Portugal here we come
Corks a-poppin' for historic win
Make no mistake, we should have blimmin' won this one 8-0.
Bellamy missed three, Davies two, Matt Jones forced two excellent saves from the Belarus goalie, and Pembridge, Speed and Robinson came close. We had more, and better, chances than in the whole of the previous nine games.
A fittingly surreal end to the campaign. Many thanks to the players who turned it on so brilliantly when it didn't matter even half an iota. I've just worked out that if we'd hung on to all our leads we'd have topped the group and would be on course to beat England 10-0 in a semi-final showdown in Shizuoga.
But if Ryndyuk had scored to level the match at 1-1 when we should have been seven goals clear, I swear that after all the incredible misses of the last 13 months by bloody Giggs, bloody Bellamy, bloody Roberts and bloody all the rest of 'em, I would have committed suicide. I would've tied my flag rope round my neck and jumped off the front of the singing section. Thanks PaulJones for saving my life.
That life-threatening moment apart, I reckon this was the best performance since we beat the Belgians in '93 - better than the win over Belarus in Cardiff in '98 because they played well then.
This time we could only watch in disbelief, wondering why we couldn't have played 10% as well as this in Minsk last year when we all trooped out of the Olympic Stadium thinking: "Could the Hughes reign be as bad as Bobby Ghoul?"
Most of the 12,000 fans turned up with heavy hearts and light wallets. Some of us have done 15,000 miles and spent maybe £3,000 on watching the ten games. It was like going to a family wedding knowing you're going to sit next to mad Aunty Aggie at the reception in the Methodist Church Hall youhate cos that's where you spent your Tuesday nights, cursing the day your parents press-ganged you into going to Cubs.
But what a salvation lay in store, eh?
Wales played champagne football.
Bet that sentence has never adorned the English language before. It gets a paragraph of its own. Relish it. Say it out loud. Wales played champagne football. Read it again. Backwards, now. Football - champagne -played - Wales. Champagne played Wales football. In Welsh - Chwaraeodd Cymru pel-droed champagne. Not so good in Welsh is it?
One last time then. Wales played champagne football. You read it here first. Chances are you'll never see that sentence again for the rest of your life.
That wasn't the only shock. Then
there was 'Paul Jones makes just one save shock'. And 'Gary Speed
has a good game shock'. Speed has played 60-odd games for us and
I can't remember any good ones. I think he's only the team to
give the ladies something to look at. Needless to say my better
half demanded to know who he was when I forced her to watch the
TV highlights. But there he was spraying the ball round like he
was Ronald Koeman and
Hartson was Marco van Basten. Wonders never cease.
As ever, the players were not half as marvellous as the fans. According to Porthmadog's Tommie Collins, who saw the game ponce class (in a box): "Singing section was effin' shoot."
Oh no it wasn't. We were champagne supporters. Sparkling, full of fizz and getting up the noses of all the jealous, quiet ones in the boxes.
Spurred on by the gang who beat the skin of a timpani drum, literally, to bits, this was another gargantuan effort to rival the heroics of the away fans who've braved rain (Minsk, Kiev, Yerevan), spitting teenagers (Norway), nasty, staring army conscripts in Bolshevik revolution greatcoats (everywhere in Eastern Europe) and more rain to sing their silly songs.
What's more there were no nasty, staring, pernickety, tie-yer-shoelaces-up-sunbeam-or-you're-outta-here stewards either. They must have been sacked or they were at the Newport v Toulouse game (well done the Black and Ambers, ra, ra, ra).
So, at the seventh time of asking, we finally enjoyed watching a Wales game at the Millstone, sorry, Millstad. To quote M** B**** : "I was there."
It was all too much. I went back to my mum's, watched the telly (my better half stomped off to bed after she'd seen the Gary Speed interview and I stayed up to listen to Mark Aizlewood) and then had the sweetest dreams of my life.
Hold on tight your blow-up daffodils, Caroline Street 'alf an 'alfs and Brains Dark, cos we're going places.
Highlight:
Living in the ugly, soulless, urban desert of fiendishly boring
Luton (worse than Cwmbran it is, honest), the only joy was seeing
the Hatters play. Seriously. In my humble opinion Hartson was
a class act even before he left for Arsenal and everyone I mentioned
this to at the time gave me a funny look before backing away to
the nearest door while maintaining eye contact. He should have
been first choice for us from 1995 onwards.
So when Simon Davies curled that delicious cross in for him to head home, Ilike to think that Hartson while flexing that bull-neck to beautifully bury his bullet header was also, in some faraway parallel universe where wrongs are righted and vengeance is visited upon miscreants, headbutting Bobby Ghoul at the same time.
Lowlight:
Reading the Wales on Sunday, FAW boss David Collins says we've
lost money on staging the five matches at the Millstone. Despite
what must one of the best average attendances in Welsh history
(I make it 34,450 over five games - which is 5,000 higher than
Italy's average incidentally), all the swag's gone down the Swannee.
Blimey.
I'm not suggesting the FAW has mis-spent it or anything but I find it curious. Roughly 170,000 people saw the five games. Tenner a head (and lots at £5 in kiddie section) raises at least £1m. How come the campaign cost that much? If anyone can enlighten me, or tell me how much the FAW pays per game to rent the Millstone, please email me.
Fan of the day:
Marsupial man and City fan Jim Welch who now lives in Duckbilledplatypusville
returned to the Holy Land with a Welsh dragon flag emblazoned
with 'Australian Bluebirds'. Top effort.
Best player:
Simon Davies. Are there two Simon Davieses? The universal verdict
on his performance for the under-21s in Armenia was: "What
the hell does anyone see in him?" Six months later he's showing
up Ryan Giggs. Somewhere in between these two extremes lies the
answer why the under-21s haven't won a game since dinosaurs ruled
the earth. Quite clearly a proportion of the under-21 cannot be
arsed (bet that's come as a surprise to you) to get out of second
gear. So not all the burden Jimmy shoulders is down to the much-maligned
coach.
adecolley@hotmail.com
PS If you think it's all over you're woefully mistaken. Come back next week for a round-up. A picture gallery will also be going up. Bribes accepted to ensure incriminating pix of you do not enter cyberspace.