Rob Page will go back to a familiar haunt for a bit of a journey down memory lane when he announces his Wales team for their first World Cup in 64 years on Wednesday. Back to Tylorstown Miners’ Welfare Hall, the sole surviving one in the Rhondda valley, which hosted a Welsh wrestling spectacle this week and a Tom Jones and Tina Turner tribute show last month.
The final remaining one in the Rhondda valley, Tylorstown Miners’ Welfare Hall, hosted a Welsh wrestling spectacle last week and a Tom Jones and Tina Turner tribute performance last month.
When Page learns that comedian Owen Money would take the stage a few days after him, he grins. He explains, “It was my old snooker hall.” “Before I moved away at 16 [to play for Watford] I’d go in, not through the big doors in the middle but to the left, down into the cellar and there was a little cubby hole where you’d get your tray of balls. I was not exactly Ronnie O’Sullivan.”
Page, who has 41 caps, is aware of the significance of leading Wales at a World Cup, and the Rhondda Council’s closure of roads to allow satellite trucks to broadcast the match live throughout the nation emphasises just how important the tournament is to the region’s 4,000 residents and beyond. From Ferndale to Penygraig, Page’s family is dispersed throughout the valleys. He also has happy recollections of playing kick-a-can in the street and representing the Tylorstown Boys Club, which his father assisted in operating. Every Sunday, my mother helped wash the kits; you could see them hanging out to dry. If a claret sock was worn with the white jerseys, you would play in pink the next week. White top, claret socks, and shorts.
Home games were held in nearby Maerdy, the last coal mine in the Rhondda to close, as Tylorstown did not have a football field at the time. “Some of the guys would sleep in, so my dad would have to drive around and get them up. We used to travel to Maerdy in an hour even though it only needed to take 20 minutes. Even though it’s chilly outside and the wind and rain are blowing down the valley, you continue to play because you simply adore it. Hence, a center-fantasy? half’s “It wasn’t a winger’s pitch, let me tell you,” he says with a smile. “You’d be ankle-deep in mud. Great memories. It shapes you and I thought: ‘Do you know what? If I can make a career out of this then I’m going to throw everything into it.’”
Was Page’s passion always football? “My PE teacher in forms one and two, Warren Evans, was a fanatical football fan and so he used to just throw us a football and we’d go play in the Darran Park for an hour. That was our lesson. Brilliant. Kelvin Wigley, a PE teacher I then had in Maerdy, was [focused on] rugby so I didn’t kick a football in forms three and four – it was all rugby. I played a couple of games. I was full-back, centre – anywhere other than in the front row.”
When Michael Sheen visited Page’s team in September following the actor’s stirring statement on A League of Their Own, Page really had a front-row seat. Sheen modified his initial speech, which went viral, and had the players in the palm of his hand when he accepted a Wales jersey from Gareth Bale. Page laughs, “I told him it took me two years to make a nation cry and it took him two minutes and 40 seconds.
“It was incredible. The part that got me was when he said: ‘Feel the breath on the back of your necks, because that’s every man, woman and child from back home supporting you’ … We’ve invited him to come out [to Qatar] and be part of it. Wherever he’ll be, he’ll definitely be supporting us.”
Wales has recently been inspired by many artists, not only Sheen. Before and after Wales’ tense playoff final victory over Ukraine in June, the folk singer Dafydd Iwan sang Yma O Hyd twice, the second time with the assistance of Bale and his teammates. “I have it on my phone, all my kids have got it and every now and then we’ll sit together in the car going somewhere and blast it,” Page says of Wales’s World Cup anthem, though he was missing from the mass sing-song on the pitch. “You won’t see me in any of the pictures because I just took a step back and just took it all in,” he says.
Was he choked up? “Umm, yeah,” he says, eyes watering. “And I was really proud as well, yeah. It was like a carnival. I was just so pleased, and relieved. There was a lot of emotion that we had to hold in that week. The last 15 minutes were just incredible; the stress and the pressure – ‘Come on, boys: just hang on’ – and Wayne [Hennessey] in particular that day gave an incredible performance to help us achieve it. The players showed their true class at the end because they went straight over to show their appreciation to the Ukraine supporters, and rightly so.”
The last manager to lead Wales at a World Cup, Jimmy Murphy, ended up with a blue plaque at 43 Treharne Street, his old house in Pentre, about three miles from where Page grew up, and there is another degree of symmetry in that Wales’s first game in Qatar is against the USA, the opponents for Page’s first game in interim charge in November 2020. In 1958 Wales exited at the quarter-finals courtesy of a Pelé goal and Page is adamant they can reach the knockout stages. “We’re not just going out there to make the numbers up,” he says.
Last week Page and his staff spent two days sifting through clips of Iran, USA and England, their final Group B opponents. What would success in Doha look like? “We’re a country of three million people, so when you strip it all away, what the boys have achieved is incredible. But when you’re there, you’re greedy.”
Wales have qualified for three of the past four major tournaments and it is a ride fans will not want to get off in a hurry. “Euro 2016 set the wheels in motion. The connection with the supporters doesn’t just come because you wear a bucket hat, because you wear an old jersey or because you sing a couple of songs … you’ve got to win games of football as well. I’ve got friends in England that enjoy watching Wales play, and I’m not going to name names … they really enjoy it.”
Wales’s head of medical, Sean Connelly, has visited Los Angeles FC and Nice to keep tabs on the fitness of Bale and Aaron Ramsey respectively but Page is not bothered that others are playing in League Two. “Jonny Williams is just as important to that group as what Gareth Bale is, and that’s why I continue to select him. He is first class. Along with Chris Gunter. These lads have created this environment.”
How has the Wales setup changed from the time Page played? He says in a room near the gym at Wales’ spectacular headquarters, “Chalk and cheese.” Sometimes in England, we had to use rented practise fields, park fields, or any other available fields. When we were trying to perform some team shape during a training session abroad, Carl Robinson fell over on his ankle due to a raised drain that was two inches high. We have denied the players of any justifications in the interim. Because if we give anything less, teams like LA, Nice, and Spurs will take you up on it, we have to compete with them.
Page, who lives in Sheffield, previously managed Port Vale and Northampton but leading a nation brings a different spotlight. It also means it is harder to keep a low profile. “I took my kids to Cyprus for a week and I landed in Paphos airport and went to get the bags and realised on the screen that I was being joined by a flight from Cardiff,” he says.
“My son nudged me and went: ‘Dad, do you think you’ll be recognised?’ I said: ‘Nah, probably not.’ Within seconds, a Cardiff City supporter recognised me and word got round so a few more wanted to come and have a photo. It’s a bit surreal at times as well because you’re still pinching yourself. When people come up to me thanking me, I’m going: ‘What are you thanking me for?’”
