Plenty of differences distinguish Wales senior managers Gemma Grainger and Rob Page from each other.
For starters, Page is a self-professed tracksuit manager. "It’s ridiculous what they wear on the sidelines now,” he says. Grainger, on the other hand, is a navy-power-suit-and-no-socks kind of gal, which is her method of switching into “game-mode”. Grainger’s first pair of boots were Mizuno, Page’s were Hummel. Where Grainger savours a goal "all the time”, Page emphatically prefers a last-ditch tackle all day long. And between top bins or a Panenka, it’s the 47-year-old Welshman from the Valleys who would go for death-or-glory.
Even so, as the two managers converse with WalesOnline on behalf of M&S Food’s Eat Well, Play Well campaign at a grassroots session in Barry, it becomes evident that the pair share more similarities than not. They’re both football mad — get Grainger talking about football at your own peril, warns one Wales international. They're both dog people, enjoy summer getaways to the beach, prefer pizza to pasta, are more than capable of putting the average football fan to shame with their keepy-uppy skills, and when asked whether either enjoy marmite on anything, both managers’ noses twitch in near identical degrees of disgust.
