Michael Grimes visited all 12 clubs in the top-flight during the 2019/20 and his discovery of Welsh football is chronicled in a book, available to order here.
During the past year of, mainly, closed-door football I've taken a closer eye on the televised offerings from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland's Championship and made a mental note to travel to some of the more interesting grounds, The Oval in Belfast, Cappielow in Morton and The Rock, home of Cefn Druids, among others.
The Welsh Premier League as a whole has always fared well in surveys of affordability, something Michael confirmed when he was kind enough to answer a few questions from me earlier this week.
I also asked him how the idea for the book came about;
'I knew nothing about the WPL, it was as a result of a conversation I had with the editor of Football Weekends magazine, where by he asked me to cover some Welsh teams. I did 3 in a long weekend, then decided to do the whole 12 WPL clubs.'
That first weekend was clearly a productive trip, leading to 'From Saints to Druids' and a warm welcome on his travels for the author.
As an aside, the current April issue of Football Weekends has a nice piece on a recent trip, made by one of its contributors, to a couple of Highland League grounds.
As for a favourite ground amongst the 12 in Wales that he visited, Michael told me;
'Probably Newtown, the ground has an old school charm about it, probably helped by the fact that it wasn't raining...a lot of rain on my trips!'
For coverage of the top divisions in men's and women's football, Cymru Football has plenty of news and stats..
Below the top level it has been a very difficult year for the game in Wales, without even the intermittment action that managed to sustain grassroots followers in England, but hopefully clubs have been able to weather the storm as much as possible and are looking forward to the 2021/22 season.
Y Clwb Pel-droed is an excellent website that covers all aspects of the game.
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