‘Devastated’ Taylor coming to terms with his challenge

Chris Coleman has said that Neil Taylor was left “devastated” and unable to speak in the dressing room as he realised the damage that his reckless challenge had inflicted on Seamus Coleman.

The Irish captain suffered a double leg-break in the incident. Taylor himself lost almost a season of his career after breaking an ankle in 2012 and, while there will be little sympathy just now for all the character references that are being provided by his Wales team-mates, he was said to be “in bits” and made an immediate attempt to apologise.

“He’s numb; he didn’t say a word,” said Chris Coleman, the Wales manager. “I was the first one into the dressing room after the game and he was sitting on the floor with his head in his hands. But, no matter how badly he feels, or we feel, it’s worse for Seamus. We’ve just got to hope and pray that it’s not too bad for Seamus.”

Coleman had separately pointed out how the game had become heated following several heavy challenges from the Irish team and was steadfast in his wider support of Taylor.

“I defend Neil as a person; he’s a lovely lad. A gentleman,” he said. “I knew what type of game it was going to be. We knew it was going to be tough and physical. Take the Seamus Coleman incident out of it and there was a bit of needle, but you’ve got to expect that. What you don’t expect is for anybody to come off with a serious injury. There are no complaints for me. Ireland did what they needed to do.”

Joe Allen has known Taylor for the past decade as a team-mate with both Swansea and Wales. “He’s in bits; he is one of my best mates,” said Allen. “Unfortunately, these things can happen. There was no malice in the tackle and he certainly wouldn’t have intended to hurt anyone.”

The length of Taylor’s ban will be decided by a Uefa disciplinary committee but Wales will also now be without Gareth Bale for trip to Serbia in June. They are now four points behind the Republic of Ireland and Serbia in Group D. “We’ve played everyone once now and there’s no team that really scare us in this group so we can take confidence from that,” said Allen.

“We’re going to miss Gareth, but we’ve had games without important players before and we’ll just have to cope with it. Serbia will be glad that he’s not playing but we’ve got enough to go out there and overcome that.”