that no other sport does. There’s a whole ecosystem around football – music, books, lifestyle and fashion.
Tony Rivers has documented much of this culture in his two books, Soul Crew and Magnetic. Soul Crew, co-written with David Jones certainly had one foot in the ‘hooli-porn’ genre, but also documented the rise of casual culture and what all the best-dressed hooligans were wearing.
Tony Rivers, fan, and author.
Magnetic is a history of the brand Stone Island. Technically, Stone Island is unconnected to football, but I don’t recall ever seeing anyone wearing Stone Island that was not a ‘lad’. It doesn’t bother with huge logos plastered all over the front, it is subtly signified by a small badge with their logo buttoned onto the sleeve. This does make the brand ripe for imitation, and I have seen knock off badges for sale to sew onto ya Primark jacket. You can even get versions with the compass symbol at the heart of the logo, surrounded by the name of your club/firm instead of the words Stone Island.
Casual culture was born in the eighties when teams, particularly Liverpool, were going abroad to watch their team and coming back with designer gear acquired by fair means or foul. Strangely, it became the thing to wear expensive clothes when looking for a ‘row’ on the cobbles. Anyone who went to football wearing a replica shirt or a scarf was considered a bit weird and there was an unwritten rule that ‘scarfers’ were not fair game. Although it was often broken.
I hasten to add at this point, this is my recollection as an outsider. Whilst I was there ‘back in the day’ and followed Cardiff all over the country, I was a lover, not a fighter. The closest I came to being part of the Soul Crew was dancing at Wigan Casino. I threw shapes, not punches. The closest I came to following fashion was wearing a donkey jacket and a flat top. You’ll get an insider’s view by reading one of Tony’s books.
Fast-forward several decades and the edgy side of football fandom is less prevalent, heavy policing and CCTV have pushed the genie back into the bottle, although it is still there waiting to get out. Going to watch club football can still be like going to a fashion show and you can still go down the pub on a non-match day and spot a football fan a mile off from their choice of shirt.
Holland 7 Wales 1 1996. Not a replica shirt in sight.
For many years it was thus at international games as well. I’ve just uncovered photos from Holland (Netherlands for younger readers) away in 1996 and there’s not a replica shirt in sight. Things have changed now though. Wales fans are known as ‘The Red Wall’ for a reason. The Welsh end of the stadium will be red from top to bottom with replica shirts, flags and – yes – bucket hats.
Which is where Tim comes in.
TIM WILLIAMS: I had been going away watching Wales for a long time and I thought there was a gap in the market for Welsh football fans. Back then, it was hard work to even get hold of a replica shirt. And even harder to get into a Cappa shirt. And that is still true to this day. There’s a lot of guys who probably shouldn’t have been wearing them because they didn’t fit, but I wasn’t part of that gang, I knew my place.
It started off when Wales weren’t playing very well. We lost more than we won. But I think that’s why I’m still here today. I gained quite a loyal customer base. I have made lots of friends through it. And I have customers who were my friends before as well. I’m not saying everybody likes my stuff but I gave it a good go and I’m still here today, fifteen years on.
I’m not on Amazon or in JD Sports. I think a lot of people who follow Wales really appreciate that I actually go to matches as well so I didn’t just jump on the bandwagon.
The first ever Spirit of 58 garment – t shirt with 1980 Wales squad before beating England 4-1
I think I did about one hundred of my first shirt (the Wales squad before the famous 4-1 victory over England in 1980) coming home from Montenegro away. We lost that game and I was worried I wouldn’t sell any, but that England game was a historic day for Welsh football. It was a match when we took England apart in 1980. People still talk about that match now. I was at the game as well. The shirts sold out, luckily for me. That’s why I’m still here.
The bucket hats never came first, it was a T-shirt, and a couple of pin badges. The bucket hat came about not long after the Monetengro game. It was a plain bucket hat, nothing very fancy but I think I sold about fifty. Now I’ve probably sold over fifty thousand and I’m sick of bagging them.
The Red Wall, celebrating in Riga, Latvia – bucket hats galore
Bucket Hat in Cardiff City Centre – (Photo from Nation Cymru)
How did Tim feel watching those games – seeing something he created everywhere? Tim replies modestly…
TIM: I think I’m quite a humble person so it was a bit overwhelming.
