An hour and a half before kick off I was standing on the concourse in the Ahmed bin Ali Stadium laughing to myself. The madness of it all sinking in. Four and a half thousand miles from home, in the desert in the Middle East listening to Dafydd Iwan singing a Welsh language rebel song on a tannoy. Surrounded by flags from Bow Street and Llandysul and Glan Conwy and Church Village. Look how far we’ve come.
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I am a terribly nervous football fan. During games of any significance (all games then) I usually sit hunched for 90 minutes. My leg does this weird tapping thing and I get this completely unique stress headache. Normal people don’t choose a hobby that causes existential dread.
But I was just laughing, at least I was at this point.
The day started ten hours earlier when bucket hats started popping up around the centre of Doha. Slightly bewildered faces underneath them, searching for a party 64 years in the making.
And then suddenly there we were. Together. In huge numbers.
I don’t know if I’m just getting soft as I get older but there were moments in yesterday’s build-up when I had to just check myself for a second, take a deep breath as I felt the bottom lip just quivering a tiny bit and the eyes glazing over just a little.
They just hit momentarily every now and then, when a second was taken to actually process what I was looking at.
A sea of red. A choir of voices. A slice of home in the gulf. It was finally here.
My brother had traveled in on Saturday night and I was struggling to find him in the Intercontinental City Hotel. Someone asked what he looked like. “He’s wearing a bucket hat and a red shirt,” I said to laughter.
People came to say hello, I had conversations with strangers, I met people with mutual friends, I saw someone I went to school with.
There were men and women and children (who think this is all totally normal), husbands and wives, fathers and sons, Welsh people of all ages.
You know you’re on a Wales Away trip when the Welsh language is being heard everywhere. In the lift and in the corridors and on the streets and in the trains.
The hotel staff went to get power tools to hang up our flags. They wore bucket hats and played the national anthem and Welsh language drill music on the sound system.
And of course we drank the bar dry. But with smiles on our faces and arms around shoulders.
And then the Barry Horns played and whipped us all up. And then Dafydd Iwan turned up and made us all cry.
The Welsh players describe playing for their country like playing for a club side. Being in the Red Wall is like being a member of a family. Everyone looking after each other, helping each other and reining in the odd family headcase. The mad uncle. The cousin that’s gone off the rails.
As we marched to the stadium in our thousands we sang Men of Harlech and we sang for Gary Speed. The people of Qatar smiled and cheered and took videos and pictures. Mexicans and Argentinians wished us good luck. Then the stadium came into view, lit in red, white and green.
Didn’t the Red Wall look magnificent on the World stage? Outnumbered but not out-fought, not out-sung, a story of our history. We cried as we sang our anthem for the world to hear. And boy did they hear.
And then a football match started. The whole point of us being here. And we were terrible. And it sort of dawned on you that we might go home in a week, with three losses and nothing much else to show for it. For all this.
But then a six foot five god walked out for the second half and held off our American allies like they were rag dolls.
Then the man who always delivers for Wales delivered for Wales. Our greatest ever, taking his moment on the stage he was born to perform on.
The roar. The release. The ecstasy. Those few seconds are the drug that makes you travel across the world to see someone you’ve never met kick a leather ball full of air into some rope.
On Monday November 21, 2022 I saw Wales play at the World Cup. And I saw us score a late goal thanks to a man we will never see the likes of again. It was everything I dreamed of. And it was worth the wait. And in a few days I get to do it again.
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