FISHLOCK FOREVER

Photo by Lewis Mitchell [lewismitchellphoto.photoshelter.com]

Megan Feringa

The clock has just ticked past the quarter hour mark but already, the stir-crazy seeds are beginning to consume the small pocket of girls packed into section 109 of Cardiff City Stadium’s Canton Stand. Candied gummies are shuffled from one end of the row to the other. Boots are being compared. A game of slide down as many linoleum seats as you can without running into another human being is about to get underway. 

On the pitch, Wales Women have just suffered the first of their four offside goals. The girls pause to merrily join in on the vitriolic cascade of boos, assumedly directed at the general existence of the offside rule. Their collective sound is impressive: sweetly melodious, yet eerily venomous, like dolls with fangs. Not long after, the boos are abandoned. The Slide Game commences. 

I don’t wonder if the girls are failing to feel the weight of the night, the force of 50 years of Welsh female obstinacy that willed this very World Cup qualifying semi-final play-off into its unlikely existence. That would be unfair on them. They’re only eight years old, at best. At eight years old, I was still wrapping my head around whether I liked the blue Furby toy I won from a first-ever successful claw machine attempt, or found him petrifying. 

What I do wonder, however, is whether the girls comprehend the weight of watching a certain player in the flesh. If any of their parents have told them of their luck at catching sight of Wales’ most decorated player. 

Do you think they know, I write into my phone notes, that they are watching Jess Fishlock?

I tell myself they know the name. And odds are, they know she carries an iota of importance. It is her sharp-featured face that adorns so many of the campaign posters. But the same antsy sense of impending thrill that shoots through my body like a freak electric shock when the ball finds itself at Fishlock’s feet did not seem to be eating away at their little frames like it was mine. There was no reflexive inhale at the sight of her pointing for a pass and receiving it. 

The day when seeing Jess Fishlock don the Wales shirt becomes a collector’s item is not as far away as many would prefer to think. Fishlock is 35 years old now. She is still playing at an astonishing high level, her quality still inimitable. Only last year was she presented with the NWSL’s Most Valuable Player award courtesy of her performances with the OL Reign. Five days before Wales’ semi-final, she won the NWSL shield for the third time in her career. The title represents the latest addition to a ridiculously lengthy list of laurels that does not fit into the recommended word count for this article. 

But the small signs of an ageing star have begun to creep into Fishlock’s game: a lingering pause after a particularly breathless galavant forward; hands-on-knees before the half-time whistle; the now palpable post-sprint pant. She missed Wales’ final two qualifiers due to an injury that hinged more on the concepts of precaution and preservation than inability to play. They are granular signs, but they are signs nonetheless. 

I don’t feel pity that these girls might not know the Fishlock that I knew, mostly because they were privy to plenty of her on Thursday: the Fishlock who whirs with unfathomable vim like a maniacal hummingbird whipped up on amphetamines; who injects into her matches a simultaneous sense of elegance and pestering carnage; who relentlessly claws at victory. Besides, by law of averages, we all miss out on seeing an icon at their peak sooner or later. Such is the tax paid for being a football fan. 

Nevertheless, as one of the girls takes the Seat Game by the scruff of its neck, lifting a crumpled plastic water bottle in the air to signify her uncompromised rein, I remain concerned. Before Thursday night, Fishlock registered only one goal and two assists in this World Cup qualifying campaign, the former arriving in the 3-0 victory over Kazakhstan away from home; the latter in Wales’ 5-0 rout of Greece at Parc y Scarlets on a bitterly snowy evening in front of roughly 2,000 fans. Fishlock missed a sitter. 

It is testament to the development of the Wales squad that these record crowds have not needed to see Fishlock do the most typifying of Fishlock things. Other players have come into the fold and shouldered responsibility to propel Wales into their current position. In the alternative universe that is just the previous campaign, a Fishlock-less team crumbles. 

That is not to say Wales are now dandy without Fishlock. Last camp dished out an ice cold slap of reality that Fishlock’s relentless quality not simply replaced. Wales got across the line without her but only just. 

Still, it wasn’t until Thursday night that Fishlock was forced to present herself as Wales’ arch-competitor: dripping with swag and unperturbed confidence, the kind of mettle not readily associated with the larger identity of Wales and yet looks so effortlessly natural in this vein, in the same way producing a game-winning volley — a volley that was so stupidly good that some folks were reduced to denying its intention because it’s required skill was beyond their realm of comprehension — in extra-time of a semi-final looked so effortlessly natural. 

In her post-match comments, Fishlock said she told Angharad James to tell Rachel Rowe to whip it in front post and “I’ll do the rest.” 

No one questioned the veracity of her claim. Just like no one questioned the veracity of last year’s claim that Fishlock had played in 125 matches of Wales Women’s 199-match history. Because when it comes to Fishlock, to doubt her - and by extension those facts surrounding her career - is to find oneself dangerously on the back foot. To believe she is not capable of scoring disgustingly good goals on command. To believe she is not capable of adding World Cup to that stupidly long list of laurels that still doesn’t fit into this word count. 

Of all of Fishlock’s remarkable qualities, that is perhaps her most criminally underrated, her aura of unwavering self-conviction in the face of pressure; her typical blend of passion and blitheness, two qualities that should, by definition, offset each other but in the case of Fishlock only seem to augment each other. Everything she does looks easy, even the geyser-sized passion poured into every whizzing movement.

I was not concerned that Fishlock’s overall game was flagging but that this dimension of Fishlock had not yet registered for these girls, which is why they were never prematurely pulled out of their seats at the mere sight of Fishlock taking a breath of air.

Now it has. Now they will.