Owain Fon Williams column: Chaos precedes every game at Euro 2016
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During this summer’s European Championships, Caley Thistle and Wales goalkeeper Owain Fon Williams will be penning an exclusive column for The Inverness Courier. He explains the hidden side of tournament football and his interest in some local history.
EVERY day before a game is just chaos.
There is so much to do it’s ridiculous. We’re based in the north of France and our games are dotted over the country, so we need to fly everywhere. I didn’t realise how big France is!
UEFA has requested that every team has to train for a minimum of 20 minutes on the actual pitch they will play on, the night before the game.
So on Sunday it was a quick shower after training on the morning, get some lunch and then a flight down to Toulouse, then you’re sorting the hotel out and getting out to the ground. You’re here, there and everywhere!
It’s easy enough to do because it’s a chartered flight, so we don’t have to go through passport control. Security with the team is high so there’s no stress on that part. It’s just time consuming.
We had a look round the ground before the Russia game and we were told to expect 35,000. As I’m writing this, we’re in a good position and hopefully we can get the job done.
We gave England a good go but any time you lose a game like that – we saw it with Caley Thistle last season – it kills you. But in tournament football, you’ve only got three or four days to sort yourself out before the next game, rather than a week. We’ve focused on getting things right.
There was a great atmosphere for the England game because there had been some concern beforehand. My brothers and cousin were coming for the game and we were wondering whether they should travel, given what the Russians did to the England fans. Russia were playing just 30 minutes away in Lille and I think both England and Wales fans were a bit shook up.
But the atmosphere was superb. There was a bit of banter but no fighting. It’s like what you see at the rugby, where fans bounce off each other.
My brothers and cousin went off to Belgium after the game to see the memorial to the famous Welsh poet, Hedd Wyn. He won the bard’s chair at the National Eisteddfod, a Welsh festival, but never collected it because he was killed in Belgium during the First World War.
I’ve been to that cemetery before and it’s quite eerie – thousands of boys were buried where they fought and most were between 16-40, which is just like the crowd at a game.
It was 70 years ago a couple of weeks ago since D-Day and we’re staying in Brittany. On the grounds of our hotel is a German gunpoint that is facing out to sea.
They would have been firing that at the British coming in and you just wonder how many people lost their lives, right where I’m standing.
I’ll end on some sad news and I couldn’t believe it when Ryan Esson texted me to say that Caley Thistle groundsman Matty Armitage had died. He was a top, top man and I had a lot of time for him.
People always say in these instances “oh, he was such a good guy”, but Matty genuinely was. He was such a lovely lad and it’s a massive shame that he’s gone.
