IN FEBRUARY 2000 the Welsh football team was a shellshocked shitshow that would have given Michael Sheen shingles.

Wales were stranded in a seemingly permanent existential crisis, marooned in terms of self-regard and status – people openly scorned fans as being idiots for going to, say, Moldova, which they had hitherto thought was some type of cheese.

What on earth was the point of the team, ignored at home, ever patronised by the neighbours?  

Welsh football was a dessicated, shrivelled apology of a sport. As if to prove the point, the Football Association of Wales fixed up a match in Qatar. The desert. Perhaps they sensed we were already there, so why not?

As a metaphor for the then deathless, arid state of the sport in Wales, Qatar could not have been a better choice. No one knew where it was and even if you looked it up on the map you had a hard time spotting it.

At least nobody could watch this one. Except, of course, 17 of us had to go. We had nothing else to do.

After all, it was only 3,822 miles away.

Bobby Gould era

It was Mark Hughes’s chance to put a, ahem, mark on his squad. Set the tone, adopt his sombre, undertaker demeanour, his patent seriousness of purpose. Set in motion the mechanism by which we could come up with a decent campaign or two.

He’d succeeded Bobby Gould the previous year after a 4-0 drubbing in Bologna. The 400 or so Welsh fans not only had to witness yet another thrashing, we were kept in the ground by Italian police for an hour after.

So when a couple met a primped-up, glossy-haired footballer-turned-fashion model Robbie Savage as he minced through the city on the street at about midnight, and were told that thankfully, mercifully, and about bloody time, gobby Bobby had put a sock in it and cleared off, there was at least something to celebrate.

Mr Gould came to power in 1995 and had four years in the job. There were good results – a 2-1 win in Denmark when Paul Jones matched Wayne Hennessey’s heroics against Ukraine in the play-offs; a 3-2 win at home days later against Belarus, one of the best internationals I’ve ever seen; a fabulous performance in a 2-1 loss at the Arms Park in 1995 against Germany in which Ryan Giggs terrorised the Germs, who went on to win Euro 1996.

He integrated some journeyman types into the team – a certain Robert Page comes to mind, who turned out to be his best find. That’s turned out quite well hasn’t it? He was at Watford, who were even more unfashionable then than now. Barnsley’s Darren Barnard had a tremendous career in a Wales shirt. Peach of a left foot.

The manager oversaw lots of debits too. Any gimmick was a good gimmick.

He pronounced Vinnie Jones skipper – after counting all the players’ votes in an ‘election’ – for the 7-1 defeat in Eindhoven. That was actually a good result for us – had we lost 15-1, nobody would have quibbled, as Neville Southall performed miracles.

Gobby was a one. After one Wales press conference he was having a chat with reporters Mark Bloom and Robert Phillips, when he turned his back to put something over his head. He turned back to face the nonplussed pair wearing a Max Wall mask and said; “You’ve gotta have laugh sometimes, haven’t you boys?”

On reflection, he was so eccentric he should have been up with us weirdos on the terrace, not running the shop. Gobby – founder member of Y Max Wall Goch in honour of the music hall comedian!

Listing further footballing debacles will leave me close to tears and unable to contemplate life, so you might want to delve into the Wikipedia results archive for more, having taken some ibuprofen. Or ask someone who watched Wales a lot in the late 90s, step back and watch them spontaneously combust.

It’s easy to put all the blame on the manager, as most do. Sometimes players have to put their hand up, although they were reluctant to front up, and Mr Gould certainly provided convenient cover.

Once Gobby’d gone, some finally had the temerity, rather late in the day it has to be said, to tell it like it was. Like we hadn’t already worked it out.

Paul Abbandonato got his claws into Nathan Blake, who vomited it all up:

But it wasn’t all Gould’s fault. Under Mike Smith in 1994, in a hotel lift in Chisinau, Gary Speed got into the lift, puffed his cheeks out and said to fans: “It’s like playing in a pub team.” We lost that one 3-2.

If it looks like a pub team, it’s a pub team. If it smells like a pub team, it’s a pub team. If the players say you’re a pub team, you’re a pub team.

Six years later the Welsh pub team, featuring the best pub team player ever – Ryan Giggs – was still proudly desecrating the international pub league with a series of underperformances that nobody ever really analysed (this is the real difference between football 25 years ago and now – the intense scrutiny of today was only brought to bear on that lot from the other side of the Dyke).

Some of whom had played for Man United. Some pub team!

