Cardiff City star Dylan Lawlor opens up on Wales debut and dream start to League One life

2025 has been a whirlwind for Dylan Lawlor, the 19-year-old Caerphilly-born centre-half who has already made a name for himself for both club and country well ahead of schedule.

Lawlor only made his senior debut at the end of February when Cardiff City faced Aston Villa in the FA Cup. Fast forward seven months and he is both an integral part of the formidable defence that has seen a new-look, youthful Cardiff team ascend to the League One summit and a full Wales international.

Lawlor's meteoric rise was capped last week in Astana, where he produced a man-of-the-match performance to make his Wales debut one to remember in the 1-0 win over Kazakhstan. His stellar showing for the national team followed starts in all six of Cardiff's League One games - but Lawlor is honest enough to admit that his meteoric rise may not have happened at all had a mooted loan switch to Aldershot not fallen through in January due to a small niggle.

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"You can't predict these things; that's football," the EFL's newly minted Young Player of the Month for August said. "I'm just enjoying it and taking it all in my stride."

Lawlor spent his childhood mimicking wonderstrikes from Wayne Rooney rather than studying the centre halves of Cardiff City past, not that you'd be able to tell. The Bluebirds have conceded just the solitary goal - a penalty - in their first six league games and are the division's only unbeaten team with Lawlor, a mainstay in their youthful defence, earning recognition for his own fine displays.

By his own admission, Lawlor does not boast the attributes you'd expect of a typical League One defender. While he may be more cultured than commanding, the resourceful Lawlor has worked out his own way to outfox the division's best penalty box predators without becoming embroiled in the physical warfare that others crave.

"You're playing against players with bigger profiles and stuff like that," Lawlor explains when he's asked what his challenge in the senior ranks has been to date. "That's definitely something I'm trying to come to terms with, the physicality. I'm trying to change the way I'm playing because I'm not as big as some of the strikers we're coming up against. So it's about adapting and using my strengths to beat them.

"I'm not a 6'5 defender who just heads it and kicks it like probably your old school ones. So it's about using my agility and my speed to beat them in that way rather than getting into a physical battle with them."

Whatever the formula, Lawlor has struck gold. His emergence is the latest success story for an academy which has a proven track record of striking gold in the player development sphere: a facet of the club which has helped ease the sting of relegation as they negotiate their first campaign back in the third tier time since 2003.

Lawlor, who joined the club as a seven-year-old, is a shining example of how the club have entrusted their homegrown talent to lead the renaissance under the tutelage of their new head coach, Brian Barry-Murphy. The Irishman was brought in to lead a cultural reset centred around the club's next generation and the early results are encouraging: Ronan Kpakio, Joel Colwill and Cian Ashford are some of the academy products who have caught the eye alongside Lawlor for the high-flying Bluebirds in the opening weeks of the campaign.

The ultimate aim for Barry-Murphy and Cardiff is for their foray into League One to be a fleeting one. Grander clubs have used the pain of relegation to rebuild stronger and the green shoots of recovery are already starting to show in the Welsh capital.

"It's obviously a big negative to be relegated, but I think it's becoming a bit of a positive," Lawlor adds. "Even though we've been relegated, I think there's an even bigger buzz about being an academy player. When I was coming through [the age ranks], there weren't as many players breaking into the first team as there are now, even though the academy and the development has always been really good.

"We're seeing the rewards of that now with so many academy boys in the first team. I think the positivity and the change of mindset that [Barry-Murphy] has brought in has been the biggest thing. His tactical view and the way he sees the game is obviously unbelievable and you can see that on the pitch, but I think if you look at it off the pitch and the environment he's made, it's unreal."

Cardiff are not alone in leaning on their academy following relegation; it's a formula others have adopted with exemplary results in the past. Last season, academy-developed players across the EFL made 265 professional debuts and played more than 244,000 minutes. Charlton Athletic, who won promotion to the Championship via the play-offs last term, consistently fielded an average of two academy graduates per 90 minutes during their successful campaign.

Lawlor, who played regularly with the likes of Ashford, Colwill and Kpakio across different academy age groups, added: "It's great to be able to play with your friends. When you see familiar faces and people you've played with for years, it makes stepping into that environment a lot easier, even though [our] environment anyway is quite positive."

The reward of a new three-year contract was sandwiched between Lawlor's fine start to the domestic campaign and his call-up to the Wales squad. Drafted into Craig Bellamy's team following withdrawals, Lawlor ended the night in Kazakhstan with a a 97.6 per cent pass accuracy rate and the most clearances - five - of any Wales player.

His showing merited special praise from Bellamy post-match while Ashley Williams, a former Wales captain who starred at centre-back for his country for almost a decade, has already tipped Lawlor to become a fixture in the national team.

Don't expect Lawlor to get ideas above his station, though. The youngster, who admits it was "surreal" to play alongside Ben Davies after watching him play at Euro 2016 in his youth, is grounded and knows the real challenge now lies ahead, even if he does allow himself a moment to revel in the fact that he is now on the other side of the line after years of attending Wales games with his family.

That goes for Cardiff, too. Nobody wins the league in September, but confidence is high.

"Making your debut for the national team is just what you dream of," says Lawlor when he's asked to nail down a highlight of his big 2025 so far. "For me now I've just got to keep my head down and keep working. On a personal level [the goal is] just playing as many games as I can this season and whatever comes from that will come.

"On a team level, it's about keeping this momentum up and demanding more of each other to ensure our performances are still there moving forward."

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