Professor Laura McAllister, the new chair of the Sports Council for Wales (SCW), has announced her ambition to place sport at the centre of Welsh culture in the coming years.

It is just one of a number of aims that McAllister is hoping to achieve after taking up the position at the organisation - soon to be renamed as Sport Wales - at the start of the month. Among McAllister's other ambitions is to ensure that every Welsh child is given the chance to become "hooked" on sport and identifying untapped talent through encouraging more volunteers to help their local team.

McAllister said: "We don't always appreciate sport's wider contribution - how sport can foster national pride and a feel good factor or bring about social cohesion to communities, for example. "Sport - which is accessible to all, whatever age or ability - has a unique ability to deliver on the government's One Wales agenda and this is something that we will be pressing over the next 12 months."