“Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.......” (Millennium Stadium (Cardiff))

Member Name: merv

Product:	Millennium Stadium (Cardiff)
Date:	20/10/02 (1207 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fantastic atmosphere, Incredibly well designed, Emotional experience

Disadvantages: Traffic congestion

In the words of Max Boyce ‘I was there’. Wales 2 Italy 1.

Wednesday 16th October, a red-letter day. The day Wales finally converted to football. Surely no more will my Saturday afternoon radio coverage of Wrexham’s away fixtures give way to commentaries on minor games with the spherical shaped ball. Radio Wales take note.

Mark Hughes must take a lot of credit for the way Wales played, as must the players, but the real heroes of the day were the stadium, which must surely now rank as one of the best in the world and the 72,000 strong crowd which provided the best ever atmosphere of any match I’ve ever attended, even the one when Wrexham beat Arsenal.

What a terrific day. Starting off at the car park at Wrexham’s Racecourse ground at 12.30am we were all in high spirits, helped by a pint in the club bar before we started. A two hour journey to Hereford was shortened by a sports quiz which took people’s mind off the ‘long and winding road’ which constitutes the main route between north and south Wales.

At Hereford we had a two hour stop at the local Berni for a three course meal and two or three pints of lager to help lubricate the vocal chords for the task ahead.

The journey from Hereford to Cardiff was taken up by choir practice – the Welsh National Anthem had a fair hammering plus ‘Delilah’, ‘Sospan Fach’ and all the other usual suspects.

We arrived at Cardiff at 6.00pm. It was incredibly busy getting into the city and the parking was so horrendous that the queue our bus was in, on one of Cardiff’s main thoroughfares, just ground to a halt. The police decided to call it a day and converted the queue into a car park – God help anyone stuck in it who was travelling home from work!

The atmosphere in this city, which has seen so much investment since the Welsh Assembly was created, was absolutely fantastic. It was el


ectric, no trouble, people just enjoying themselves. Really, really friendly.

We walked to the Stadium through the hoards of people, it took us about twenty minutes. None of the people I was with had been to the Millennium Stadium before and we were all absolutely thunderstruck when we arrived. It is architecturally superb. It was lit up like the Titanic - a monster of a building.

No trouble getting in, minimal security checks, wide turnstiles and aisles, vast open spaces with plenty of toilets, programme kiosks and refreshment bars. Very well stewarded. The staff, were very friendly and caught the mood of the evening. Ticket prices were cheaper than the Conference, £10 for adults, £5 for concessions, a tremendous incentive for fans to come and fill the stadium. I’ve never seen so many women and children at a football match.

But the best was yet to come. You walk into the stadium proper and you are hit by the sheer magnificence of the building. Even my friend who for some reason is a season ticket holder at the dreaded Man U, had to admit that the stadium is much better than Old Trafford. It is so high and yet close to the pitch with a feeling of space. There’s plenty of room between the seats and its incredibly comfortable for a football stadium. Room enough for people to walk past without you having to stand up every time. Massive screens above each end of the pitch with incredibly sharp pictures to catch all the action replays, which under UEFA regulations can only be shown at half time and at the end of the game. The Millenium Stadium is the first in the UK - and the biggest in the world - to have a retractable roof, which takes 20 minutes to open or close, making it an all-weather stadium. The roof is supported by four corner masts which reach 93 metres into the sky, making it the tallest building in Wales.

Oh what a night, the roof was on – an indoor match with 72,000 watching. I couldn’
;t be
lieve it was happening. The Manic’s were playing a set when we arrived – not the CD, the actual band! This was followed by John Charles, Britain’s greatest ever footballer.

The teams came out, and were met by a huge roar, which was absolutely deafening. Before the anthems were played, the MC, using the excellent PA system had warned the crowd that anyone not singing along to the Welsh national Anthem would be ejected from their seats and forced to watch England.

That’s probably what got the adrenalin going. The National Anthems were played. The couple of thousand Italians did there best to sing along to the cheerful little ditty which constitutes their own anthem, but when Bryn Terfel sang the first line of the Welsh National Anthem, “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” there was a tremendous outpouring of emotion – nearly 70,000 people singing and crying simultaneously – not a dry eye in the shop. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end.

No need to say much about the match, Wales played out of their skins. Simon Davies scored a brilliant goal right in front of where we were sitting, which was cancelled out by a Del Piero free kick. Craig Bellamy scored an incredible winner dissecting two of the best defenders in the world and rounding the keeper. The atmosphere as the ball hit the back of the net was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

We left the stadium on cloud nine, walking on air to our bus, which was still clogging up the road where we left it. On a wonderful three hour journey back, after eventually managing to get out of Cardiff, we relived every moment, with some of the Welsh diehards (not me I might add) revelling in England’s paltry draw with Macedonia.

Next morning at work it was easy to spot those who had made the journey down south. Bleary eyed but happy and hoarse to the point of being unable to speak.

Why the En
glish FA have to spend £600 million plus, when Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium is so fantastic at a cost of £126 million I can’t understand. It must surely be one of the best stadiums in the world, and I was there, the day when Wales showed the best team in Europe how to play football. Roll on 29th March Wales V. Azerbaijan. I can hardly wait.

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