Ready for the rumble of crimson thunder
ABOUT now in any other World Cup year I would be reaching a fever pitch of excitement. As of today there is only just over a week to go before it all starts with a match between Qatar and Ecuador in the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor.
England and Wales play their first matches the following day, against Iran and the US respectively. The television schedules have been cleared. Strictly has been moved to make way for the month-long cavalcade of international football. People in sequins are already threatening to march on Broadcasting House in disgust, with pitchforks and flaming torches.
In any other World Cup year I would have half-finished my Panini sticker album by now, and my World Cup coins collection would have been taken out, polished and examined. Did Keith Newton really look like that?
I would have studied all the competing teams and picked out those I fancied to do well. I would have watched all the previews on TV and would be humming the official World Cup songs while walking the dog.
This time around, though, it’s all a bit ho-hum: because this is the World Cup nobody wanted, apart from those of us who support Wales.
Everything about this World Cup is wrong. The location is wrong, for all kinds of reasons. The time of year is wrong: but my beloved Wales, whom I have followed through almost no thick at all and decades of thin, have qualified to play in a World Cup for the first time since 1958, when John Charles (not the Brixham one) lined up against a young Pele.
That was two years before I was born, and I have never seen Wales play in a World Cup. Neither has anybody under the age of 64.
Neville Southall, Ian Rush and Ryan Giggs never played in a World Cup. Neither did Dai Davies, George Berry or Robbie Savage. A blatant handball by Scotland’s Joe Jordan stopped us going one year. A penalty miss by Paul Bodin stopped us another time.
Wales have beaten Italy and Germany, but not when it mattered most.
The Caerphilly Kid, John the Coat and I used to drive up to Cardiff to watch them play when they were rubbish. We saw Gareth Bale’s first game and saw Robert Earnshaw grab a hat-trick against Scotland: but never, ever have we seen those red shirts at a World Cup, until now.
By rights we should be reaching a state of advanced ecstasy as we look forward to November 21, when Gareth Bale’s new Wales team kick off against the US. Nobody expects Wales to win the World Cup, but the purveyors of Crimson Thunder, as Michael Sheen put it, have not gone all that way in the middle of winter just to make up the numbers.
However, Qatar is a place which poses so many questions on so many levels. How on Earth did Qatar end up with the right to host the World Cup anyway? What went on while the stadia were being built? Is this World Cup going to be a catalyst for change in the attitudes of the country, or are we just sportwashing the place for all we’re worth?
On principle we shouldn’t watch any of it. It’s all wrong and we should leave it well alone: but it’s been 64 years, and it might be 64 more. The Kid, the Coat and I might never get another chance.
I have never seen Wales play in a World Cup. Neither has anybody under the age of 64