Craig Bellamy couldn’t have had a more impressive start to his job as Cymru’s 15th full-time manager than last week’s two Nations League games against Türkiye in Cardiff and Montenegro in Nikšić. It wasn’t so much the results – a goalless draw and a 2-1 win respectively – it was the way Cymru played, with a style, skill, confidence, intelligence and organisation that was so strikingly different to anything we have seen before. Bellamy has miraculously instilled a sophisticated and competitive excellence in his squad of players in just two brief months in charge. The mind boggles at what he can achieve in the four years minimum of his FAW contract.

What’s more, he communicates with unusual openness, steering clear of the prosaic platitudes and hollow hype that so bedevil modern football, while still expressing a contagious and boundless enthusiasm for the daunting tasks ahead (like getting to the 2026 World Cup in North America and, crucially, ensuring Cymru qualify for the 2028 Euros when we will be one of the hosts). I loathe the jarring jargon bandied about willy-nilly by coaches, reporters and pundits as they attempt to brandish expertise, claim some sort of insider knowledge and suggest finger-on-the-pulse modernity. You know, stuff like ‘high press’, ‘drop deep’, ‘defensive line’, ‘false nines’, ‘expected goals’ and so on and so forth. But Bellamy, although laden with more coaching qualifications than you can shake a stick at, eschews that gratuitous gobbledegook and instead homes in on meaningful explanations of his methods, exemplified when he said his team will play “in shapes not formations”.

So it was against Türkiye, with Cymru defying expectations and discarding old habits by dominating possession, territory, tempo and attacking ideas without ever becoming predictable. Using the goalkeeper as an integral part of distributing the ball out of defence certainly gave me the heebie-jeebies every time Danny Ward casually passed to Rodon or Davies inside the penalty area amid a swarm of Türks as I beseeched him to kick it into Row Z, but Bellamy was right and I was wrong. There were no embarrassing blunders, Cymru kept the ball and, what’s more, luring the opposition forward created space to release our attacking players. We should have beaten Türkiye, ranked 26th in the world (four places above Cymru), and would have if we had only been able to underline our superiority with goals – however a point was a good start in this competition and the classy performance was what really mattered. Bellamy demands super-fitness and tireless effort from his players, and the starting 11 plus the three subs used did not let him down. Worthy of particular praise was Sorba Thomas, currently with Nantes in France, for his revelatory performance as a constant menace to Türkiye on the left wing. Cymru’s head-to-head record against Türkiye now stands at P10, W4, D3, L3, Goals F13-A10.

Three days later, the win in Montenegro began sensationally as Cymru scored twice in the first three minutes with goals from Kieffer Moore (after 37 seconds) and Harry Wilson. Was this an all-time record? The answer is no! Cymru’s best ever start to a match was actually in a 5-1 win over Northern Ireland in Belfast in 1961 when Mel Charles (1935-2016) and Ivor Allchurch (1929-1997) scored in the first two minutes. But the opening barrage in Montenegro does equal what happened in the 11-0 defeat of Ireland at Wrecsam Racecourse in 1888 as the joint second-best start – in that game, still Cymru’s biggest-ever win, brothers Jack Doughty (1865-1937) and Roger Doughty (1868-1914) also scored in the first and third minutes.

Next question: was Kieffer Moore’s goal Cymru’s fastest ever? Again the answer is no! Of all people, a certain Mr C Bellamy holds that particular record for the goal he bundled in after just 15 seconds in a 4-0 win over Azerbaijan at the Millennium Stadium in 2003. Whether Moore’s goal counts as the second-fastest on its own cannot be categorically stated because the precise timing of Jack Doughty’s 1888 goal was not recorded – but at the very least it must go down as the joint second-fastest. Cymru’s two other first minute goals both came slightly later than Moore’s after one minute had elapsed: Dean Saunders against Sam Marino after 1 minute 20 seconds at Cardiff Arms Park in 1996 and Wyn Davies against Denmark after 1 minute 45 seconds at Wrecsam in 1965.

There were a couple more extraordinary things about this game: the torrential, ceaseless, monsoon-like rain that turned the pitch into a lake and made it a highly entertaining old-fashioned lottery; and a first cap for Leeds United reserve goalie Karl Darlow just a month short of his 34th birthday, which made the English-born grandson of Ken Leek (1935-2007), who won 13 caps in the 1960s, the oldest Cymru debutant since WW2 and quite possibly the oldest of all time*.

The result, which took the head-to-head against Montenegro to P4, W2, D0, L2, Goals F5-A5, was not only a first win for Bellamy but also puts Cymru in a strong position in Nations League Group B4. The next fixtures coming up in October are away to Iceland and home to Montenegro before the Group concludes with games away to Türkiye and home to Iceland in November. It could be just warning signs of incipient cock-eyed optimism, but I’m getting excited again!

*NOTE: Only two men could have been older than Darlow’s 33 years 11 months on their debuts, but their precise dates of birth haven’t been established: James Davies (c1844-c1910), first and only cap in March 1878, and John Evans (c1859-1939), first of three caps in April 1893.