Zagreb – where’s our breakfast Mr Mayor?

Posted on by adecolley
The crack Canadians
The crack Canadians

We’re a broad church at the Wales fans’ team. No, really.

So when three Canadian gap year types got chatting to some of our number on the train from Graz to Zagreb, they were invited to play for the team the following day.

And to our surprise they turned up for the rendezvous at 4pm on the day before the trip to Osijek. Well oiled – how did they know this was part of the deal? Adam Soil (goalie), Brian Weatherseed (blonde hair) and Rob Cooley  are travelling around Europe. In Hungary last we heard.

The trophy cabinet at the NK Zagreb training ground where the game was played

The mayor of Zagreb (still trying to find his name on the internet) kicked the match off apparently at the very plush training ground of the first division side NK Zagreb.

I didn’t know this fact otherwise I would have taken a picture of the kick-off. Just to add to the surrealism. And then he invited us all for breakfast on the day of the game.

And, even more surreal, the invitation was later rescinded for some family reason (Hmmm, isn’t that what politicians all over the world say?).

As per usual we slipped into a four-goal deficit in what seemed like seconds. And our top front man Owain from Aber was too knackered to last the first half.

Then keeper Greg hurt his leg – he’d done a half-marathon the day before. And a second keeper

Which one's the dummy?
Which one’s the dummy?

So half-time came and Adam, three days into his European holiday of a lifetime, stuck his hand up to be goalie for the second half.  He has a scary twitter nickname folks @evilsalty – go and follow him.

I like to think my half-time pep talk to the Canucks made a difference (‘Listen lads, as we say in the UK, run your bollocks off’ – they nodded as though they knew what it meant).

Man of iron and top Wales goalscorer Will Johnson took the field after running a marathon the day before in Graz (show-0ff). What’s he on? I reckon he could outlast Lance Armstrong even if Armstrong had swigged a bucketful of EPO/steroids/dopedisguiser.

Dog, left, Ton Pentre rock star Dowling, right, love a picture. @evilsalty is congratulated
Dog, left, Ton Pentre rock star Dowling, right, love a picture. @evilsalty is congratulated

And we pulled a goal back through the multi-talented Johnson, scoring for his tenth fans’ game in a row. A Gullit-esque rocket header from a corner .

And then came the highlight. Man off the S4C soap opera Rhys Hartley gave away a penalty in the box and Adam from Toronto (full of some sort of concoction) had to face it.

The Croat hit it low to the keeper’s left and well, would you Adam and Eve it?, our man danced across to save it with his left foot. The penalty taker made it to the rebound first and fired in a cannonball which ricocheted off Adam.

A double-save from a penalty. A Wales fans’ first, surely? Big Nev eat your heart out. And definitely the highlight of the game, if not the week.

We showed those pesky Croats how to take a penalty when ex-Croesyceiliog hotshot Huw made it 6-2.

We’ve had ex-international Malcolm Allen, former League of Wales players, the Doc Marten-wearing barman from the Irish pub in Graz matched up against 1978 World Cup star Hans Krankl.

But, the biggest guest, for me so far has been @evilsalty

The 1938 NK Zagreb side’s keeper wasn’t a patch on ours

Diary of a Madman

Posted on by adecolley

The fevered delusions of a man in love make for compelling theatre in this one-man show.

Well before Ozzy Osbourne used it as an album title, Russian writer Gogol wrote a short story on a clerk’s descent into abject humiliation.

And it’s quite a plunge we witness. So though it sounds dark and forbidding it’s performed so expertly that you’re never overwhelmed by the character’s despair.

It’s superbly acted by Robert Bowman who manages to draw us in to the life of a self-important St Petersburg bureaucrat whose chief role seems to be the sharpening of pencils for a bigwig.

He falls for the bigwig’s daughter many years younger than him. A man in love is barely rational and one second he’s howling like a dog on heat, then softly speaking of the raptures of love he feels.

It’s a physically and emotionally demanding role for one actor to sustain, but Bowman manages to switch the contrasting tones of his emotions extraordinarily well.

He gabbles madly in the height of his obsession, slows down and then loses control as the madness deepens. It’s a highly skilled, remarkable, 70-minute performance by Bowman who barely stops talking, ranting and fantasising while careering across the set all the way through.

Afterwards, I couldn’t help feeling that Ozzy must have read the book.

Well worth seeing when it goes on a national tour next year.

