The Euro 2016 Draw

So ladies and gentle readers the draw for Euro 2016 has finally taken place and for the first time in what feels like a life time Wales were in it. Going into it I was dreaming of the glamour teams and a group involving the likes of Spain, Germany, Italy, Croatia and Sweden. I wanted a proper group full of mouth watering fixtures and slowly one by one the teams were drawn;

Up first we had the noisy neighbours next door, Woy Hodgsons boring army. The only top ranked team I didn't want as they usually stink up the tournaments with boring matches over the last few tournaments. Plus the media and fleet street regulars will be ignoring the Welsh point of view and covering the match from England's point of view with a 'Battle of Britain' mantra nobody cares about.

Please pretend there something witty written here - I have no Slovakia material.

Up last we had Russia, now its getting juicy, if I could take you back a decade dear reader, the closest Wales have ever got to the Euros before was Euro 2004 where we finished second in our group to Italy, cue highlights of the classic Wales 2 Italy 1 match;

We were drawn against Russia in the playoffs and after a hard thought 0-0 in Moscow they scored from a badly conceded free kick at Cardiff to knock us out. A proper grudge match here and the standout fixture of the group.

Well my thoughts are that its a disappointing unsexy group but we've got a decent chance of second place, the countdown to summer 2016 starts now...

Wales Qualify for Euro 2016!

Ladies and gentle readers last night for the first time in my lifetime the Wales football team has qualified for a tournament. Over the years we've come close a few times and other times never been in the chase. Only in the last qualifying campaign we finished second bottom of our qualifying group only ahead of Macedonia. In fact over the last decade its been campaign after campaign of building and we now have a team made up of Wayne Hennessey, Chris Gunter, Ashley Williams, Ben Davies, Jazz Richards, Joe Allen, Joe Ledley, Aaron Ramsey and Gareth Bales AND WE FINALLY DID IT!

Last time we even came close was a decade ago when the likes of Captain Fantastic Gary Speed, John Hartson, Simon Davies, Craig Bellamy, Simon Davies and Robbie Savage came second to Italy and we lost a playoff to Russia by a goal. A crazy campaign where we beat Italy with Simon Davies and Hartson coming third and fourth in the goal scoring table to Inzaghi and Del Piero. Sadly we faded after the first four games and it didn't happen.

Before that it was another decade before we came close with the legendary Terry Yoraths team of Ian Rush, Mark Hughes, Dean Saunders, Neville Southhall and Ryan Giggs fell at the final hurdle against Romania. Sadly no matter how many times I rewatched Paul Bodins penalty over the years it refuses to go in.

Recently there have been glimpses of what could be and reasons to keep the faith, be it Wales 2-1 win over Montenergro or a hard fought 1-0 loss to Germany. Finally we've put a string of results together and reached the promise land of Euro 2016 in France. Meaning for the first time this blogger wont be pulling names out of a hat to decide who to support.