World Cup 2022: 230,000 children sing Yma o Hyd for Wales

More than 230,000 children inside and outside Wales have taken part in a singing jamboree ahead of the World Cup.

They sang the Wales World Cup anthem Yma o Hyd together online on Thursday morning.

More than 1,000 schools joined together for the event, which was organised by the Welsh Youth Movement Urdd Gobaith Cymru.

Wales will be competing in the World Cup for the first time since 1958.

The event took place at 10:30 GMT on Zoom, and was also featured live on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru and BBC Radio Five Live.

Yma o Hyd was originally a protest song by Dafydd Iwan, but has been adopted over recent years by Wales football fans and is the official tune for the national team heading to Qatar.

A total of 230,372 children practised that song and others ahead of the Urdd Jambori Cwpan y Byd, with 1,071 English and Welsh language schools signing up to take part.

Not all were in Wales. Two London schools, Griffin Primary School and Ysgol Gymraeg Llundain, also took part.

Griffin Primary is not a Welsh-medium school but teacher Michael Downey, from Caernarfon, was keen for his pupils to learn the song.

The teacher said: "The first session was very difficult so I wrote the words out phonetically for them and by the second and third session, they were rehearsing Yma o Hyd quite easily!"

His pupils joined with Ysgol Gymraeg Llundain to record the song together.

Mr Downey was happy to see the children mixing with one another.

He said: "They had good fun with it. I was surprised how Welsh they sounded!"

As part of the event, the children received video messages from members of the Wales team, as well as First Minister Mark Drakeford to thank them for their support.

Proceedings concluded with Dafydd Iwan joining the children to sing Yma o Hyd together.

The Urdd encouraged schools to let children wear red for the day to show their support for the Wales team.

Urdd chief executive Sian Lewis said: "The Urdd have been blown away by the positive response to primary schools across Wales to Jambori Cwpan y Byd, Wales' World Cup singalong.

"By aiming high and getting behind our national team we're bringing together 230,372 children across Wales to give Cymru the send-off they deserve."

Ms Lewis said she was pleased that so many English language primary schools are taking part.

"It's exciting to see that over 600 second language primary schools have accepted our invitation to join the event."