While Wales face a tricky task in reaching back-to-back World Cup tournaments, former striker Rob Earnshaw says they will fear nobody. He told BBC Sport: “I know Craig Bellamy, I played with him and his mentality is ‘give us whoever, it doesn’t matter’. You just feel that we’ll take anybody right now and it doesn’t matter, and a lot of that is down to Craig Bellamy.”
The Republic of Ireland are feeling equally as upbeat. They stunned Portugal, who saw Cristiano Ronaldo pick up the first red card of his 226-cap international career, in Dublin before seeing Troy Parrott net a historic hat-trick away in Hungary. He completed that treble, wrapping up a dramatic 3-2 win, in the 96th minute.
Parrott, after netting five goals across two must-win games, said of his heroics: “Look, I love where I’m from. So this means the world to me. My family is here…this is the first time I’ve cried in years as well. It’s unbelievable. Everyone’s crying. I said against Portugal that this is what dreams are made of but tonight, I don’t think I’ll ever have a better night in my whole life. It really is a fairytale. You can’t even dream about something like that. Honestly, I have no words to describe the emotions right now.
“Everyone wrote us off at the start of the group. But I couldn’t have said it enough, that there’s always a chance. And we’ve taken the chance. Everyone should be proud of the group of players that are over there. To go down twice and come back like that, it’s beautiful.”