Yes, I think it is likely that the fact the Welsh had a focused sentence - the words rearranged for emphasis - that was contributing to the difficulty which led to the question - simply getting the ‘ol head around the overall translation.
The challenge is of course that there is no equivalent ‘emphatic’ structure in written English…so you are left with the choice of:
…skipping over the emphasis and just writing a normal sentence - which doesn’t seem great from the translation point of view…
…having a direct translation which sounds a bit odd to the average person in English (although it sounds exactly like someone from my home town in South Wales!) by saying “The Blues, it was, the best team…” (and why is it said that way, even now?
)
…or tweak the English to create a similar emphasis - by saying: ‘It is…’, ‘it was…’, ‘it will be…’ - in the process of course dropping the ‘word for word’ aspect of the translation.
… generally the last option seems to be used …as the best compromise.
Rich 