Were it not for the Premier League-winning exploits of Leicester City, the Welsh national football team’s performance in the European Championships would have unquestionably been last year’s great sporting underdog story – remarkable not only because of Wales’s minnow status in international football (this was their first tournament appearance since the 1958 World Cup), but also because it came just five years after the team lost their manager Gary Speed, who took his own life. Jonny Owen’s film takes up the story as new manager Chris Coleman is put in charge in 2012 and follows it all the way through to the Euros and ultimately Wales’s semi-final defeat to eventual winners Portugal, with Coleman, the team’s star player, Gareth Bale, and some of the fans who went along for the ride are among the talking heads. At a time when Senna and OJ: Made in America are twisting the sports documentary into exciting new shapes, this is a fairly workaday affair, but in its brisk, cheerful telling it does a solid job of evoking the thrill of the Dragons’ unlikely run.
