Much of the buildup to this game revolved around the choice of Rodney Parade to play host to the crunch qualifier. Wales hoped the intimate environment of a sold out, hostile crowd of 5,000 would, as the Welsh No 10 Jess Fishlock put it, “rattle” the Lionesses.
Meanwhile English and Welsh fans were left aggrieved as the 24-hour sell-out left them ticketless.
No stone was left unturned, with the Wales defence at St Mary’s impenetrable in April and talk of Phil Neville needing width to break them down, Wales narrowed the pitch to its absolute limit – the faded lines of the original layout clear to see, a good two feet beyond the fresh paint. Because for Wales, this game was about the result – by any means necessary. Securing passage to a first World Cup finals is too much of a reward not to have that mentality.
The Wales crowd more than responded to Fishlock’s calls for boos, every tackle won and every ball forward saw the crowd in fine voice, with “you’re just a shit Gary Neville” a regular favourite of the fans behind the dugout.
The England manager could be let off the blip in Southampton. It was his first game on home soil, his first competitive match in charge. Now he knows his players inside-out – from pet names to when they eat ice-cream – and this was the real test of his managerial reign.
A little jig in the sixth minute was stifled as the flag went up after Nikita Parris had looked to put England ahead.
Had Neville undone the Welsh defence, despite the repaint, from out wide? It sure looked like it. Yet the flag was waved long after the Manchester City forward had wheeled away in celebration. Perhaps it was justice for the goal the visitors had been denied on England’s turf.
With Alex Greenwood and Lucy Bronze flying up the wings, behind a lively Parris and a less effective Toni Duggan, the manager’s predicted path to success was plain to see. Except despite the logic of it, despite the talent at his disposal, it seemed as if his team would not break down the side ranked 29th, 25 places below them in the Fifa rankings.
In the end the breakthrough came not from the wing but surprisingly through the middle, with Duggan throwing off her ineffective first half to fire home after she received a squared ball from Fran Kirby. It was the same for the second – with the middle looking more fruitful and Welsh legs tiring, a clipped ball from Bronze fell kindly for Jill Scott, who looped a header over the brilliant Laura O’Sullivan. While Parris added a deserved third with 22mins left on the clock.
In the end the ground did not matter, the hostile crowd – pushing their team forward to the end – was not enough, and the squeezed pitch was forgotten. A superior side, of fully professional players who play week-in week-out at the top level finally undid the squad made up of professionals and semi-professionals scattered across the leagues.
Barring an unlikely run of results all going their way, Wales are out, despite finishing their qualification campaign with this one defeat. The Wales manager Jayne Ludlow and her players will feel this loss but their drive to try to find a consolation goal as the time ticked away was just another positive for the side in red to take away.
England now travel to Kazakhstan on Tuesday with their passage to next summer’s World Cup tied up, leaving Neville with an opportunity to experiment. However, for 147 minutes the Welsh shut-out of this potent front four – WSL players’ player of the year Scott, PFA player of the year Kirby, Barcelona top scorer Duggan and Jodie Taylor, whose double clinched Seattle Reign’s NWSL play-off place – has provided an interesting blueprint to those teams with their eyes on the prize in 2019.
Neville has work to do to get this forward line to create space where there is none. That can now be his focus.
