Bucket hats are everywhere in Wales. Not just in the crowd when the national football team play – where they are practically uniform – but on schoolyards, city centre squares in statue form and even in hardware shops, hanging incongruously above paint pots and tools.
The distinctive red, yellow and green colours are an emblem of a footballing nation in the midst of its most glorious era; the hats’ ubiquity reflect the team’s unprecedented success.
But it was not always this way. Far from it.
In…
