When Rob Page announces his Wales squad for their first World Cup in 64 years on Wednesday, he will return to an old haunt for something of a trip down memory lane. Back to Tylorstown Miners’ Welfare Hall, the last surviving one in the Rhondda valley, which this week was home to a Welsh wrestling extravaganza and last month held a Tom Jones and Tina Turner tribute act.
Page smiles when informed the comedian Owen Money will take centre stage a few days after him. “It was my old snooker hall,” he says. “Before I moved away at 16 [to play for Watford] I’d go in, not through the big doors in the middle but to the left, down into the cellar and there was a little cubby hole where you’d get your tray of balls. I was not exactly Ronnie O’Sullivan.”
The magnitude of leading Wales at a World Cup is not lost on Page, who won 41 caps, and Rhondda council closing roads to enable satellite trucks to broadcast the event live across the country underlines that the tournament is big deal to a small community of about 4,000 and far beyond. Page has family dotted around the valleys – from Ferndale to Penygraig – and fond memories of playing kick-a-can in the street and representing Tylorstown Boys Club, which his father helped run. “My mother helped wash the kits every Sunday – you’d see them out on the washing line. White top, claret socks, claret shorts … if a claret sock went in with the white jerseys, you’d be playing in pink the following week.”
In those days there was no football pitch in Tylorstown so home matches were in nearby Maerdy, the last coal-mining pit in the Rhondda to close. “My dad would have to drive round and knock some of the lads out of bed because they’d slept in. It used to take us an hour just to get to Maerdy, which should have been 20 minutes. You’d see the wind and the rain driving down the valley and you’re freezing cold, but you’re playing because you absolutely love it.” A centre-half’s dream, then? “It wasn’t a winger’s pitch, let me tell you,” he says with a smile. “You’d be ankle-deep in mud. Great memories. It shapes you and I thought: ‘Do you know what? If I can make a career out of this then I’m going to throw everything into it.’”
So was it always football for Page? “My PE teacher in forms one and two, Warren Evans, was a fanatical football fan and so he used to just throw us a football and we’d go play in the Darran Park for an hour. That was our lesson. Brilliant. Kelvin Wigley, a PE teacher I then had in Maerdy, was [focused on] rugby so I didn’t kick a football in forms three and four – it was all rugby. I played a couple of games. I was full-back, centre – anywhere other than in the front row.”
Page did, in effect, have a front-row seat when Michael Sheen visited his squad in September after the actor’s rousing speech on A League of Their Own. Sheen, who was presented with a Wales shirt by Gareth Bale, adapted his original speech, which went viral, and had the players in the palm of his hand. “I said to him: ‘It’s taken me two years to make a nation cry and it took him two minutes and 40 seconds,’” Page says, laughing.
“It was incredible. The part that got me was when he said: ‘Feel the breath on the back of your necks, because that’s every man, woman and child from back home supporting you’ … We’ve invited him to come out [to Qatar] and be part of it. Wherever he’ll be, he’ll definitely be supporting us.”
Sheen is not the only performer to inspire Wales of late. The folk singer Dafydd Iwan sang Yma O Hyd before and after Wales’s nervy playoff final victory over Ukraine in June, second time around with the help of Bale and his teammates. “I have it on my phone, all my kids have got it and every now and then we’ll sit together in the car going somewhere and blast it,” Page says of Wales’s World Cup anthem, though he was missing from the mass sing-song on the pitch. “You won’t see me in any of the pictures because I just took a step back and just took it all in,” he says.
Was he choked up? “Umm, yeah,” he says, eyes watering. “And I was really proud as well, yeah. It was like a carnival. I was just so pleased, and relieved. There was a lot of emotion that we had to hold in that week. The last 15 minutes were just incredible; the stress and the pressure – ‘Come on, boys: just hang on’ – and Wayne [Hennessey] in particular that day gave an incredible performance to help us achieve it. The players showed their true class at the end because they went straight over to show their appreciation to the Ukraine supporters, and rightly so.”
The last manager to lead Wales at a World Cup, Jimmy Murphy, ended up with a blue plaque at 43 Treharne Street, his old house in Pentre, about three miles from where Page grew up, and there is another degree of symmetry in that Wales’s first game in Qatar is against the USA, the opponents for Page’s first game in interim charge in November 2020. In 1958 Wales exited at the quarter-finals courtesy of a Pelé goal and Page is adamant they can reach the knockout stages. “We’re not just going out there to make the numbers up,” he says.
Last week Page and his staff spent two days sifting through clips of Iran, USA and England, their final Group B opponents. What would success in Doha look like? “We’re a country of three million people, so when you strip it all away, what the boys have achieved is incredible. But when you’re there, you’re greedy.”
Wales have qualified for three of the past four major tournaments and it is a ride fans will not want to get off in a hurry. “Euro 2016 set the wheels in motion. The connection with the supporters doesn’t just come because you wear a bucket hat, because you wear an old jersey or because you sing a couple of songs … you’ve got to win games of football as well. I’ve got friends in England that enjoy watching Wales play, and I’m not going to name names … they really enjoy it.”
Wales’s head of medical, Sean Connelly, has visited Los Angeles FC and Nice to keep tabs on the fitness of Bale and Aaron Ramsey respectively but Page is not bothered that others are playing in League Two. “Jonny Williams is just as important to that group as what Gareth Bale is, and that’s why I continue to select him. He is first class. Along with Chris Gunter. These lads have created this environment.”
How different is the Wales setup compared with when Page played? “Chalk and cheese,” he says in a room adjacent to the gym at Wales’s impressive base. “We’d have to borrow training grounds, park pitches, whatever pitches we could get our hands on really, sometimes in England. I remember training abroad and Carl Robinson went over on his ankle while we were trying to do some team shape because of a raised drain that was two inches high. In the meantime, we’ve taken every excuse away from the players. We have to compete with the likes of LA, Nice and Spurs, because if we offer anything less than that, they’ll pull you up on it.”
Page, who lives in Sheffield, previously managed Port Vale and Northampton but leading a nation brings a different spotlight. It also means it is harder to keep a low profile. “I took my kids to Cyprus for a week and I landed in Paphos airport and went to get the bags and realised on the screen that I was being joined by a flight from Cardiff,” he says.
“My son nudged me and went: ‘Dad, do you think you’ll be recognised?’ I said: ‘Nah, probably not.’ Within seconds, a Cardiff City supporter recognised me and word got round so a few more wanted to come and have a photo. It’s a bit surreal at times as well because you’re still pinching yourself. When people come up to me thanking me, I’m going: ‘What are you thanking me for?’”
