As predicted in this very column, Mark Hughes has watched his team naturally progress a stage further and slowly but surely we have begun to find ourselves column inches (should that be centimetres nowadays? I don't want to get RP prosecuted!) that talk about, wait for it…the match. Yes, that's right. If you ever wanted to measure the meaning of what Wales have done this year you only have to pick up a national newspaper and read the match reports to notice that they have:

• more than two paragraphs, and,
• (heavens above!) pictures.

You don't need this proof because (although we're not commanding big pictures or full-page articles outside of Wales yet) every one of you who is a Welsh football supporter knows exactly how things have changed this year. All of a sudden your workmates want to talk about Welsh football; how they always thought Sparky was a great (fair, ha!) footballer and whether Wales will be in Portugal in two years' time. In moments of quiet contemplation this Christmas, sit back and allow yourself a satisfied smirk. Even Robbie Savage seems like a good thing. Strange days indeed.

ABER…WHERE?

No disrespect intended, but following the mild euphoria of beating Italy was always going to be difficult so let's have a bit of respect for the fairly decimated team (and none whatsoever for certain Premiership clubs) that went to Azerbaijan (go on, you point it out first time on the map then!) and came away with another three points, a clean sheet and a further reinforcement of the feeling within the whole squad that we really have got something going here.

It was always going to be a risk playing when we did but it proved a risk worth taking and what says it all for me is the number of people I have spoken to in recent weeks who want to know when the tickets for the return fixture in March are on sale. Most of them are English! Seventy thousand for that one really would make the world sit up and take notice.

I suspect the return fixture will prove no easier for Wales but, if nothing else, we have now proved that we are no longer 'big time charlies' and we can get out there and do it game after game regardless of the opposition and almost regardless of the team we put out. 2003 looks promising.

THE RISING

There's a long, long way to go yet but I have always said that, putting aside my ambitions for my club, all I ever wanted to see was Wales qualify for a major championship. No doubt, if it ever happened, my ambitions would be revised to 'do it again and win the thing' but you all know what I mean. Every other home nation but us has done it in the last 50 years (what is this strange obsession with the 1976 European Championships? Not a recognised achievement outside of the imagination of the writers in the Wrexham programme!) and it's always seemed a pipe dream. Now, at last, we can at least see how it might actually happen. Even if we fail this time around, we all owe Mark Hughes a big thank you for giving us back our football team. Amen to that!