It’s been a great time to be a Wales supporter these last few years, so I’m not going to be too critical of tonight’s 1-0 home defeat by Poland which consigned them to a relegation back to the second tier of the Nations League with a record of one draw and five defeats, so I suppose there can be few complaints about our fate really.
The feeling I’m left with at the end of the campaign though is one of frustration for a couple of reasons. First all five of those defeats were by single goal margins – true, we were fortunate to only lose 2-1 to Belgium three days ago, but with all of the other four we came very close to drawing and, overall, I’d say three or four points would have been a fairer reward for our efforts.
The second reason for frustration relates to tonight’s match – if we deserved a draw tonight, it was only because we finally started playing in the last ten minutes or so when the Polish goal led something of a charmed life, combined with fine goalkeeping throughout by Wojciech Szczesny, to cling on to their win.
Before that, it was disappointing that Wales’ approach was akin to a team trying to achieve a giant killing by attempting to rough up superior opponents. Referee Andris Treimaris earned the wrath of the home fans with a string of contentious decisions late on which favoured the Poles (including the obligatory ridiculous booking for Keiffer Moore for heading the ball), but, earlier on he was pretty lenient I thought when Welsh defenders committed a string of fouls – how Ben Cabango escaped.a yellow card, I don’t know.
The words more thought, less haste sprang to mind as Wales wasted the advantage in pace they had over the Polish defence in the opening half especially with a headless chicken like approach which got the crowd excited for the first fifteen minutes or so but achieved little in terms of threatening to score the goal they needed to have a chance of staying up. It was fitting that the first chance Wales had was from a booted clearance (I’m sure it wasn’t a pass) which found an unmarked Dan James who drew the first of a series of good saves out of Szczesny.
There was also a shot by Brennan Johnson which was deflected just wide by a touch off a team mate, but it was the Poles who tended to provide what quality that was on show. However, the closest they came scoring was when Wayne Hennessey almost came up with his version of the Danny Ward in Prague howler when he miscontrolled a simple back pass, but in the end did very well to prevent the ball from crossing the line when a goal looked certain.
The second half offered more of the same with Poland looking the more likely scorers even if it had been a miserable night for Robert Lewandowski, who one header which drew a decent save from Hennessey apart had looked out of sorts.
However, all of that changed on fifty seven minutes when the prolific goal scorer provided a lovely assist for Karol Swiderski who tucked the ball away by nutmegging the helpless Hennessey from twelve yards.
Wales huffed and puffed after that, but were too frantic as poor delivery and wrong options became more and more frequent. Wales have shown over the past six or seven years that they’re better than they showed for the majority of this game.It seemed to me that the late improvement they showed was down to a combination of contributions by substitutes (Rubin Colwill had his moments and Sorba Thomas put in a string of much better quality crosses than we’d seen all night during the few minutes he was on) and, maybe, tiredness on some players parts which made them have to think more about what they were doing, rather than trying to do everything at a hundred miles an hour. As I mentioned earlier, we had a lot of attacking pace, but achieved very little through it.
Of course, it needs to be noted that Ben Davies, Joe Allen, Aaron Ramsey and Harry Wilson were still all out injured as were Chris Mepham and Ethan Ampadu because of suspensions following yellow cards picked up against Belgium and it’s easy to forget about David Brooks who has received the all clear to resume playing following his treatment for Leukaemia, but has, I believe, received a setback in the form of a hamstring injury.
In both of our games this week p, I think it’s the calm authority of Davies at the back that we’ve missed most, followed closely by Allen who may be in the twilight of his career now, but knows all there is to know about playing in central midfield at this level.
In the closing minutes, Szczesny made a great save to deny Brennan Johnson (again Wales’ best attacker even if he did take it by himself a bit too much for my liking) and he also showed sure handling when dealing with crosses as Wales tried, and largely, failed to find Moore’s head. Indeed, it was Gareth Bale who enjoyed more aerial success, notably when his effort from a Thomas cross came back off the crossbar.
Try as they might though Wales were denied a goal and will know that they go into the World Cup in as poor a run of form as they’ve been in for years. However, I’m of the view that, even if tonight was disappointing in terms of quality of performance, we’ll be able to show why we’ve had so many years in the upper echelons of the FIFA rankings (we’ll probably drop out of the top twenty for the first time in about six years after this week’s results mind) – who knows, the expected high temperatures may be a good thing in some ways if they cause some of our players to be less frenetic than they were tonight.
Away from the full international team, it’s been disappointing as well from the Under 19s who followed up a 0-0 draw with Hungary with a 2-0 loss to Ireland in their mini tournament which also includes Gibraltar, this means that we cannot now catch the Irish at the top of the table.
It was better news on the Cardiff City front however with a pair of 2-0 wins over Swansea City on successive days at Leckiwith Stadium. On Saturday, the Academy team came out on top as they made it four wins out of four in the league (they were thrashed in a cup tie at Coventry mind) thanks to second half goals from Kyle Kenniford from the penalty spot and Cody Twose.
There was more evidence of the turning of the tide in games between us and the jacks in women’s football which started at the end of last season when City beat their rivals thanks to a couple of Phoebe Price goals in the first half.
There were mixed results in the Preliminary Round of the W John Owen Cup for AFC Porth and Ton Pentre as their games were decided on penalty shoot outs – the former drew 5-5 with Llangeinor FC before making it through 4-2 on penalties, but Club Cymric won theirs 3-2 to end Ton’s interest in the competition. In a truncated Highadmit South Wales Alliance programme, Treherbert Boys and Girls Club were 2-1 winners at AFC Butetown in the First Division.
