If those who were among the 13,250 who watched QPR beat Cardiff City 1-0 at Ninian Park on 17 November 2006 can remember the game now, I’d say it’s for one of two reasons. The first one being that the goal was scored very late on by a teenage striker called Ray Jones who would be dead within a year as a result of a car accident.
The other, far happier, reason for remembering the match is that it was the league debut for someone who, around fourteen and a half years later, would set an international record for his country that he’s never going to lose.
Chris Gunter was not long past his seventeenth birthday when he made that first start for City and, with our Academy producing some serious young talent in its early days, the scouts from bigger clubs were soon arriving to run the rule over the right back.
With the club really struggling financially at the time, City did not take much persuading at all to cash in on Gunter and a move to Spurs was agreed on Christmas Eve 2007. He only played six times for Spurs in the Premier League before moving to Nottingham Forest at the age of twenty one and, in a way, that transfer mapped out what the next decade would consist of for Gunter when it came to club football – he became a good Championship standard defender who played over four hundred times for Forest and Reading between them, before dropping into League One this season with Charlton.
So, Gunter had had a good club career, but not one you’d necessarily equate with the first player from his country to win a hundred international caps.
That’s what Gunter did tonight though as he captained Wales in their friendly game with Mexico and one of the biggest compliments I can pay him is to say that he turned in what was a typical Chris Gunter Wales performance.
With Connor Roberts and Neco Williams barring his way into the team in the right back position where he has won the large majority of his caps and the emergence of wing backs not really playing to his strengths so to speak, Gunter has become a footballing equivalent of the experienced county cricketer who drops into the second eleven to help bring younger players through and, if that is going to be his role for the rest of his Wales career, then I can think of no one better to do it.
Gunter was faultless tonight, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise because he nearly always has been when representing his country – an awful lot of his opponents would have much bigger reputations than him, but when have you ever seen Gunter have a poor game for Wales? Never spring to mind for me, but I dare say he has, although I bet you could count them on the fingers of one hand.
Gunter has been a solid six to eight out of ten performer for Wales for just short of fourteen years now – there are plenty of bigger names in our international squad these days, but none of them got to a century of caps before him, hearty congratulations to him on that magnificent achievement.
As for the game, Wales won it 1-0 and, although it was another one of those ever increasing occasions where the team I’m supporting only have a fleeting acquaintance with the ball, it was a good performance by a makeshift team against a Mexican side virtually at full strength. The Mexicans are ranked number nine in the world and so this was a notable win for Wales in a match which was a good bit more entertaining than the norm for friendlies during international breaks.
The fact that it was a more physical game with something of an edge to it helped somewhat and, with better finishing, it would have produced a lot more than a single goal.
If not quite as impressive as the previous goal we’d scored, this one was a quality one scored at, more or less, the same time that Harry Wilson had netted against Belgium on Wednesday. There were good contributions from Gunter, Matt Smith, Rabbi Matondo and Tyler Roberts whose pass found Jonny Williams who got by his man and played over a low cross to the near post that was deftly rolled ever so slowly into the net by Keiffer Moore.
Williams and Moore were the only City players on show tonight, with the latter taking something of a buffeting that saw him limping at times before he was withdrawn at half time, while the former made a pretty good job of playing as a right wing back before going off with five minutes to play with what looked like an injury.
The BBC’s stats showing four goal attempts by Wales (one on target) and nine for Mexico (three on target) suggest we were a bit fortunate to win and I suppose we were (notably when Wayne Hennessey made a somewhat fortunate save with his foot to deny Hirving Lozano and an unmarked Jesus Corona fired over from around the penalty spot with the last kick of the game).
However, Wales showed tonight that they have a depth, even in a squad like this one that is missing some very important players through injury, that they haven’t always had, but I still don’t get why, a fine performance from Matt Smith notwithstanding, why an in form Will Vaulks who is getting regular first team football for a team challenging for a place in the Premier League next year is considered inferior to the assortment of reserves and players currently with League One or Two clubs that made up our central midfield options tonight.
