Don't you dare call Hal Robson-Kanu an 'average' footballer - he's the very antithesis of the description.
To the rest of the world, HRK's international retirement from Wales today may cause little more than a 'meh'.
Some semi-interested fans may have exclaimed: "But he's only 29! He still has so much to offer the international footballing world."
But in Wales today, actual tears are likely being shed. Hands are being wrung. Tsunamis of emotion are engulfing entire towns and sweeping them away to the wastelands of nostalgia.
The blinds are down. The black is donned. Today, no-one will work past the Severn Bridge.
Our talisman has left us.
Overstatement you may say. And it is. All of it. And deliberately so.
That's part of the culture that sprang up around Hal after his heroics at Euro 2016 in France.
As Wales strode on through the tournament, there was delirium among the fans. Confidence exploded but it never became arrogance.
Instead it grew into a comedic good-natured exaggeration of our powers - and he was the player who most embodied that. Hal personally pulled up trees - real actual trees - in a team that was only euphemistically doing the same.
So while Wales were walking in a Dinard dreamland, Robson-Kanu became something more powerful than a player - he became a symbol of how the smaller nation and less fancied player could rise to the occasion.
HAL THE PLAYER
Hal sits, for us, in the cult hero slot that rarely exists in elite level modern football anymore.
Released at 15 by Arsenal despite being told by Liam Brady, Arsenal's then-Acadamy chief, that he had “a wand of a left foot”, he was picked up by Brendan Rodgers who was the director of the Reading academy - the rest is Halstory.
At his best the big man has beautiful touch, surging power and pace with a cannonball shot and an X Factor that sets him apart - supreme confidence.
He is capable of the sublime, it's perhaps only consistency that has been his enemy.
His ongoing club career is good but modest by elite level standards. Internationally, Robson-Kanu scored just five goals in eight years and 44 appearances. But two of those turned out to be pretty special. More on that later.
Wales almost never had him. Hal represented England at under-19 and under-20 levels but in 2010 switched allegiance after an intervention from then Wales youth boss Brian Flynn and made his debut for the senior team against Croatia in May that year.
So let's get this out of the way.
He's definitely a bit English, if you count a little thing like being born and raised in England. But he's also a bit Nigerian (on his dad's side) and a bit Welsh (His nan was from Caerphilly, so it's legit, ok?).
He has spent much of his career in the Championship and has rarely been a starter in the time he spent at Premier League level. He wasn't even first choice for Wales in that Euros campaign, starting just three of the six matches.
However, he became emblematic of the way international football can elevate some players. When Wales fans looked enviously at, for instance, David Healy's goal-scoring heroics with Northern Ireland and looked around for our own talisman playing above himself - Hal stepped up to the plate.
Wales have been blessed with big name attacking talent over the years, but we have always underachieved. Of course the Euro 2016 run was built of many factors, but Hal was among them.
He may not have yet quite hit the heights at club level but in a Wales shirt something clicked.
HAL THE MAN
The thing about Hal is that he's got personality.
“Hal’s a good guy but he absolutely loves himself,” Ashley Williams told Wales Online. He meant it in a nice way. Honest.
When the international spotlight found Hal, he loved it. And Wales fans loved him for loving it.
Prior to his heroics in France, the list of great Welsh football moments in the modern era was short.
- Craig Bellamy's winner against Italy in a 2-1 shock in the 2002 European Cup qualifier.
- Mark Hughes scissor kick stunner in a 3-0 win over Spain at Ninian Park in 1985.
- Giggsy's first international goal with a free-kick in a 2-0 Belgium in a World Cup Qualifier.
- Gareth Bale's header against Cyprus in Euro 2016 qualifying - the goal that sealed the deal.
But the big abiding memories have more often, unfortunately, been fails.
- The heartbreak of a generation as Terry Yorath's men fell at the last against Romania in the 1993 campaign.
- Losing to 1-0 to Russia in the play-offs for a spot at Euro 2004 under Mark Hughes.
Wales had long been in a fug of disbelief.
Once we got to France, a group of us were talking in a pub pre-match and we decided we were happy to just be there.
We'd like to win a game, yes, but seeing us score a goal on big stage would be enough for us success starved fans.
It wasn't enough for Hal and his team-mates though.
When the qualification campaign started, Wales has just lost Gary Speed and was in actual mourning. Chris Coleman got his young team together and began forging a team spirit that elevated them to previously unseen heights.
They took a cripplingly sad moment and used it to their advantage.
It did not weigh them down.