And don’t think that the travelling, er, horde of 17 idiots really gave much of a monkey’s. Not like people do nowadays. We didn’t go for the football. If we had, we wouldn’t have gone to Qatar.

So we got on the plane . . .

Qatar

QATAR is the sort of place that should boil your snot.

Bet you didn’t know that.

In February 2000, we had to go there to understand what is commonly known now. The penny has since dropped for Sepp Blatter, who regrets the choice of this year’s event.

Obtaining a visa involved a trip to Kensington where we got a snazzy looking stamp in the name of Sultan Al-Hudaifi, who was the country’s intelligence chief.

In an autocracy governed by very wealthy men in a very wealthy country, it was almost a privilege to be ushered into the country by such an eminence.

The flight with Qatar Airways took eight hours and cost £600 return.

Soon as we got there, of course, we hit the bar. Not allowed to drink by law, the locals did not go out boozing. So that westerners would come to Qatar to work, bars were provided and you had to show your passport to get in, thereby proving you were not Qatari.

A certain number of bars were dotted around Doha – generally tucked away. One was on the seventh floor of a big hotel.

To these eyes it appeared that all the menial jobs were done by south-east Asians – largely Filipinos. The professional jobs requiring degree-level education or expertise were done by westerners. The Qataris, though many obviously were working, appeared to swan around drinking tea and chatting.

“We went to a cabaret one night at one of the hotels,” says one fan, who doesn’t want to be named in case he doesn’t get into the country for the finals next week.

“It was a good floor show and afterwards the Filipinos in the show came round to ask for tips. We got talking to them and they told us about how they lived.

“They were paid but the cost of living in their rooms was taken out of their wages. By giving them tips we were able to help them – it was one of the ways they could make money.”

For its part, Qatar recently said: “We wholeheartedly reject the trivialising our genuine commitment to protect the health and safety of the 30,000 workers who built Fifa World Cup stadiums and other tournament projects. That same commitment now extends to 150,000 workers across various tournament services and 40,000 workers in the hospitality sector.”

Sheraton Hotel

The shimmering Sheraton is an architectural gem. Three years after this match, US general Stormin’ Norman used it as the base for the Allies’ 2003 war on Iraq.

Twenty two years on and I still think it’s the most amazing modern building I’ve been in.

The lifts noiselessly glided up and down the inner atrium like a Star Trek shuttle. They were glass fronted so you could survey the splendour of the majestic atrium decorations as you descended or ascended. I went up and down in them just for fun for about 15 minutes one day. Chandeliers everywhere. A string quartet of Western musicians would emerge on and off through the course of the day to play for guests – classical music as muzak: virtually no one paid them much attention. They were adornments to the Qataris’ orgy of tea drinking.

The day after the game, I sneaked into the outdoor garden bordering the sea by pretending to be among the FAW delegation. The pot of tea ordered was brought to the sun-lounger by a flunkey carefully driving a golf cart so that he didn’t spill a drop.

Iwan Pryce says: “I saw it in the news and said to Gwilym Boore ‘We going?’ He said yes, so we got on Trailfinders and booked it all. A friend got us a triple room for £20 a night (last week it was £214 a night for a single).

“When we got there some of the Football Association of Wales delegation looked a bit miffed that we were staying in the same hotel as them and the players.”

The FAW say they did all right out of the trip – ie, they made a few quid out of it. Word over there was that the FAW received £20,000. Happy to correct if anyone can oblige.

The Tuesday night, most fans’ first, was a blinder for a number of reasons (see part two).

The house Filipino band featured two girl singers and their brother on keyboards and for the most part they looked rather bored with singing the same old, same old, night after night. Given what we now know about employment in Qatar who can blame them?

Oiled up and boiling to let off steam, we were ready to celebrate something or other. Not the prospect of another friendly, that’s for sure.

The band didn’t reckon on former Welsh language rock band lead singer Rhys Boore being in the audience. Back in the late 80s/early 90s he fronted U-Thant, whose vinyl can still be found in secondhand shops if you look hard enough.

“Well, what can I say,” says Rhys. “There’s a stage, a band. Just try and stop me getting up there to sing a few. Green Green Grass of Home was sung for sure.”

Brother Gwilym was called upon to do the raffle. First prize was the Porsche which was parked downstairs in the atrium.

It was all going swimmingly well. What could possibly go wrong?

Click here for part two – http://bit.ly/3tHoRwH