Late, late equaliser for Wales, but still two points dropped?

6 Responses to Late, late equaliser for Wales, but still two points dropped?

1. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 26, 2025 at 1:25 pm

   Fine report Paul always.
   Just one quibble near the end.

   No, NOT that you don’t excoriate Joe Allen for committing team suicide in the 91st minute, with a kamikaze pass back… in fairness the chap should have retired from international football before the last World Cup Finals squad were named (along with Bale and Ramsey… two others who had passed their sell-by-date for international duty also).

   So I need not mention my usual mantra of pass the ball FORWARD… because that is frankly obvious.

   No, Paul, my quibble comes over these words of yours on our equaliser… ‘ However, there was still time for Williams to swing in a long ball from halfway’. Oh dear, that so saddens me.

   You are a man whose football knowledge is profound. But even the most profound thinkers on the game can end up with Freud working overtime in their subconscious. And I submit that here your love of tiki-taka has gained ascendancy over your usual thoroughly commendable desire to choose the right word.

   ‘A long ball’ is sooo dismissive of what it was. It was in actuality a brilliant considered pass… especially when one realises that it came in the 95th minute from a player in Neco who had played every minute of the game with his usual 100% endeavour… and must have been fatigued.

   If you look at the replay of the goal, you will see Neco quickly look up and aim for Kieffer’s head. Magnificent.

   Magnifico! A bulls-eye.

   Yet you call it a ‘long ball from halfway’. Yes, you’ve come some way from the days when you’d use the word ‘hoof’… but Paul, can you not my dear fellow see a certain irony when I compare that description with this one of a few days earlier on our third goal against Kazakhstan…

   ‘…
   Rabbi Matondo scored his first goal for his country as Thomas’ low cross following a superb cross field pass by Jordan James
   …’

   A ‘superb cross field’ pass eh? Compare that with ‘to swing in a long ball from halfway’. And no guesses as to whose words they were.

   That is so unfair of you Paul. And – risking seeming to blow smoke your way – I have to say that fairness has been your main characteristic down the MAYA years.

   So please go look here…
   https://tinyurl.com/bdcn3263
   and click on the BROOKS TO THE RESCUE! video and marvel at the precision of the even more ‘superb’ Williams pass (given the fact that we were almost inside the jaws of defeat). And marvel at the unselfishness of Kieffer’s header.

   (Craig is doing a fine job… but is remiss in not starting with Kieffer. Alas Brennan is no striker… and I am not convinced he is a winger who should make the team-sheet before Dan and Sorba.)

   Off to lunch.

   TTFN,
   Dai.
2. The other Bob Wilson says:

   March 26, 2025 at 8:09 pm

   I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong this time Dai. There’s two things I’d say to you. First, I preceded my description of the goal by saying there was still time for Wales to come back after conceding such a late goal, but that chance seemed to have gone when Jordan James had his shot blocked. What I then said, was that there was still enough time though for another attack – my comment was all about there being enough time left, rather than any kind of comment on the type of attack it was.
   Second, I’ll tell you what I was saying and thinking as Neco Williams got the ball – I said to my dog who was sat alongside me on the sofa “get it in there!” while thinking at least it will be a quality ball if Williams is playing it. You really have got me wrong, if you believe I would have been imploring Wales to play short measured passes on halfway when we were one down with seconds to go and we had a six foot five target man waiting for the ball in their penalty area.
   Maybe I could have been more complimentary about the pass, but I would have backed Kieffer to produce a header like that – in fact, I’d have played him from the start instead of Broadhead and played Johnson in the Broadhead role.
3. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 27, 2025 at 5:01 am

   A good spirited defence of your position Paul: I would expect nothing else from you. Bravo!

   Only one thing though: you have managed to read something into my words that was never there in the first place.

   I was frankly bemused to see you say
   ‘…You really have got me wrong, if you believe I would have been imploring Wales to play short measured passes on halfway when we were one down with seconds to go…’

   I believed no such thing, because you are one of the sanest people I know. For instance, I know that you, like me, found it frustrating to see Horvath play a short goal-kick in the 90th minute of our Luton defeat… when short goal-kicks had been failing us all season.