Osiwreck – Croatia 2 Wales 0

Posted on by adecolley

When your opposition coach asks for ideas on Facebook and then quotes Kipling as an inspiration well you don’t feel confident, this is Wales after all, but you don’t face the game with the usual sense of impending doom.

Why ask Davor from Dubrovnik for his snippets of wisdom? Maybe Igor Stimac’s cuckoo, maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing. A useful straw to clutch at when you’re at the bottom of a pit of despair.

Then Kipling and the poem ‘If’. Bit of a cliche these days. Old hat. Tired.

Six-one stays with you doesn’t it? I think it’s already erased ‘Russia’ on my heart. You want any straw to clutch at to give you hope. Gareth Bale cleaned out the tubes last Friday and managed to avert further Welsh catastrophe.

Anyway, Stimac, crazy Croat, I hoped, might be in for a surprise.

Social media failing

Maybe what we did wrong was to not go on to Facebook and give Igor Stimac plausible but useless advice on our chaps. Eg ~ Ben Davies is like Bale, just a few years younger. You’ve got your hands full there Eeeg ~ he’s bloody fantastic, Modric better mark him. And your striker.

Any old bollocks, we should have just found someone who knew the lingo and primed him to fill up Facebook with all manner of cock and bull. After all, all’s fair in love, war and football.

Osiwreck

Osijek’s Gradski vtr, incredibly, means City Garden and must be one of the most ironically named stadia in the world. It is one hell of a concrete-cancer, moose-ugly gargoyle of an arena and it’s no surprise to find a wikipedia reference to it as unfinished. That’s not the bloody half of it.

The main stand has 13 priapic pillars emerging from the top tier, (see pic) an architect’s way of saying “Yep, we’ll be finishing it off any minute now.”

No cover anywhere and boy are we glad it didn’t rain during the match otherwise, with my dicky chest, I’d be dead and there’d have been no one left to clap the players off the pitch cos we’d all have left on 52 minutes after the second goal. Some of us would still be in casualty (obviously I would be in the mortuary).

The athletics track surrounding the pitch was a faded light blue like it had been left unused for months.

And we got a taste of 80s terracing with a fence topped with inward~facing railings. When they scored, we even got a Croat nutjob standing on the dividing railing, quite impressively, gloating. He was very lucky refreshments were served in plastic glasses. If they’d had a massive TV screen they would have screened Top Gun at half-time, just to you make you even more nostalgic.

GOOD – for hanging flags and feeling cooped up and taking us back to an era when we were all treated like the oppressed scum we, deep down, knew we were.

BAD – for 21st century football, a good view of the game, keeping that nasty rain off us.

So, no sense of intimacy or of feeling uplifted by a grand setting where history would be played out.

The trouble with being sixth seed in the group that we’ve been farmed out to second-rate stadia at Novi Sad and Osiwreck and my initial thought that it would help us rather than the home side has been wide of the mark. 

The locals in both places have got behind their boys magnificently it has to be said, through gritted teeth. In future we need to play in cosmopolitan capitals where the locals are a bit harder to please, less easily impressed and deeply sceptical of the coach’s corny, passe use of ‘If’ to inspire his illiterate players (are any players apart from Bellamy vaguely literate these days?).

The big improvement here on Novi Sad was at least my pen wasn’t confiscated, we didn’t get stuffed – always a bonus –  and there were refreshments behind the back of the stand. Oh luxury.

If we ever have to play here again, I recommend we concede the game.

Kipling

Shame to say, I’ve never read him but we’re all familiar with the tales of Jungle Book and If.

‘If’ might be only two letters long but it’s the biggest word in Welsh football history isn’t it? A few of my ‘if’ moments:

1 If only Joe Jordan/Paul Bodin/I hadn’t introduced that blonde in Amsterdam to that bloke from St Asaph (insert your own nemesis) . . .

2 If only Hughes had fielded Earnie against Russia in 2003, we’d have won Euro 2004.

3 If only I had stopped watching Wales back in 1998 I’d be at least 20 grand better off and a lot a happier.

Comedy goals

Ashley Williams’ backpass left Lewis Price with a stinker of a clearance. From behind, it looked like Price didn’t have a lot of options if he wanted to clear successfully.

Now the dust has settled, it was the most comic Welsh disaster for, er, at least five weeks. Specifically, last month’s second in Novi Sad which obviously at the time was not comic at all but a sin against humanity. But once your inner anguish subsides you have to accept it was a classic example of footballing fiascos.

