Dial M for Merthyr

This was a mantra from my old man. It was always what he said. He couldn’t get his head around people not planning. If I was stuck somewhere (Brecon Jazz one year...in a phone box...desperate) How did you get there? Uhhh....I don’t know. You don’t know? Uhhh....I thought that....ummm You thought what? I don’t know. Exactly! Get a bus or thumb a lift. It’ll teach you.   (And I did...I thumbed a lift and arrived home freezing and damp...and it did teach me). One time I’m at the table....I’m about 8 years old. I’m gonna be a footballer!   Are you now? Yes! (If this was a Hollywood film the music would start and there’d be a montage of me trying hard and scoring goal and him shouting from the touchline...instead it was Merthyr Tydfil) And what’s the back up? I don’t need one. Don’t you? Nope! I’m gonna be the new Pele.   Pele? Yes! And what if you’re not. I will be.   But what I you don’t get past 5 foot? (I was below average...

Cast your mind back to around 5pm on Saturday 30th November 2019. Can you remember where you were, who you were with and what you were doing? You can’t? Understandable, it was well over 18 months ago. I can though, in fact I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was sat in Gareth Bale’s boozer opposite Cardiff Castle, I was with some work colleagues for a pre Xmas do meet up and I was watching a television nervously waiting for the draw for the finals of Euro 2020 to commence. Seeing as, in 40 years of watching Wales at home and 25 years of watching them away I’ve only ever been in that position once before (4 years previously), events like that are burned in my memory. Four years previously. I was a little slow of the mark booking accommodation for the 2016 finals and ended up with some, er, right ropey joints. So this time I, along with my two regular Wales Away travelling pals, Ritchie Question and Mackie, took it serious. We knew that we could only play in two groups, Baku/Rom...