Centre-back Joe Rodon said it was the first time this Wales team had seen Bellamy in such a rage.<\/p>\n
For anyone who followed the 46-year-old as a player, it would come as no surprise. The former Liverpool and Manchester City forward courted controversy on and off the field over the course of a career packed with notable achievements but several flashpoints too.<\/p>\n
As much as Bellamy might have mellowed as a coach, his half-time tirade demonstrated that his fiery temper is still in there somewhere.<\/p>\n
And frankly, the game was so insipid that it needed something \u2013 or someone \u2013 to liven it up.<\/p>\n
This, after all, was not how Wales had imagined Tuesday would play out.<\/p>\n
This was meant to be another of those famous nights under the Cardiff City Stadium lights, with a place at the World Cup on the line.<\/p>\n
Instead, what Wales got was a friendly against Northern Ireland. At home, yes, but not the game they wanted. In fact, it was a match nobody wanted.<\/p>\n
Having lost their World Cup play-off semi-finals against Bosnia-Herzegovina and Italy respectively five days earlier, given the choice, Wales and Northern Ireland would probably have had the night off to wallow.<\/p>\n
Or at least that was the option a large number of fans appeared to have opted for, judging by the empty seats.<\/p>\n
The match had been a sell-out in terms of tickets sold, with Wales fans encouraged to buy in advance to guarantee their place in the event of a play-off final against Italy.<\/p>\n
Given the gut-wrenching nature of their penalty shootout defeat against Bosnia, it was understandable that many of them couldn’t stomach this fixture.<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland supporters, meanwhile, had been offered refunds by their association, who sensed the lack of appetite, even if their defeat in Italy had been less of a sickener.<\/p>\n
Still, it could have been worse. When these sides met in the short-lived Nations Cup 15 years ago, only 530 people turned up at Dublin’s cavernous Aviva Stadium to watch a Wales side featuring Bellamy win 2-0.<\/p>\n
The sense of apathy did not reach those depths at Cardiff City Stadium, which was still close to three-quarters full, but it was undoubtedly flat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Centre-back Joe Rodon said it was the first time this Wales team had seen Bellamy in such a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-506280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}