And it set me thinking, there’ve been quite a few over the years. At the time they weren’t funny at all. Several have made me severely ill. But once the bile settles, and you’ve snotted out your chest phlegm in a tamping rage, we’ve racked up some notable achievements.

1 Paul Jones’ hat trick for Slovakia in the 5-1 fiasco at home. Gift-wrapped clangers of the highest quality rewarded with a permanent exile from the No 1 shirt. A wounding way for a great keeper to go out. But, hey, this is Wales, this is our destiny.

2 Coleman coolly playing in an Italian at Anfield in 1998 with a peach of a backpass. A rare mistake by our Jack general, who it has to be said could well be the best left back we ever had. At least Ashley Williams could lamely and legitimately moan about mud, the captaincy armband constricting the blood flow to his freezing cold knuckles and how rotten Osijek is.

3 Didn’t Mark Aizlewood fuck something up badly against Bulgaria in 1994? I don’t recall the details, just the huge sense of brain-bursting anger.

There must be many more. In fact, it must run into hundreds. Please feel free to leave your own personal favourite defensive cock-up below.

One more thing – why don’t we get the benefit of some of these comedy goals? On a plate. With a dinky little chocolate and a wink from a foxy policewoman the local rozzers have roped in to make up the numbers. Just asking.

Crisis? What crisis?

From the deathless sludge soccer of Serbia to the more acceptable muddy mediocrity of Croatia. So, yes, it was an improvement. Then again, being whacked with a truncheon by one of the Croat Robocop policemen might have been an improvement – could have shown off my bruises and made up some fairytale to impress people.

At least we’re no longer on the edge of the cliff being eyed by the coastguard through his binoculars as a possible casualty.

We’ve peeped over the precipice and it’s business as usual. Not much of an achievement. But after last month, about all we could hope for.

And, saving grace of saving graces, at 2am in the Tufna nightclub, the DJ pumped out the Clash’s Rock the Casbah, ten years after I spend an entire campaign badgering idiot DJs across Europe to show some taste.

At last, a straw to clutch.

Hail Bale – Wales 2 Scotland 1

Posted on by adecolley

 

 A million wows. Brain-boggling Bale blasts a brilliant goal to salvage Wales – and a nation’s sanity – from the shredder.

For me, the best Welsh goal this millennium. Also, let’s just over-egg the pudding – one of the most important goals in our history.

Coming away from the spineless, September stinkathon in Serbia it seemed we’d taken a blow so painful that I feared recovery would be impossible.

It really seemed that the side didn’t give a monkey’s. Pitiful performances – well we’ve seen plenty of them, take your pic, there’s dozens. But last month was the worst of the lot.

Novi Sad was crisis-bad. Maybe the worst defeat in my lifetime and it seemed to spark knives out for Coleman and more turmoil than I can ever remember in my lifetime. Even worse was that the national side seemed to be again becoming a favoured topic of national ridicule.

A story appeared suggesting Coleman, to appease the FAW, would have to win against Scotland and Croatia and I thought: ‘Hang on, while you’re at it why not ask him to climb Everest too and then ski down stark bollock naked?’

So, full marks then to all the players. Novi Sad was all their fault, I figured. So all credit for this win must go them – and in winning they presumably have settled the insidious Coleman question for the moment.

The game

;

Matches at the CCS are rarely without a pointedly chosen pre-match record . This time it was Secret Affair’s Time for Action. Mod anthem message to gee up the troops – an unusual choice.

Morison’s miss in the first half, followed by an immediate Scottish goal looked like it was going to sum up Welsh football history in 30 seconds. So close to glory, then sucker-punch humiliation just to remind you that the Welsh always lose. It’s in our genes.

At half-time, a mutual wail of woe with Iwan from Cardigan about strikers and the ‘How on earth aren’t we winning? chat.

And then a second-half swelling tide of Bale, Bale and more Bale. He’s absolutely fucking brilliant isn’t he, in a way I don’t think I’ve seen in any player play, bar Pavel Nedved at the Euros in 2004. If he raced a stag, you’d fancy his chances and then push the poor creature over.

Looked a penalty to me – in fact we should have had two before I reckoned, for fouls on Ramsey and Davies.

