Merthyr Town manager Gavin Williams is working hard to build a competitive squad for the 2020-21 BetVictor Southern Premier League season. Williams has one of the lowest team budgets at Merthyr’s level, but he has recruited a group he believes will push towards the play-offs. Former Cardiff City youth striker Eli Phipps is among Merthyr’s new signings and he says: “I can’t wait to get started, it’s been a long time coming after the past couple of months. 

Matthew Jones was a Premier League teenager with the world at his feet. He packed a lot into six years, but a career-ending back injury brought desperation, depression, uncertainty, but finally fulfilment through coaching. Newly appointed in charge of Wales U18s, he tells Owen Morgan about growing up, growing wise, and a growing reputation. Matthew Jones was being touted as a future Welsh football captain from the time he first ran on a field. The exciting Llanelli prospect had skippered his country at every age group up to senior level.

Wales captain Sophie Ingle became a title winner for the first time this season when the truncated Women’s Super League was won by her Chelsea team. The occasion may have been muted, but for Ingle it was a triumphant end to a journey that began as a six-year-old with Vale Wanderers, as she tells Graham Thomas. Wales captain Sophie Ingle says the grass roots club that nurtured her talent played a big part in helping her become a champion. The Chelsea centre-back celebrated her first FA Women’s Super League title earlier this month when the season was brought to a premature end due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ryan Giggs has said he wants Wales to try and play in a similar style to runaway Premier League leaders Liverpool when international football resumes. The Wales manager has been forced to revise all his plans for 2020 with the postponement of the European Championship finals and the scrapping of all his team’s warm-up fixtures for the tournament. But with football due to return behind closed doors on June 17, Giggs is turning his attention to the lead-in to next summer and the evolving playing style he would like his young team to develop.

Dean Saunders was good enough for Wales, Liverpool, Aston Villa and Galatasaray. But 35 years ago this week, the striker who eventually scored 255 club career goals was dumped by Cardiff City after just four matches. Terry Phillips counts the cost of a missed opportunity. Dean Saunders failed to impress with Cardiff City under Alan Durban and left the Bluebirds after only four appearances. The Swansea-born hitman was on his way out at his home town club at the age of just 20. It was 1985 and Cardiff manager Durban could have had signed the striker for a very small fee.

I know there may not be many alternatives at the moment, but there’s only one place I’m going to be this Saturday afternoon at 1.15pm. The family have been told the television is booked and the beer is chilling in readiness for an afternoon’s entertainment I am going to thoroughly enjoy. The latest in BBC Wales’ classic sporting re-runs is Wales’ Home International Championship match against Scotland in 1979 – one of my all time favourite sporting encounters.

Gwennan Harries was hoping for trips to Baku and Rome this summer, like so many others looking forward to the Euro 2020 finals. Instead, she will have to settle for recent memories being jogged by S4C this weekend – a night when the whistle blew and the touchline dancing began, as she tells Graham Thomas. It may take her another year, but Gwennan Harries is still looking forward to jigging on the touchline when Wales take their place at Euro 2020. In fact, the former Wales, Everton, Cardiff City and Bristol Academy striker believes there could be even more reason to dance with delight when the delayed finals eventually get going in 12 months’ time.

Ben Cabango was in the middle of a stunning debut season for Swansea City before the lockdown came. Now, the teenager has a new challenge – sticking to a strange new routine that he hopes will keep him on course for a future international breakthrough with Wales, as he told Graham Thomas. Routine and rewards are the ways ahead through the lockdown, suggests Swansea City defender Ben Cabango. The 19-year-old – who has won rave reviews in his breakthrough season for the club – admits life at home when the football season shut down took some getting used to.

There’s an anniversary looming . . . and not just 10 weeks since we last saw any football. A significant milestone waits just ahead for those who spent many memorable afternoons and evenings at Swansea’s Vetch Field, such as Owen Morgan. When I read on Twitter the other day that it’s 15 years since Swansea City played their last league match at Vetch Field, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I know most of us are struggling to know what day of the week it is and just how long we’ve now been in lockdown, but FIFTEEN years since Adrian Forbes scored the winner against Shrewsbury.

Connor Roberts has swapped building attacks for Swansea City and Wales to making bookshelves and bird boxes in his garage. The 24-year-old full-back is filling in extra time in his daily schedule during lockdown by turning his hand to his favourite hobby – carpentry. Instead of watching re-runs of old football matches, Roberts has been glued to shows like The Repair Shop, Homes Under The Hammer and Escape to the Chateau DIY.

Leighton James played against Norman Hunter throughout the 1970s – both for club and country – and insists the former England and Leeds United defender, who died this week, was far more than just a hard man, as he told Graham Thomas. Leighton James can still recall the tackles, the shoves, the pushes and the clatter of bone-on-bone whenever he played against Norman Hunter. But the supremely canny former Wales winger has a more painful memory of damage inflicted by Hunter in January 1973 when Wales played England at Wembley in a key qualification tie for the 1974 World Cup.

Not many Welsh footballers, men or women, win a European football trophy. There are fewer than 30 in total, but the first of them was Ollie Burton. Josh Thomas met the man who led the way with a winners’ medal for Newcastle United back in 1969. It meant everything,” says 78-year-old Ollie Burton, recalling being one of only 28 Welsh players in both the men’s and women’s game to have played in the final of a European club competition. Last year marked the 50th anniversary of Newcastle United’s victory over Hungarian side Újpesti Dózsa in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, which was the Magpies’ last domestic honour.