Tomorrow night, Wales will be 90 minutes away from making history and booking themselves a spot in their first ever major tournament. However Ireland and a home crowd of over 25,000 hoping to see their team qualify for their first ever European Championships will stand in their way.
At The Halfway Line prior to kick off tomorrow night, we got the chance to hear from Wales captain Angharad James.
‘These are the games you want to play in’ Says bullish James
James was asked about the occasion and how it will feel to play against Ireland at the Aviva Stadium in front of a huge crowd, she responded, “I think as a player these are the games you want to play in. The magnitude of this game, to play in a stadium as beautiful as this, and to have you know 25,000 fans here tomorrow, [these] are the games that you know as a little kid you dream of, and to do it for Wales, and to put the red shirt on and do it with this group of people, this group of staff, is special, and hopefully together, we can put that good performance on tomorrow.
The Welsh captain was keen not to miss out on praising the travelling Welsh faithful too. She noted, “I know we’ve got a lot of Welsh fans traveling with us too, so we won’t be alone out there. And yeah, hopefully we can make them proud and put performance that we’re proud of.”
James relishing a ‘special night’
With over 25,000 tickets sold for Tuesday night’s match, it will be a loud one in Dublin. James was asked about how that might affect her and her team. She smiled:
“We relish these opportunities as players. We want to play in to play against fans that are booing you, it spurs us on even more. And there’s just something within the athlete that whenever you play away from home and you have you know a group that are against you, [it] makes you want to achieve it even more. And we’ve spoken about it’s going to be loud here tomorrow, and we have to be smart and I’m sure our 400 Welsh fans will be right behind us too. So yeah, it’s a game that we all want to play in, the magnitude of it, but also away from home in Ireland, here in Dublin, it’s going to be a special night.”
The Wales Captain on Sophie Ingle
When asked about the presence of Welsh players who are injured with the squad for this camp, she noted, “yeah, it’s not just about the 23, 24 players have travelled with us in this squad.” James continued, “Sophie’s been integral in that from Helen Ward to Elise [Hughes], who’s picked up an injury recently too.”
James continued to wax lyrical about the Chelsea midfielder “it’s so nice to have people like Sophie around the group. She’s a leader. She is our leader, and she’s integral to the group. So just her presence does help us.”
James on ‘the biggest game’ she’s ever played in
James was asked about how less senior players will deal with the pressure in what is probably the biggest game of their careers and what, as captain she can do to help. “I think it’s probably the biggest game we’ve all played in. It’s a huge moment for for Welsh football, and it’s a huge moment for this group. As a group, we’ve made sure that we’ve we’re focused on the task ahead.
James continued, “Every time that that we represent Wales, it’s the same feeling that we all have, and we represent Wales with such pride and passion, and hopefully we you can see that in our performance tomorrow. But as a group of staff as well, they’ve worked really hard to make sure that that we are just focused on on our own individual performance and collectively as a group, if we deliver our game plan, I have every confidence in this group that we’ll get the result tomorrow.”
BBC reporter Jo Currie followed up, asking James if she felt like it’s Wales’ time? Without skipping a beat James answered with steely resolution, “Absolutely.”
Kick off is at 19:30pm on Tuesday with the two sides hopes of a maiden European Championship place hanging in the balance.