And then the goal that many of us felt was our due – like we’d earned it because we were driven mad in Novi Sad to the point where you question why you ever bothered starting to watch Wales play away and all those people who roll their eyes when you explained might have a point. But we were owed something big, something beautiful, something you would remember for the rest of your life. And about bloody time, we got it.

We got all that and more and the relief was immense. It resonates so much especially with the classic Wales v Scotland heartbreaks over the years. And fair dos to the Scot who admitted he clipped Bale therefore spiking the guns of the scurvy Scots who accused our man of diving.

Not really revenge as I reckon that it will still only, once the dust settles be the difference in a parochial play-off for fourth place in the group.

Great stuff and I bet Steve Morison must have been relieved his miss was an irrelevance. If you see a better goal at the CCS in the next 50 years then maybe it will have been scored by Messi beating seven players in the ninth minute of added time.

They all played, they all bust a gut, there are no complaints from me. The pain has been purged.

‘Coleman out’ codswallop

No prizes for guessing where I stand. It was brave to select Price, Davies and Ledley and all performed well. I can’t remember Price ever being less than excellent and if he was several inches taller he would surely be first-choice somewhere.

Quite brave to replace Ramsey as skipper too – though after Novi Sad where he appeared rudderless, a very sensible and obvious decision.

Seems to me that Ramsey, missing for Tuesday, could be replaced by an extra defender. Scotland still had several good chances and there was often lots of space in the box.

Let’s hope that whatever happens on Tuesday, the unsettling cloud over Coleman – a guy who has only three competitive games so far and in two of which (Belgium, Scotland) his side have played well, has been dispelled.

Giggs v Bale

The debate is edging towards Bale. Both men were men of the match in about half the first 25-30 games they played for Wales. Bale’s better goalscoring record and crossing ability edge it for me.

Play another seven or eight years and he’ll probably beat John Charles as the best Welsh player ever.

Roger Speed

This campaign will always be overshadowed by Gary Speed – can’t the anti-Coleman campaigners see the poisoned chalice he has accepted and give him credit for trying to turn it around?

So, it was heartwarming earlier in the week to hear Roger Speed urge people to get behind the side and Coleman in particular. He nailed his colours to the mast unequivocably and rather bravely, given the mutterings of the last month.

Simple common sense from a bereaved father bewildered by what he saw.

So, quite bizarrely, the spirit of Gary Speed is still with this team in the form of his father – a benevolent grandfather figure to the national side.

It occurs to me that Roger Speed, with a humane, compassionate sentence or two of support for Coleman, is a man wise beyond words.

Penalty pic courtesy of Jack Fleckney

Hail Cale

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The grandaddy of Welsh rock showed age is no barrier to brilliance.

John Cale won’t be going gently into the good night on this evidence – he’s a peroxide blond at 70 (to fit in with the surfers in LA where he lives perhaps?) – and he’s a leading a testosterone-fuelled monster of band.

Manic Street Preacher James Dean Bradfield was among the audience at the Coal Exchange to witness what evolved into a startlingly good show.

With Cale on keyboards, the four-piece band – the rest of the group were half his age – started slowly with new numbers from the album Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood being interesting rather than compelling.

It got a lot more exciting when he switched to guitar and a spellbinding rendition of Helen of Troy swirled us on to a different planet. It howled with fury, an absolute tour de force.

From that moment you forgot that this guy – the genius whose work with Lou Reed made the not-very-popular-at-the-time Velvet Underground in the 60s influenced thousands of bands – could be drawing a UK pension.

The band grew in confidence, the pace was relentless and tracks like Whaddya Mean By That and Perfection were perfectly pitched. Hard and loud, but melodic.

By the end Grandad John, who, let’s be honest, doesn’t smile too easily, was grinning. He was dripping in sweat – his cotton jacket was soaked through after a tough 90 minutes. There was no gasping for breath or concession to advancing years. I bet this uncompromising, peroxided pensioner even fancied a bit of crowd-surfing. It was an absolutely astounding performance and homecoming.

He may not have had a hit record you can name, or an easily recognisable public persona. But he is one of Wales’s national treasures.

The boy from Carmarthenshire, whose mother tongue was Welsh, signed off with – nice touch – ‘Nos da’.

‘Nos da’ wasn’t the half of it, this was very, very good night indeed.

Mad, bad Novi Sad – Serbia 6 Wales 1

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Seven years ago I gave up drink. Last night I came close to starting again.

