Welsh Cup next season

Cardiff City boss Dave Jones is up for a return to the Welsh Cup, but only if there is a European spot for the winner which including the Welsh teams playing outside Wales.

The politics surround the decision the exclude the Welsh clubs and including the likes of Hereford, Chester City Shrewsbury and a few others from across the border killed the competition. It was all because the then FAW Secretary General Alun Evans believed the Welsh football was under threat from FIFA who wanted to see a team GB. He felt Wales need a strong League structure so the League of Wales was launched. In the process a civil war between the FAW and Welsh non-league teams that played over the border in England.

The FAW set up the FAW Invitation Cup which became the Premier Cup and invited the English playing league clubs plus the non-league team into the competition with the BBC Wales air games live. Without a European spot for the winners the competition saw the Football league clubs turn out weaken teams.

It's been 16-years since Cardiff was in the Welsh Cup and 18-years since winning the Cup and playing in Europe against Standard Liege.Manager Dave Jones said about the FAW plans,

"If there's a European spot then I'm sure myself and the other guys at their clubs would welcome it.

“If it is going to be as it was then it wouldn’t appeal to me personally. I haven’t spoken to the board or anything but the reason we didn’t play our strongest team in it was it wasn’t worth it to us"

“If there’s a European spot, I’m sure myself and the other guys would welcome it.

“We wouldn’t want to play in the Welsh league, definitely not. I don’t think the fans would or the hierarchy would.

“No disrespect to the Welsh football league but it is not as good as playing in the English League. That is where everyone wants to be.”

And Jones said any criticism of the move by rival clubs in the English pyramid would merely be sour grapes.

“A lot of people are always moaning that we come under the FAW sanctions. That’s not the club’s fault.

“If there’s a route for us into Europe let them moan because if was given to them you would not hear a peep out of them.

“It’s nothing to do with us as a football club it’s all about the hierarchy.

“And if we are invited into the Welsh Cup it’s because we are a Welsh team and nobody complained about it before.

“European football is part of this club’s history, you think back to when Cardiff played Real Madrid that happened because they won the Welsh Cup, nothing to do with what they’d done in the English league.

“I think it was only the Welsh that stopped it, not the English, so if nobody complained then, how can they complain now?”

Vice-president Trefor Lloyd Hughes has confirmed that the FAW would be happy to nominate any of them to represent Wales in Europe should they win.

"We think that by having them in, it would raise the profile of the Cup and would help improve the playing standard of the clubs in the Welsh Premier.

"We would put their names forward to Uefa and it would then be Uefa's decision, not the FAW's, whether or not to allow them to play in Europe."

The route to play in Europe for the winners in Welsh Cup is the Europa League. The FAW will now have to talk to the football governing bodies to discuss the plan.