Good Will hunting a happier ending in play-offs
CARDIFF City midfielder Will Vaulks is gunning for play-off glory to atone for having to cancel his wedding and missing out on Wales’ Euro 2020 campaign this summer.
The 26-year-old Bluebirds midfielder had planned a June 6 wedding in Italy with his fiancee Alexandra, but those plans soon hit the buffers when the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world.
It was meant to be a huge summer for Vaulks, who, aside from the nuptials, was meant to head to his first major international tournament with Wales but that, too, also had to be scrapped.
“I should have got married and potentially been at the Euros,” Vaulks said at Thursday’s press conference. “It has been two pretty big things for me that have been cancelled.
“But it’s unprecedented at the moment, there’s nothing you can do.
“I’ll get married one day and hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to go to a major tournament.
“She didn’t take it too well! But what can you do? We were getting married abroad but even weddings here were getting cancelled.
“So, we have just got to try and look after each other and stay healthy.”
That phrase, “look after each other”, went somewhat viral this week after the club’s official Twitter account posted a video of the Wales international striding out ahead of the game with Leeds last weekend, instructing his teammates to take care of one another out on the pitch.
It was evidence of the increasingly important role Vaulks has in the engine room at Cardiff City and one would think he is one of the first names on the team sheet when manager Neil Harris begins to draw up his plans for the next match.
The next match, in this case, is this lunchtime at Deepdale, where the Bluebirds come up against Preston, with whom they are level on points for the play-off places.
City’s ultimate goal, of course, is to break into the top six and fight for the opportunity to achieve promotion to the Premier League this season. Vaulks, however, believes the Bluebirds are currently tagged as underdogs, which, he says, suits him right down to the ground.
“I don’t think we have been spoken about very much, even with the play-off places being so open,” he added.
“It doesn’t bother me, it doesn’t offend me, sometimes it’s quite nice to go under the radar a little bit.
“A lot of predictions were for other clubs [to be in the top six].
“Listen, we have played one game, it still means nothing, we’ve still got a long way to go, but we’ve put ourselves in a good spot.
“Everyone’s opinion seemed to be that we were underdogs. That’s fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion, that suits us.
“We will crack on behind the scenes, prepare the way we have been and do as much as we can to be right in there in eight games’ time. I am not feeling pressure.”
It’s certainly not been plain sailing for the Welshman.
Having joined from Rotherham last summer, the midfielder was largely consigned to the bench and the under-23s for most of the first half of the season following a sub-par performance in the 3-0 away defeat at Reading, a game in which a number of City players had off days.
His relationship with Neil Warnock deteriorated rapidly thereafter and he even considered seeking a spell out on loan in January to earn some game time.
But it has all changed in the last six months under Harris, who on Thursday waxed lyrical about the player’s importance to the side, citing his tremendous work rate, laudable passing range, ability in both boxes and, of course, his trademark long throw-ins.
It quite possibly hadn’t worked out as he would have initially envisaged this year and, having had his wedding and the Euros cancelled, it unquestionably hasn’t been the smoothest of rides off the pitch.
Winning promotion at Wembley on August 4, though, would make it all worth while.
“Definitely,” he said. “Yeah, I think that promotion would definitely make up for it.”