It wasn’t the worst I’ve ever felt at one of our games but it was one of the worst defeats in our history. The manner of it was excrutiating and it came at the worst possible time. The last year must have seemed like a constant crisis-management exercise for the FAW and it’s hard not to feel sympathy for officials.photo (1)

Now the crisis is on the pitch. Last Friday it seemed the players wanted to play – last night nobody seemed to want the ball once we fell behind. Good players had really really bad games. All this against a team I read had scored only twice in ten games. Local Serbs after the match were as stunned as we were. Father Christmas had flown in from Cardiff to deliver a wonderful present.

The mad

The dream opening to this piece that I had in store would have been a tale of divine retribution for Wales after our 2003 trip to Novi Sad to see the under-21s play. That night our keeper Jason Brown, now of Aberdeen, was racially abused and players James Collins and David Pipe were elbowed, according to our then coach Jimmy Shoulder. It was sickening. In fact, the evident racism in the country, not just in the match, was a shock.

Before the game, a friend reporting seeing balaclava-clad Serbian ultra-nationalists parade through the town, about 40 of them.

Keep smiling
Keep smiling

Add to that that the volcanic Sinisa Mihajlovic, who called Patrick Vieira a ‘fucking black monkey’ back in 2000, is now Serbia manager and I had hopes that Ashley Williams could score a last-minute winner to somehow make amends. Sometimes it’s a bad thing to over-romanticise football.

The bad 

Well this would apply to the entirety of the match from the moment we kicked off in a grey kit that I can only describe as horrible. Reminded me of my old school uniform. Each to their own, my mate Tim then informed me he had bought it.

We knew our coins would be confiscated but I never figured a souvenir Serbia pen would be snatched off me too. I couldn’t be bother to argue. It set the tone.photo

No point in going into a blow-by-blow account of what went wrong. Pretty much everything of course.

Sometimes that’s easier to bear because we have such a good time on the terrace that the on-field disappointments are water off a duck’s back. Eindhoven 1996 comes to mind.

A worse defeat (7-1) but the last 20 minutes was a roaring crescendo of Welsh defiance, by us not the players, and the locals clapped us out of the stadium, so impressed were they. And at least Vinnie Jones didn’t play much for Wales after that fiasco.

But I have to say that the seven minutes between Serbia’s second goal and Bale’s free-kick rank among the blackest spells of watching Wales in more than 100 games.

Many fans failed to contain their boiling anger at the players – something I’ve rarely witnessed – and the nature of the Serb second goal probably had something to do with it. It was like a comedy dribbler was being helped out by freakish ricochets and mistimed attempts at tackles. If the guy had been wearing a clown costume and two-foot long shoes it couldn’t have looked more stupid.

Bale’s goal took the edge off the anger. Serbia’s third goal didn’t spark the same outrage – you sort of knew the game was up with the second goal, the third was greeted as absolute proof. The remaining three goals hardly registered.

Couldn’t bring myself to join the boos at the end of the match nor the ‘What a load of rubbish’ chant, though that was true. We even chanted ‘Ser-bee-ya’ as a mark of respect to our hosts. That’s how bad we felt.

Liked the dry comment in the second half: “What a waste of four quid!” (the price of the match ticket).

Chris Coleman

I was disappointed to hear ‘Coleman out’ chants just five games into a reign that began in circumstances that no one would wish on any manager. One of those games, you could argue, was Costa Rica which was more of a memorial service than a match.

Seems to me he has acted with genuine humility and real respect for the position. It needs to be repeated that he has taken on the post in the most appalling situation and needs to be given credit and time for that.

Surely it’s a man management nightmare. If he’s dealt with Diana conspiracy theorist Mohammed Al-Fayed on a regular basis while at Fulham, then he should have the credentials for the job.

But it’s also fair to wonder about a few decisions – as Ralph from Brno insists – why did he start Church wide left for two games? To no obvious effect. Will he persist with Morison up front.

Football fans’ increasing lust for what I call ‘lynchmobbery’, heads on plates after bad runs and easy target victims (why not blame the players ahead of Coleman?) has got progressively worse.

And the early knives out for Coleman are the last thing we need. If we are in crisis now – and arguably we are – then surely his departure would make it worse. Any new manager might think he’s only got 4/5 games to get results. The FAW would be revealed as a poor employer. Any good manager would surely not risk his reputation or even want the job.

