Wales

Good luck Wales in their Semi Final against Portugal :)
James Collins looks likely to play so a Hammer to cheer on.

One thing that crossed my mind before the Tournament kicked off was "does having a really good song help you?" thinking of New Order's brilliant tune in 1990 which helped us get to the Semi's.
I love the Manic Street Preachers so the official Wales tune was a big favourite of mine, considering once again most of the England songs are crap.

Seems to have worked :)

European Championship 2016 Draw

The draw for next summer's Euros.

Group A - France, Romania, Albania, Switzerland
Group B - England, Russia, Wales, Slovakia
Group C - Germany, Ukraine, Poland, Northern Ireland
Group D - Spain, Czech Republic, Turkey, Croatia
Group E - Belgium, Italy, Republic of Ireland, Sweden
Group F - Portugal, Iceland, Austria, Hungary

England and Wales drawn together, with Slovakia and Russia should be ok?
Northern Ireland got a tough draw with the Germans and Poland.
The Republic get "the group of death" with Italy, Belgium and Sweden.

Roll on the 11th June for England's first match against Russia :)

Euro 2016

Twenty teams now qualified for next year's European Championship, with the last 4 to be decided in November's play offs.

Hosts - France
Group Winners - Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Italy, Northern Ireland, Portugal, Spain
Runners Up - Albania, Croatia, Iceland, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Wales    
Best 3rd Place - Turkey

Play Offs - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, Hungary, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine

So far so good for the Brits with England and Northern Ireland winning their groups and Wales finishing as Runners Up, the Republic will have to wait and see who they get in the Play offs.
Holland have missed out but the rest of the big names are there, so it should be tough.

World Cup 2014 Day 1

A good start for England with a 5-0 hammering of Moldova :)
They played well but didn't need to be at the top of their game against a really poor side.
Sometimes in these type of games it gets scrappy if you don't score early but we were helped out in the 3rd minute by the Dutch ref giving a penalty for handball which a lot of refs wouldn't have?
Lampard banged it in and it was all plain sailing from then on :)
Lampard scored again and Defoe made it 3-0 at half time.
The second half was pretty dull as we seemed happy to hang on to the 3-0 but after bringing on Walcott and Welbeck we livened up and Milner finished off a great move to make it 4-0, for some reason Milner didn't seem too happy at scoring his first goal for England in 32 games probably realising he was once again lucky to be on the pitch after another poor performance, Baines got the 5th with a massive deflection from his free kick and the only downside was Terry's late injury.
My Ratings - Hart 6, Johnson 7, Baines 8, Lescott 7, Terry 8, Gerrard 4, Milner 5, Lampard 9, Cleverley 8, Oxlade-Chamberlain 8, Defoe 7, Subs - Carrick 5, Walcott 6, Welbeck 6 + England Fans 10

James Collins made sure he was fit for the Hammers next game by getting sent off for Wales against Belgium, they would have struggled with 11 men so no surprise that the Belgians won 2-0.
Northern Ireland were unlucky against Capello's Russia losing 2-0 including a dubious penalty.
The Republic left it very late against Kazakhstan with Keane and Doyle scoring in the last 2 minutes to give them a 2-1 win.
Looking around the other games some of the big names didn't have it easy, Germany only scored 3 against the Faroe Islands, France beat Finland 1-0, Portugal only managed a 2-1 win against Luxembourg, Italy drew with Bulgaria, Norway lost to Iceland.
Bosnia had the best result of the night with an 8-1 away win in Liechtenstein with Man City's Dzeko getting a hat trick.

Gary Speed

RIP Gary Speed :(

What a shocker, a great player for many years and he was turning out to be Wales best manager in many years.
Really saddened by this.

Wales

Just been reading about the Welsh ladies under 19 team who won 21-0 against Georgia yesterday, this follows a 15-0 win by the senior welsh ladies team against Azerbaijan in a world cup qualifier last month.
Seems obvious to me that they should dump Bellamy, Bale etc and play the girls in their next Euro 2012 game :)