Let me just get this straight: we’re out of Europe but we’re still in Great Britain. Aren’t we? Scotland want to leave GB now we’re out of EU. Wales likes GB but hates both EU and needless acronyms. The Northern Irish simply don’t count. Not in the big debates.

So when Andy Murray wins at Wimbledon, which he may well do this year now that The Miserable Serb has finally lost a grand slam game, I can claim just a little ‘British glory’ from the very small part of the English-hating Scotsman that is proper-English British. Even though I can’t stand him. And he makes The Miserable Serb seem like Coco the clown by comparison.

Its like when Rory McIlroy wins the golf. I’m suddenly forced to cross 2 ‘red lines’. I have to pretend I’m interested in golf, and imagine, for the purposes of polite conversation, that it is an actual ‘sport’. And I have to claim allegiance that other bit of Great Britain. The bit that was pretty much unmentionable for most of my early life.

And now its the Welsh. But this time I’m going to embrace my inner leek totally. Last night’s match against Belgium was a triumph for everything good about football. A triumph for small nations against big ones. A triumph for a ‘team’ over a group of highly talented individuals. And a triumph for my Welshness against my last remaining Englishness, shattered not once within the last week but twice.

Wales in the semi-finals of the European championships is almost as remarkable as Iceland making it to the quarter-finals. Wales is a small country renowned for singing, rugby and excessive drinking. The national team has one superstar, in the ever-wondrous Gareth Bale. It has two pretty decent players in midfield, Joe Allan and Aaron Ramsey, even though the latter is both a very recent blond and worse still, a Gunner. They have a superhero captain in the ever-awesome Ashley Williams. And the rest are the usual Welsh mish-mash of third division rejects, wife-beaters, drunk-drivers and Hal Robson-Kanu. Who scored last night. The best goal of the tournament by a country mile. Whichever country. And he doesn’t even have a club. Unwanted. Well, until last night, that is.

The goal was such a thing of beauty that grown men cried. Trees straightened. The moon… ok, nuf hyperbole.

Gareth Bale plays a 40 yard pass of total perfection into the path of Ramsey who’d made only the second such run of his career without an ensuing injury, and controls beautifully. Crosses to Robson-Kanu, the un-signed player, 12 yards out, back to the goal, 3 defenders in the way. He did a ‘Cruyff’. Johann himself lifted from his grave to smile and give a thumbs-up, then went back to dead as the striker took out all 3 defenders with his turn and slotted the ball sweetly past the keeper.

So happy to be Welsh.

Happy Saturday, boyo

A xxxx