Positives

1 If you were banking on watching Wales in Brazil, well looks like you’re five grand better off already.

2 Given we are effectively out of the running already – unless five wins come out of the next six games – there’s a great opportunity to skip the Belgium trip and save even more money. This is a personal view on the attractiveness of Brussels, having been threatened by police there in 1992.

Five at the back?

Is a four-man defence the future for Wales? Will Coleman consider five? We did it a few years back under a certain Mr Toshack – and we created far more chances back then than we have done recently. And missed pretty much all of them.

Legacy

I am still in Serbia at the time of writing, so know nothing of the reaction back home. But it seems to me this result is knocking the stuffing out of football in Wales.

We’ve already returned to the days of: “What are you watching Wales for?”, asked in a tone of eyebrow-raised astonishment. I had the chat with an Aussie friend last week and he wasn’t persuaded by my answer.

What’s worse is that there now seems to be a disconnect between our players and the public. The FAW have got a lot of things right over the last 10-12 years but the most interesting chat I had this week was with well-known Cardiff fan Corky.photo (3)

It was a surprise to hear from him that, running Trelewis kids’ football, he is struggling to get support from outside to promote soccer for about 20 kids.

Meanwhile the WRU machine rolls relentlessly on in his neighbourhood, bankrolled by an admirably efficient, well-oiled set-up. So Corky can’t compete with many clubs taking an interest in young children.

Recently the FAW has ramped up its marketing. ‘Time to Believe’ and all that. The Uefa Supercup coming to Cardiff. A glossy mag dished out with the Western Mail. I applaud that but it seems superficial to me. To a certain extent it has to be done, of course. But I am then left wondering if more support at grassroots might be the next priority in the more deprived areas of Wales.

So, say, instead of a game in November – surely the last thing we need – there needs to be a team-bonding and a ‘connectedness’. Take ’em to Trelewis, Mr Coleman.

This might bridge the other issue I think is a factor in recent Wales’s up and down performances and that’s the ‘disconnect’ between the players and the fans. Nothing new here in this argument. But, having returned to Wales after 20 years in England, it seems to me  that parts of the valleys are Second World in infrastructure and quality of life. Blaenau Gwent has one in six unemployed.

Contrast that with the lesser lights in this Wales team being capable of settling seven thousand pound bar bills on holiday I hear.

The FAW charge a fiver for kids’ tickets, they would say. Which is good, not knocking it. I’m not qualified to judge but I have noticed a lot of glossy marketing which is being fatally undermined by the poor results.

What now?

After the match, it was time for a drink (non-alcoholic – I didn’t succumb to temptation).

Next to the Novi Sad stadium is a fine bar called Camelot. Sitting there, it was hard not to conclude that after a night of such high disappointment at a game I genuinely thought we would win, we need an Excalibur-wielding King Arthur and his knights of the Round Ball to emerge to turn this around.

Because that’s what we need.

Another fine mess

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One of the more unusual Wales fans’ games  took place some 30 kilometres outside Belgrade yesterday.

Not only did 18 players and spectators get a two-police van escort to the match there and back, but the game officials were all female.

The police over here have been understandably jittery and appear to be on orders from up high to ensure no Welsh fan gets attacked – word is that attacks on a French fan sparked a determination that no more trouble can be tolerated.

And what a refreshing difference the female officials made – there were virtually no sniping comments made to them, not in my earshot anyway. And most decisions were taken with good grace.Female Serbian football officials

Maybe this the way forward for match officials at any level.

On the road, despite being fresh-ish from an 11-2 win last Friday, the team have usually been less effective.

So we’ll quickly gloss over a full account of the 7-1 thrashing to gush about the facilities of a ground seemingly in the back of beyond. FK Srem‘s ground was better than at least one Serbian Premiership ground I’ve been too and the players were very pleased with the quality of the pitch.

For the record, Aberystwyth hotshot Will Johnson scored for his eighth consecutive match for the team and with the Jocks coming up next month, there’s every chance of a ninth scoring game in a row.

* Picture of beauty and the beast (Neil Dymock) courtesy Gary Pritchard

Wales 0 Belgium 2

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Gary Speed WalesWelcome to ‘Plucky Wales shoot themselves in the foot’, episode 95 (or choose your own number).

Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, when maybe we were on the verge of a breakthrough with a decent squad, a good performance goes to waste in cruel style. Only Wales games can produce so many ‘so-near-yet-so-far’  moments.

