January 18 – Wales off the Mark | On This Football Day

January 18 – Wales off the Mark

THE Welsh have always been more into rugby and singing than football but their national team is the third oldest in the world, behind England and Scotland.

The first match the Welsh side ever played was a bit of a drubbing: a 4-0 defeat away to Scotland. The return leg wasn’t that much better as the Scots hit two goals without reply at The Racecourse Ground, Wrexham on 5 March 1877.

The Wrexham Advertiser described the match thusly: “Both teams played remarkably well and the contest throughout was an exceedingly close one. The Scotchmen exhibiting the utmost proficiency in the essential art of passing while the home team worked admirably, the ‘Backs’ exhibiting some really excellent play.”

Everyone is a critic though and one fan wrote in the letters section of the Wrexham Advertiser: “It was noticeable that the Scotch forwards were not ambitious of doing the work of the back players and this was in contrast to the Welsh team. Had the Cymry forwards played well up in the first half several goals would have been scored in their favour, but they would persist in following the ball up and down the ground.” Everyone is an amateur manager.

So, two games played, no goals scored and six conceeded. The Welsh could have been forgiven for packing the whole thing in there and then, but bless them, they carried on and today in 1979 they played their third ever international fixture: England away.

The teams turned up at The Oval to find the ground covered in snow. Rather than call it off the two captains agreed they would play just 60 minutes instead of the usual 90. The delightfully named referee Richard Bastard (really) agreed and the match was on.

The atrocious weather and the fledging nature of the sport meant the attendance for this match was easily the lowest for any England game in history with reports varying from a ‘crowd’ of 85 to 300.

Herbert Whitfield got the scoring underway for England in the 8th minute and Thomas Heathcote Sorby added another 12 minutes later. Just when it was beginning to look like another hiding for the plucky Welsh, William Henry Davies of Owestry etched his name into history forever when he scored the first ever goal for Wales half way through the second shortened half. The press said he scored: “with his usual brilliant dash landed the first goal for Wales, amidst tremendous cheering”.

It may have been another defeat but at least the team was up and running in the goal-scoring charts and technically, they were still the third best team in the world. In 1882 they really got their act together when they took on the irish team and trounced them 7-1 in Wrexham.

Although it’s not quite from 1879, we’ve got some footage for you below of Wales’ Wyn Davies scoring against World Champions England at Wembley in November 1966. Davies goal was not much consolation though as England eventually put five past the visitors.

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Here at OTFD we think Man City have about as much chance of signing Kaka as Rafa Benitez does of beating Fergie in the mind game stakes, but the fact City are reportedly ready to pay the Brazilian £500,000 a week would not even have been allowed had it not been for Jimmy Hill and events that happened on this day in 1961.