The business is very much tied to the success of the wales squad. After we lost to Poland (meaning we failed to qualify for the Euros) business dropped off. But if we qualify for the World Cup, I’m sure I’ll be alright financially for a few years.
THE CULT OF WALES AWAY.
Final Panel – The Cult of Wales Away
Final panel of the day features Jonny Owen (film producer and director, ex musician, actor and all round Merthyr boy (even though he lives in Nottingham)). His films include ‘A Little Bit of Tom Jones’, ‘Decidedly Bloody Dodgy’, ‘Svengali’, ‘I Believe in Miracles’, ‘Three Kings’ and of course ‘Don’t Take Me Home’ (the story of Euro 2016); Ellis James (comedian, BBC presenter (his CV includes presenting Wales: Football Nation on BBC)); Ceri Wyn (Pope of the London Welsh Centre) and Gav Murphy (from Ystrad Mynach and does shit for the BBC I think).
Wales Away (Verb): To travel to far flung parts of Europe for a cultural exchange, get drunk, and watch football. The extent to which people exchange culture varies; from visiting museums and sampling local cuisine, to visiting Irish bars and eating KFC all weekend. But it’s all Wales Away.
There was a time when it was quite easy to get tickets for Wales Away. The team had its ups and downs on the pitch. The ups were never very high, but the downs were very low. I recall watching Holland v Wales in 1996 and we got battered 7-1. If it wasn’t for the skill of keeper Nevile Southall it could easily have been 25-1. As a result, it was never a problem to get tickets for the game.
That Holland game was in Eindhoven, but the majority of Wales fans stayed in Amsterdam, famous for its nightlife and, shall we say, relaxed attitudes. Which is perhaps as much an explanation of the growth in the popularity of Wales Away as anything. The more people went away, the more they realised that there are interesting destinations on the continent. Wales Away became as much about the trip as the game. Nobody travels to Azerbaijan for ninety minutes of football.
Wales often finds itself playing in countries that are not obvious holiday destinations: Albania, Bosnia and China being three recent trips for instance. Not many of us would have gone to these countries if were not for football.
Of course, these destinations could be visited any time of the year, and probably cheaper, but with Wales Away you can combine an ‘exotic’ holiday with hanging out with your mates and getting to know like-minded football tourists.
JONNY OWEN: It could be quite edgy on times. Football hooliganism was at its peak and there was a lot of rivalry. You could be the other side of the continent and Cardiff would be looking out for Wrexham, Wrexham would be looking for Newport, and so on.
Things have changed now, with the FAW #TogetherStronger campaign making a big difference. It’s much more of a family affair these days.
Jonny Owen – He’s come a long way since ‘A Bit of Tom Jones’
And indeed it is. The days of rivalry between Welsh clubs at away games has pretty much gone, there is a camaraderie between fans. And what’s more, there is rarely any agro with the home fans. The Wales Away crowd is a very different beast to the hordes that go away with some of our closest neighbours. Everywhere Wales travel to, the local police, fans and pub landlords welcome us with open arms. Well, almost everywhere. I don’t think the Russians or Italians do hospitality. Hostility maybe, but not hospitality.
But what is is about Wales Away that makes it so special?
ELLIS JAMES: My first away game was Scotland away at Hamden in 2013. I’d been going to home games for over 20 years by that point, and I just got this feeling when I walked into the away end that I had sort of found my people.
And also because we had a very young Bale and a very young Ramsey, they really were approaching their peak at that time. You could just tell that something special was happening. That started with Gary (Speed). And I just became addicted to it.
It was slightly cooler than our home support in the dress sense, and there were songs that you didn’t hear at home games. There were two and a half thousand of us, and I reckon there must have been about half a million pounds worth of jackets.
And also, there was a sort of swagger to it, and I think growing up in West Wales in the late 80s and early 90s when I was discovering football, everyone was a football fan. It’s a complete fallacy that football is sort of an inferior cousin to rugby, but they tended, in the main, to be fans of the big First Division and then Premier League clubs, and Wales really was a bit of an after thought. And so if you supported a Welsh club side and the national team, you were regarded as a bit of an oddball.