It all started so well. Full marks to the visiting Belgians for unravelling a ‘Respect Gary Speed’ banner in their end before and during the match. You’ll be forever given credit for a magnificent gesture. They even had the good grace to lose the fans’ match beforehand 11-2. We should have realised they’d launched a charm offensive.

Then, there was then a sermon from Mount Fifa before the match. Was I the only person who found this bizarre?

Someone read out, as if it had been printed on a tablet of stone, an earnest lecture on ‘Fair Play’ in the manner of a schoolmaster declaiming Leviticus 3:24 loudly, knowing that your life would be forever changed as you were struck by a thunderbolt of  .

I’m all for fair play and, fair play, it was very good common sense. But it was ridiculous.  Any sermon from Sepp Blatter is, er, tainted.

Anyway Fifa, fair play to you wonderful gents, did the Panorama show last year get your goat and inspire the marketing bods to respond with ‘a brainwave’?

Jolly good show.

The match

Everyone I spoke to before the match seemed scared of the Belgians and could take no comfort from the fact that we’ve got good players too. Let’s just write that again in capitals – WE’VE GOT GOOD PLAYERS TOO.

And it showed. We played really well until the sending-off. After the sending-off we continued to play really well. Passing was very good, composure was amazing. Coleman criticised the team last month against Bosnia for going forward too early and not holding on to the ball for long enough. Thoughtless play.

He was right. Last night the lesson was learned and I was deeply impressed by the guts we showed.

Talking to media types before the match, they felt the players didn’t care about Wales, couldn’t be bothered and were uninterested. With some exceptions (Church was mentioned), up their own backsides.

But I wonder if I spent several days before a big game at training and waiting if I’d be a bit listless and uncommunicative (they are footballers after all). The performance did not lack character or effort. It seemed to me that once on the pitch their professional ‘football head’ if you like, kicked in and automatically they did what they were trained for to the best of their ability.

And for me the proof was that at 1-0 down in the second half we could barely hear a peep from the Belgian fans. Seems that they could see we were playing well and the game could end in 1-1. Pigs might fly, but at 1-0 and playing as we did, it DID seem that 1-1 was on the cards.

And then, hey presto, Plucky Wales shoot themselves in the foot.

The ref

I don’t blame the ref at all. The Collins tackle, from a long way away, had me praying for a yellow card immediately.

Another bad start in an opening game – it reminded me of the Minsk match in 200o when Bellamy was red-carded in the dreadful defeat over there.

The ref wasn’t to blame for their first goal and, again, from a long way away may have g0t the free kick decision wrong but that didn’t cost us the game. So why blame the ref?

James Collins

A few years back I used to think there were two James Collinses. One played for Cardiff City at centre-back and was brilliant. The other played for Wales and in his first ten games seemed to make a bad mistake inevitably punished. The two couldn’t possibly have been the same person, it seemed.

His performances for Wales improved hugely to the point where he was bloody fantastic in Moenchengladbach, for example, and his commitment couldn’t be faulted.

In short he either had stinkers or stormers. Then, you couldn’t make it up, last night  he had a stormer for 25 minutes and stinker for a microsecond and that was enough to get him sent off. The two extremes  of James Collins’ play were captured in a 25-minute cameo that epitomised his entire career. In the history of the game that’s unusual – it’s fair to say he has a unique talent.

For what it’s worth I hope he returns after the ban. But with Darcy Blake doing so well ever since he first lined up in the side, he seems to be destined to be third choice  centre half. Will he quit Wales, seems to the question?

Chris Coleman

 Coleman’s five at the back starting line-up was common sense. Collins saved our bacon several times before throwing himself into the frying pan with a flying hack.

Then the back four were superb. Have never seen Adam Matthews, for instance, play so well. From that sending-off on, no one performed badly.

Coleman, with the game still at 1-0, then introduced attacking subs in a bid to get a point. So, tactically, he’d thought through what was required and the implementation of the plan was derailed by the sending-off.

Afterwards his defence of Collins, while wrong, was great man-management. He could have kicked him hard but he showed Collins he still had belief in him and wants him to stay in the squad. Classy.

It seems to have been difficult for Coleman to knit the squad together with the ghost of Gary Speed hanging over this side.

His forbearance in the light of what happened to Gary Speed has been exemplary – the fans singing ‘Gary Speed’s Barmy Army at matches are unlikely to change that to ‘Chris Coleman’s Barmy Army’ soon.

But I’ve been impressed with the serious dignity he has brought to the job and deserves credit.

