A football shirt with a soul

Worried that football is being moulded into a sportswashing circus with the pursuit of maximum profit for a tiny moneyed elite as its ultimate goal? Solace can be found at the very bottom of the English professional game, in the shape of Newport County.

The Welsh team finished 22nd in League Two last season, the lowest possible position you can attain without being relegated to non-league football. Undaunted, they’ve just collaborated with Athletic Bilbao, who finished fourth last season in Spain’s La Liga, to release a new red and white striped away shirt that celebrates Newport’s heritage, community values, and a little known connection to the Spanish civil war, whilst also manages to illuminate the plight of the modern refugee and the children of Gaza.

In 1937, when the residents of Bilbao were being systematically bombed by Franco, 4000 Basque refugee children known as “niños vascos” were sent off to the UK. Over 200 made it to the safety of Wales, and 56 of them were taken into Cambria House in the Caerleon district of Newport under the care of Maria Fernandez, a Spanish woman whose Basque father had moved to Wales to ply his trade as a miner.

Football was a key element of the refugees’ integration into the community. The children formed a team of 11-15-year-olds called Basque Boys AFC who played a series of exhibition games across Wales, picking up press attention along the way. In 1939, they beat top Welsh schools team Moorland Road in front of thousands of spectators at Cardiff City’s Ninian Park. After the war, the players returned to the Basque country and goalkeeper Enrique Garatea went on to play for Atlético Madrid and Tenerife.

Newport County owner Huw Jenkins famously took Swansea from the bottom of the fourth tier to the Premier League, a League Cup final win and European football not too long ago and hopes to repeat that kind of success at Rodney Park. But it’s a fan, Neal Heard, who has originated this project.

Heard is a lifelong County supporter and now the club’s ‘creative director’. He also happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on training shoes and football shirts, having published definitive books on each. He’s been a consultant for leading sportswear brands and recently created highly sought-after limited edition shirts using Jamaican artists to promote Rizla through his own label Lovers FC.

Heard now turned his attention to his own club with a beautifully shot video telling the story of the children and the shirt and the connection between the clubs which is currently accumulating views on YouTube. I had it sent to me last Friday by a friend in Japan when there were only 19 views, and within a few hours, the count was in the thousands.

“We’ve created the new away shirt in the Bilbao colours to highlight this story and the connection between the communities,” explains Heard. “All 56 of the children who came to Newport have their names worked into the red stripes and there’s a tag explaining the story inside the back collar.

“It’s not just a historical account though, there are still contemporary connections. One of the people who features in the video is Stephen Benavente, the son of Andreas Benavente, who stayed after the war because his own father had been killed by a firing squad and his mother had died in the conflict too.

“Andreas’ name appears on the shirt next to the name of the man who fostered him in Wales, named Mr Gibbons. It’s Stephen who does the narration on the video too.”

Newport currently hold the Guinness World Record for the longest goal ever scored after a wind-assisted goal kick by Tom King found the opposition net in 2021, but the club haven’t been leading anything football-wise for quite a long time. The Children of 37 shirt, however, places them very much at the forefront of football with a conscience.