The thing with oddballs is they tend to find each other. It’s a bit like when I went to see the Japanese indie band Deerhoof in Cardiff, and I was like, everyone is cool! And then you leave and you’re like, no, the four hundred people at the gig were cool, and now everyone is normal.
And so it was that, and because of Gary Speed and Coleman and Bale and Ramsey and Allen and Ashley Williams, all those great players, having not missed a home game for years and years, I always got the impression that, as a country, we were looking to get behind a successful team.
But there seemed to be foundations built on sand a little bit, because as soon as the team started losing, people stopped coming in. Whereas the away lot, they’re my favourites, because I think that they’ve made it more about a state of mind, as opposed to a state of the football team. And I think that, as long as you’re going away and enjoying the trip, I’m not saying that football is, you know, an incidental, but I think that they will continue to support the team.
Johnny gives his take on it.
JONNY OWEN: For many years Wales did not qualify for anything, but we didn’t care. We are away with Wales and that’s alright. I think the reason why we developed such distinctive supporters is their character, their personality, was because we didn’t qualify in those years. Because we were like a petri dish on our own and we developed this amazing culture, where you look different. The bucket hats and spirit of 58. So we arrived in 2016 in this amazingly perfectly formed way. And the world’s media went, ‘Who the fuck are these? What is this?’ The Red Wall. And the way we were. And our humour. And the way we went to cities. And, you know, the Tartan Army did this. And Ireland did it. We defined ourselves as being something different to what England were, who dominated our media. We all know this. We were Wales. This is how we look. This is how we dress. This is how we speak. Welsh language is imprinted in us. All those things just came together almost perfectly in this perfect storm. And then this team arrived.
You know, Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey, world class footballers who wanted to play for Wales. I always think Gareth Bale’s really interesting. Ian Rush, fantastic. What a footballer, right? But he was a Liverpool player. Ryan Giggs was a Manchester United player. Gareth Bale went to the biggest fucking club in the world and said, “I prefer to play for Wales”.
How does that make you feel? He said, “I want to play for you before I want to play for Real Madrid”. I thought that was magnificent. I felt that when we arrived in 2016, we made such an impression, not just on the pitch, but off the pitch. And that’s what made me so proud.
At this point the conversation wanders off into anecdotes from the many trips away. Anyone who has been on a Wales Away trip will know that you could write a book about some of the adventures people have just travelling to these far flung places, let alone what you get up to when there. I don’t want to recall all the anecdotes from this session, partly because your battery will run out before we get to the end, but partly because all of this was being filmed and I’m sure Alternative wales will be doing something with it – I don’t want to spoil it – but I will share one Ellis moment with you.
ELLIS JAMES: Prior to Cyprus away, which was one of the last away games before Euro 2016, I was at the BBC and I’m on a list as a Wales fan. And someone from the Today Programme tweeted me and said, “Do you fancy coming on to the show today to discuss the tournament?” And I replied, because I had a drink. “I can’t, I’ll be shitfaced unfortunately”.
And my friend Michael, who’s a comic, retweeted that. And unbeknownst to me, James Corden followed Michael and found it funny and retweeted it.
I was too tight to pay for data roaming. I had no idea this was going viral.
The Independent wrote a piece on it. The Australian media covered it. I think it’s called Deadspin, which is an American media sports website covered it.
The comments under that are hilarious because all the Americans thought that I was a player. “This is absolutely disgraceful. The guy’s a professional footballer. What’s he doing? Getting shitfaced before a game.” As if I was just going to turn up pissed in Cyprus. Yeah, I’ll play.
Ellis James – Not shitfaced
And that’s all part of this indefinable thing called Wales Away. None of us takes anything too seriously (even the media). We are no strangers to defeat, so don’t get too upset. We dont go on the rampage throwing plastic chairs about when we lose. We just put it down to experience and look on the map to find out where the hell the next trip is.
Before we get to the end of side two of this year we will have visited Belgium (yet again – yawn), Lichtenstein (a country twenty-five kilometres long and a population of thirty-nine thousand, that’s one tenth the population of Cardiff) and Kazakhstan (the ninth largest country on the planet, spanning two continents – a nine hour direct flight away).
And wherever we go, you can guarantee Spirit of 58 will be in evidence and Alternative Wales will be there to document it – slightly more professionally than Peppermint Iguana. Just like Ellis, we will probably be shitfaced.
