The Welsh Rugby Union has taken the unprecedented step of banning Sir Tom Jones’s hit ‘Delilah’ from the choirs’ repertoire at the Principality Stadium.
Telegraph Sport understands that the Welsh rugby anthem, which centres around a jealous lover stabbing his unfaithful partner, will not be performed in Cardiff during the upcoming Six Nations. It comes after allegations of sexism, racism and misogyny within the WRU came to light in a BBC investigation last week. Wales face Ireland and England at home in rounds one and three respectively, alongside trips to Rome, Edinburgh and Paris.
Earlier this week, footage emerged on ITV News of the Guernsey Welsh male voice choir rehearsing ‘Delilah’ ahead of their appearance at Wales’s hosting of England on February 25 but, after a week in which the WRU has answer questions about a toxic culture within its organisation, Telegraph Sport understands that officials were spooked by the footage and this week instructed their enlisted choirs to not perform the ballad at the two upcoming matches in Cardiff, having consulted with anti-domestic violence charities in the past.
Last weekend, Steve Phillips resigned as WRU chief executive with Nigel Walker taking interim charge with immediate effect. Chairman and Wales legend Ieuan Evans remains in post and has promised that an external taskforce will investigate the allegations surrounding a toxic culture within Welsh rugby’s governing body.
The WRU had already prohibited ‘Delilah’, which reached No 2 in the British charts in March 1968, from being played over the Principality Stadium public address system for a number of years due to the song’s subject matter, but the hit remains popular with Cardiff crowds, and had historically been performed and played in the build-up to kick-offs. Despite the move to restrict the ballad’s airtime during rugby fixtures, Jones performed the song at a concert in the Principality Stadium in the summer of 2022.
This is not the first time that the song has courted controversy. There were calls to ban ‘Delilah’ in 2014 and 2016, with former Plaid Cymru president Dafydd Iwan saying the karaoke classic should be outlawed because it depicts the brutal revenge killing of a woman. Both Jones and the WRU defended the song’s usage at the time.
“It’s not political, it’s about a man just losing it, ” the 74-year-old said. “I love to hear it sung… it makes me very proud to be Welsh.
“The great thing about the song I think that everyone picks up on is the chorus, I don’t think that they are really thinking about it.
“I wasn’t thinking that I was the man that was killing the girl when I was singing the song, I was acting out the part and that’s what the song is.
“If it’s a going to be taken literally like that then I think it takes the fun out of it, I think it takes the spirit out why it’s being sung.”
The WRU added in 2014: “Within rugby, Delilah has gained prominence through its musicality rather than because of its lyrics.
“There is however plenty of precedent in art and literature, prominently in Shakespearean tragedies for instance, for negative aspects of life to be portrayed.”
As well as its association with Welsh rugby, fans of football club Stoke City have sung Jones’s classic since the Eighties.
In 2020, the Rugby Football Union resisted calls to ban ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ from Twickenham after reviewing whether the song, with origins in American slavery, was appropriate as part of a wide-ranging and extensive review into its diversity and inclusion programme.
England’s governing body concluded that the ballad had “a long-held place in rugby history” and that the union would “proactively educate fans on the history and provenance of the song as well as providing platforms for diverse voices across the game”.
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