Owain Fon Williams column: Security is 100 per cent prepared 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. Here, he talks about the security setup in France and looks ahead to Wales’ opening game with Slovakia.
SINCE we arrived in France it’s all been about preparing for the first three games.
Before that, it was a case of getting our fitness up, because there was one or two boys who hadn’t played for a few weeks.
Everyone is starting to look sharper and we enjoyed the open training session we had earlier this week, because there was a lot of locals that came down to watch.
We had a bit of a mad one on Tuesday – one of our security guys ran into our meeting and shouted “there’s been an attack!”. When a big, ex-SAS guy says that, you don’t hang about or say ‘aye, good one’. You get moving.
Gareth Bale was sat next to me and I’ve hurdled over him and legged it straight down to the basement of the hotel. All the guys, the manager included, were bricking it. Only when we get down there does the security guy say “right, that was a drill”.
I had nightmares on Tuesday night thinking about it because this is something that’s been on the news. There are police and security around the place and everyone is aware of the issues in France over the last few months. It was just a test and you hope to God you don’t have to experience it for real.
They are 100 per cent prepared, should anything happen. There’s so much security – the Welsh FA has got their own, the hotel has their own and I imagine Uefa have got their own too. You can’t really go 10 yards without seeing security.
With what’s happened here in the last few months, it’s in the minds of everyone that they want to be aware of what could happen. They are doing it really well.
There’s some dressed up like Jack Bauer or Liam Neeson and there’s others who are in plain clothes, so they’re not instantly recognisable. But it won’t affect the tournament – that will go ahead as normal.
It does put things in perspective though. When I’m sat at home watching the news, I can’t believe some of the things that these guys have done in the past. But when it happened on our dummy run it shook me up, to be honest. We’re in the country where it all happened and it’s been on the news, so you can’t get away from it.
Tomorrow is going to be a tough game. Slovakia are a decent side and I hope everyone is fit and ready for it. We have meetings twice, sometimes three times a day and later in the week, we’ve looked at how they might play.
Normally when these tournaments are on, I’m on holiday or at home in the garden. I usually have a big poster in the kitchen and fill it in, not just the results but who is going to play who in the later rounds. It’s something I’ve done since I was a kid because I’m so interested in it.
I will still watch every single game I can. We’re travelling down to Bordeaux today, so I hope I’m there in time to watch the opening ceremony and the first game, because it’s always spectacular. Personally, I think the Euros, World Cup and Champions League are the three biggest competitions in sport.
As a nation, we’ve been waiting for so long just to be playing in this tournament, so it’s great to get underway. If we can get it right tomorrow, there’s no reason why we can’t take three points.
