This paper aims at establishing to what extent sports commentary aids in preserving the traditional counting system in Welsh. To that aim, empirical data about the usage of numerals in rugby commentaries will be collected and compared to the usage in ‘normal’ conversations, radio broadcasts, TV series. The argument seeks to support the idea that rugby as a traditional sport has a preserving effect on linguistic peculiarities of the Welsh language, in particular the counting system.

The traditional system uses the base of 20 with additional peculiarities for the numbers 11-19; e.g. 18 is literally ‘two nine’, 36 is ‘one on fifteen on twenty’ while 53 is ‘three on ten on two twenty’ or also ‘three on half hundred’. In contrast, the modern way of counting is strictly decimal with no irregularities at all, merely counting the hundreds, the tens and the rest. 11 is therefore ‘one ten one’, 12 is ‘one ten two’, 24 is ‘two ten four’, 156 is ‘hundred five ten six’ 289 is two hundred eight ten nine, etc.

In normal usage, the traditional way of counting is still used to some extent for telling the time and the date but even in these cases, the usage is in decline. In rugby commentary, however, the traditional numbers are still used in a variety of contexts, e.g. for the shirt numbers, the score, number of international appearances of a player, number of tries scored, time keeping, age of players, field position, etc.

This paper will analyse the frequency of the different numeral systems and will also attempt to find an answer to the question if there is any difference regarding the age and the provenance of the speaker.