Quote Originally Posted by Monster munch View Post
Toshack blooding the youngsters in the late 2000's has helped create a consistent squad. Speed and Coleman then took it on to the next level with a bubbling set of players who were also friends and its just kicked on ever since.
Also playing our home matches in front of a near packed CCS i think has helped. Creating a home and identity for the national team, fans have settled into preferred areas, Wales home games have now been great fun and atmosphere i don't think ive seen in my lifetime (i started wales games in the early 90's rush/hughes/horne era).
We had the odd one or two good days in the Millenium (Italy win, Azerbaijan 4-0) but it just never felt home and there were a lot of horrible evenings there. The team and fans just couldn't settle there.
Lets keep it going. Rising the rankings proves the better group draws and we actually can get to some of these tournaments and more likely to qualify for. When we used to be drawn 4/5th seed we never stood a chance. Been a lot of hard work over the last 15 years.
On the other hand, if our ranking hadn't dropped so low under toshack we wouldn't have had to try to qualify from 5th pot for a couple of tournaments