   No, my whole point was that such is your belief in tiki-taka that it has permeated your choice of words. A ‘superb cross field pass’ from one player becomes three days later , ‘a long ball from halfway’. C’mon, Paul compadre… ‘chwarae teg, boyo’…!!

   It was measured to the inch was that Neco pass. So, the question I ask myself here is if I had labelled that very good Jordan pass as ‘superb’, what word would I have left in my lexicon for an even greater pass?

   Not sure I know what to say. ‘Stellar’ maybe… or ‘exquisite’? (No, perhaps not.)

   But I would not have chosen ‘a long ball’… for Neco deserves much better than that.

   But hey Paul, intelligent people can disagree agreeably… as we occasionally do.

   TTFN,
   Dai.
4. The other Bob Wilson says:

   March 27, 2025 at 10:07 am

   I don’t think Williams’ pass was as good as Jordan James’ for that goal against Kazakhstan Dai and, more importantly, I don’t rate it as highly as the two Neco played to Harry Wilson out in Iceland I think it was which led to goals. To introduce a term from other sports, I don’t think the “degree of difficulty” involved in the pass for the goal on Tuesday was as high as it was for the passes by James and Williams that I refer to above. As I say, maybe I could have recgnised that it was a good pass by saying something like “Williams did well to pick out Kieffer Moore’s head”, but, for a player of Neco’s ability, I maitain it was a fairly easy pass – it was good that it fell to him to play rather some others in the team, but for someone who is a regular in a team that is likely to be playing Champions League football next season, was it really that brilliant?
5. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 27, 2025 at 2:57 pm

   Paul,
   It is only fair and proper that you have the last word… given that MAYA has been one huge heroic effort from you these past few years.

   The only problem here is that you end your last posting (above) with a question that you want me to answer.
   So I will oblige.

   And my answer is ‘Yes, I sincerely believe Neco’s pass was the greater of the two’. And here again is for why…

   True, neither pass has any element of luck in it in that both players can be seen quickly looking at their target and promptly delivering. But here’s the decisive factor: it is the LEVEL OF JEOPARDY that marks the difference.

   In one instance Wales are 2-1 up and whilst hardly ‘cruising to victory’, are relatively comfortable.

   In the other, we are a stunned team who have just had a member insanely committing hara-kiri and have exhausted all but a few seconds of our injury time. Despite tired legs in the 95th minute after being perhaps our most energetic starter still on the pitch, Neco does not blow it… boy-oh-boy, that was some pass.

   I respectfully submit the reason that pass did not get the proper recognition it deserved, is because it came down ‘with snow on it’…

   Such is the pernicious grip that tiki-taka has on the subconscious of the British press in these days of King Pep Guardiola, that any ball that gets to the man in the POMO position within 2 seconds, is regarded as ‘first cousin’ to the ball that comedian Peter Kay delvers here*…
   https://tinyurl.com/bdz7fwa7

   *Except when Ederson places on a sixpence one of his 70 yarders, they regard that as an example of Pep’s genius. Never mind that he has bored us to tears with his pass, pass, pass… backwards and square… winning the Premier League almost because his opponents have fallen asleep.

   Some of us still revere Charles Hughes who died the same month as our greatest ‘Ladies Man’ since Rex Harrison… and are immensely ashamed of the FA for insisting we all have a minutes applause for Sven whilst ignoring the voice of a man who had immense courage of his convictions, but died a forgotten man.

   Charles should have realised that he should have gone with the herd.

   TTFN,
   Dai.
6. Dai Woosnam says:

   March 27, 2025 at 6:21 pm

   Oops… I missed off my postscript there… here it is, three and a half hours later…

   PS… Imagine if Neco had screwed up that brilliant pass and put too much on it (as he easily could have) and it had sailed over even Kieffer’s head for a goal kick…!! Cue, widespread groans in the crowd, and the final whistle.

   So the pressure was really on him…

   TTFN,
   Dai.