Hal's natural self-confidence helped throw off decades of downbeat defeat, that lack of self confidence that has plagued Wales. Hal stepped up. He Cruyffed a nation and he revelled in it.
It was a breath of fresh Welsh air.
It's not just THAT goal against Belgium.
He did his bit against Slovakia in the opening match too. Neutrals may remember Gareth Bale's free kick more, but it was Robson-Kanu's scuffed finish on 81 minutes that handed Wales the win and sent us on that path to glory.
Yes, I know we didn't actually win a cup there, but it's deffo glory for Wales. Ok? Ok.
It made a nation believe.
It also made Hal believe because next he did something no-one else could credit.
Let's give the moment its proper dues.
It's the Euro 2016 quarter final in Lille against Belgium.
Wales has been 1-0 down to an early Radja Nainggolan thunderbolt. That is usually the cue for a Welsh collapse.
But then captain Ashley Williams scored a header from a corner using the set-piece routine England nicked for the World Cup, curiously nicknamed 'The Love Train' by Glenn Hoddle.
The game was on knife edge. Belgium were have favourites.
Enter the hero.
Receiving an awkward cutback from Aaron Ramsey, he controls with his right, nips it between his own legs with his left and slots it confidently past Thibaut Courtois with the same wand.
Thomas Meunier, Marouane Fellaini and Jason Denayer have been done.
"They've all gone for a Crêpes Suzette," said a wry Dean Saunders said in a moment of punditry perfection.
Belgium are stunned. Hal is not.
“I had my back to goal and they’re thinking I’m going to set the ball and I’ve Cruyffed and put it in the net," he said at a presser afterwards. He said it like he does it all the time.
The goal was nominated for the 2016 Puskas Award.
The goal became a huge meme, the clip set to Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On.
The goal birthed the chant. And the chant is all.
The words are simple - an everyman refrain the world can enjoy.
To the tune of Salt-N-Pepa’s Push It: "Hal. Robson. Hal Robson Kaaaaaaanuuuuu!"
Note: Best enjoyed accompanied by the The Barry Horns 11-piece brass band.
It will continue to ring down from the terraces in the sky even if Hal has gone to taste the bread of heaven, as far as his Wales days are concerend.
HAL THE LEGEND
I can't speak for every single person in Wales (as I only know most of them) but for our group of fans at least he now occupies that 'Chuck Norris facts' territory ("Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits").
- HRK scored a Cruyff turn against Belgium in a Euros quarter final
- HRK knows the difference between BitCoin and Ethereum
- HRK can peel off a tiger's skin in one piece with his bare hands
- HRK turned down a £100,000-a-week move to Chinese Super League club Shanghai SIPG to sign for West Brom.
Please feel free to add your own #Halfacts on Twitter.
So for Wales at least, the player is gone but he continues to blaze his own legend purely by being himself.
Take for instance, his retirement missive.
He announced it with a blog headlined: 'A message to a nation'. It sounds better suited to a Martin Luther King speech, or one by an international statesman like Jeremy Hunt, not one of West Brom's forwards.
The blog post was made on Medium.com, a social journalism platform quite possibly unknown to the likes of fellow Baggies Gareth Barry or Chris Brunt (no offence lads, I didn't know it either).
Outside of football, Hal is a bright guy.
Thomas Henry Alex "Hal" Robson-Kanu grew up in London's fancy Kensington. His dad was vicar at St Mary Abbots Church, which backed onto to Kensington Palace.
He left Twyford Church of England High School with a string of A*s at GCSE. He was always clever. And not just for a footballer.
He is quietly building a business empire for life after football.
He backs The Turmeric Company - a firm that makes 100% organic liquid health shots to make you feel that little bit more Hal when you need it.
But he's also surfing the blockchain revolution.
His Sports Ledger business - a sport data sharing app incorporating social media could see him become the next Mark Zuckerberg. It'll be gradually rolled out in late 2019. He believes blockchain is the next technological revolution..
So first he broke the internet, now he's going to fix it.
This is why Hal needs more time away from football.
Ronaldo once famously said if Portugal had 11 Ronaldo's they would win every game.
If Hal had 11 Hals he could change the world.
Regardless of him being limited to just one body on earth, Hal has changed the world for Wales fans. Changed the way they think. Given them belief.
Oh, that night in Bordeaux.
Oh, that night in Lille.
Oh, Hal. How could you leave us? But leave us you have. Leave us you must. To fulfil your destiny as master of all you survey.
Go with our blessing.
Go with our thanks.
We love you Hal
*A nation waves for far too long after Hal disappears around the corner, dabbing it's eye with an FAW-branded hanky.
