Two years of 'the Welshman'

Nathan Jones has completed two years as Charlton manager and has talked to Richard Cawley.

Asked if there was one part of the job that had given him most satisfaction during his Addicks reign, he replied: “There isn’t one particular aspect. When you come in as a manager and not as a head coach, what we wanted to do was drive the club forward. Not one man can do that - maybe they needed a catalyst and maybe I was the catalyst for that.

“We’ve got a lot of good people. We’ve got owners that are sane and make sane decisions - not kneejerk and back you to a relative level that we’re all comfortable with.”

There is more on Cawley’s Substack page.   For some fans the fact that Jones is still in the job will be a matter for regret, others think it is the sensible decision in the circumstances.

What intrigues me is that Cawley always refers to Jones as ‘the Welshman’.   My nephew’s partner always refers to him as ‘the Welshman’, ‘when I met the Welshman’ etc.

Of course when Curbs was manager some fans were suspicious of the fact that he came from ‘north of the river’.  In fact when my father was born in Lord Street, North Woolwich in 1908 it was part of Kent and the borough of Woolwich.

Are Welshmen that exotic?   One of my granddaughters recently applied for a backroom job with Swansea City, having never previously experienced any interest in sport of any kind.   In fact she had discovered her inner Welsh woman and soon landed a position as financial controller with an Abertawe firm of solicitors.

This was all in spite of her not speaking a word of Cymraeg.   It is a difficult language and one you have to learn while you are young.  My soon to be three great-grand daughter is taught in Valencios (Catalan) in school; speaks passable Dutch acquired from the local expat community, but reverts to English with a Spanish sentence structure at home.

Meanwhile my granddaughter is bidding on a modernised detached double fronted cottage with garden at £170k while her cousin is faced with paying £360k for a shoebox in Oxfordshire.  Actually their Spanish-based cousin has outpaced them as she got her first mortgage in England at 19 and has bought a three bedroom apartment for 125,000 euros.

But to return to my main theme, how useful is a knowledge of Welsh?   A couple of years back I did some consultancy for a client in Swansea.  They were happy with what I did and wanted me to do more, but no money was forthcoming.   I then had the idea of getting one of my nephews whose first language is Welsh to write an email and I got paid in 24 hours.

I have been summoned to give evidence to Senedd committees on a couple of occasions and the first time there was a great deal of tut tutting when it was discovered that I didn’t speak Welsh and an urgent call was put out for a translator.   In fact on both occasions all the questions I was asked were in English, but my fellow witness, a rural solicitor, insisted on speaking Welsh.

To revert to our manager, his mercurial qualities are a marked contrast with the cooler style of Cutbs.   Some fans like the manager to be passionate; others prefer a more analytical approach. How much it has to do with nationality is a moot point.