Where now?

Well I’m off to Novi Sad. Updates to follow. For what it’s worth I fancy us to win as Serbia are on a downer and if we are to do anything in this group we have to beat sides like Serbia. A second defeat and we are in last-chance saloon. No side ever gets through the qualifiers having suffered three defeats.

For once, the marketing types have come up with an appropriate slogan ‘Time to Believe’. Last night the players performed – to my surprise – that they do, something I had doubted. Most fans

But I believe this campaign is gonna be a lot more fun than we ever suspected.

No consolation, but why couldn’t the Belgians have picked a few of their fans instead

Scritti Politti, Bristol Thekla

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No way are Scritti even close to the top of my favourites but this was definitely the best gig I’ve been to this year.

A really welcome and unexpected surprise, it swept by in just over an hour but features some of the sweetest vocals I’ve ever heard. Sound quality was one of the best I’ve witnessed, vocals to the fore and Green Gartside can sing like an angel – always good to see that in person rather than wonder whether his recorded vocals have been souped up in the studio. I figured his 50-something voicebox might have lost its winsome charm and, as is so often the case, get drowned out by the band.

But it was intimate, soulful and affecting. Thekla acoustics and, presumably, a great job by the sound engineer meant that every utterance, every word, was audible in this cosy little boat venue.

Given I was so-so about Songs to Remember back in the 80s, most of its songs sounded note perfect and it’s certainly grown on me.

Liked the between-song tale of ‘Sweetest Girl’. He offered the song as a joint venture to Kraftwerk and Gregory Isaacs. Isaacs was up for it but Kraftwerk were not.

Then, while hanging out with two Kraftwerk members in New York in the early 80s he broached the subject with the them tentatively, receiving a Germanic response; “We did get the song – we HATE reggae!”

PiL, Bristol

Posted on by adecolley


Enter Johnny.

Opening remark: “Bristol . . . country life . . . (leering) do you want to see my knob of butter?”

So, in a good mood from the off, makes a change. Definitely the least angry performance of the five times I’ve seen him in two-and-a-half years, Mr Lydon showed us fleeting glimpses of occasional serenity, pleased that the mission to show PiL at their best and create new songs (which I’ve not heard) has paid off.

But he’ll never be a pussycat. The line from Coriolan/us the other night comes to mind – ‘Anger is my meat’.

He snarled bullyingly at a security guard for walking in front of the stage, pretty unfairly and nastily I thought, but that was about it.

Set was pretty similar to the shows from late 2009 onwards – starting with This is not a Love Song, Albatross heading to Flowers of Romance, and all the usual suspects. Back in 2010 here he was riled about the pro-Palestinian protest outside the venue and it showed and he was red with rage to the extent that it seemed his concentration was affected (next night at Oxford they played the same set only better).

This time we got a more settled performance, mature even. Very similar to the previous shows of the past couple of years so fewer surprises and peaks. Still very worthwhile though.

Ebbw Vale CC

Posted on by adecolley

Ebbw Vale v Penydarren Country XIBeen a while since I had the chance to play at a first-class venue. Sixteen or so years since a match at Hastings Central Ground, which was then scandalously torn to bits and a soulless mall of the type you see worldwide was installed to give the town centre a ‘boost’.

So, it was lovely to play at Ebbw Vale, scene of many a Glamorgan match from the 50s onwards – even remember watching a John Player League game there in 1974. Glammy all out 92, they seem to be of a similar vintage this year. And haven’t played many first-class games here since the 90s.

Gutted to then tread on the ball while fielding, a la Glenn McGrath Ashes 2005, and have to the leave the field at the end of the home side’s innings.

This meant the next two hours were spent with a bag of ice on my left ankle and I missed out on opening on the best track I would have played on for years.

As it was, as last man, went in to make four as Penydarren were all out for about 140, some 40 or so runs short.Ebbw Vale v Penydarren Country XI

The club seems past its heyday – players said afterwards that Ebbw Vale – part of Blaenau Gwent where unemployment rate is among the worst in the UK – struggles to attract people. Not much industry therefore not much to come here for.
As for the cricket, what jobs there are mean that shift work eats into local lads’ free time so they can’t commit to playing. A town of 30,000 or so thus finds itself in Div 2 of the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire League.

Still, a top venue to play at – one of South Wales’s best. A great tea, a lovely clubhouse with pix from way back when.Ebbw Vale v Penydarren Country XI