Ramadanadingdong
Under 21 International - Azerbaijan 0 Wales 1
Typical Wales. You witness a historic moment, wished for by an entire nation for nearly six years. Then, having watched what could be the Dawn of a New Era, you wish you hadn't wasted a single minute on attending a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible (that's four terribles) match. We should have gone ten-pin bowling instead.
History or no history, it was awful - as one fan said: "This is for European under-21 Wooden Spoon."
After watching the game no-one could quibble with that. For Cardiff fans this rivalled the infamous 0-0 at Northampton where the half-time entertainment consisted of a man dressed in a pink pig suit riding a motorbike down the touchline. With gusto, it has to be admitted, but it was not very entertaining. And the game was even worse.
We were bad, they were atrocious. The pitch was good - no patches of dirt or oil derricks. The passing was awful and there was far too much fannying around with the defences neatly distributing the ball to each other and not wanting the reponsibility of trying to be creative.
But that's enough whingeing. You already know the main positive. The others, briefly, were Adam Birchall, David Pipe and Kevin Gall, who were splendid. Birchall's touch is exquisite and he set up the goal by mesmerising a centre-half near the byline and cutting the ball inside for Gall to slot home.
Quite similar to the way Birchall set up the goal against Italy last month. Nice pass, mate takes a good swing at the ball and bang it's in the net.
The goal was met with muted joy by some of us. We felt mild guilt at slagging the game off so heartily seconds earlier that we had started running the risk of getting morose and couldn't bring ourselves to get too steamed up.
There was also relief and a dose of confidence, as the goal assured victory. Our hosts had already missed several good chances by this time and it was clear they weren't going to get many better ones.
We nearly got a second. Someone, nobody knows who but it was probably one of our players, hit the bar with a piledriver - it ricocheted back. When we saw cetnre-half Rhys Day bearing down with only the goalie to beat, we knew he'd miss. His first touch was appalling and he then had to stretch to toe-poke an effort which sailed over the bar in the general direction of the belching chimneys behind the goal.
We didn't deserve to win but then we didn't deserve to lose the last two. This side saved their worst performance for the game they won. Somewhere in there is the lesson of why we went 26 games without victory.
It's been unfair that a record earned by the efforts of others has hung like an albatross round this side. This game apart, they've played well, with real zest and fire. And they were chuffed to bits at the end, coming over to salute the stupid morons (us) who turned up to see them change history.
Well done lads. We've worked out the next victory is scheduled for May 2008. See you there.
Best Player:
Arsenal's Birchall.
Best Moment:
Dylan Llewellyn, that
presenter bloke off S4C's Sgorio, posing for Daily Post pictures
at the front of the stand, getting the full blast of "Who
ate all the pies?" for the duration of his modelling assignment.
adecolley@hotmail.com