How Iceland – twice – froze Wales’ World Cup hopes in the 80s

Leon Barton

Last month’s 2-2 draw in Reykjavik was actually the first time Wales had played Iceland in a competitive game for forty years.

There were three friendlies in between, all Welsh wins. The most recent was a decade ago, with Gareth Bale’s remarkable ‘off the pitch’ goal the most memorable moment in a 3-1 victory (a few weeks later Bale would repeat the trick on the other side of the pitch in Real Madrid’s Copa Del Rey final victory over Barcelona).

In the summer of 2008, John Toshack’s very young Welsh side travelled out to the North Atlantic where debutant striker Ched Evans hit the only goal of the game with an exceptional backheeled flick.

Far less spectacularly, a Paul Bodin penalty settled a drab encounter in front of only 3,600 spectators at Ninian Park in 1991.

When it’s come to the crunch though, our record against Iceland is quite spectacularly bad.

There’s a section in Nick Hornby’s ‘Fever Pitch’ where he states ‘the Welsh and the Irish have very little choice when it comes to putting out a team, and the fans know that their managers simply have to make do. In those circumstances, occasional poor performances are inevitable and victories are little miracles’.

Mike England

If Hornby’s correct in that assessment (which I happen to think is actually way off although probably far truer when the book was published in 1992 than it is now) then Mike England must be one of the biggest miracle workers that Wales has ever known.

His eight year reign as Wales boss between 1980 and 1988 included two victories over England, a 3-0 obliteration of Spain and a 1-0 defeat of an exceptional World Cup-bound French team in Toulouse.

Not just victories, but occasional resounding wins over some of Europe’s most renowned footballing nations.

Why then, did Wales fail to qualify for a single tournament in the 1980s despite the quality of players such as Ian Rush, Mark Hughes and Leighton James in the forward positions, Everton’s trophy collecting skipper Kevin Ratcliffe at the heart of the defence and possibly the world’s best goalkeeper in Neville Southall?

And that’s before we mention Mickey Thomas, Peter Nicholas, Joey Jones, Brian Flynn, David Phillips, Pat Van Den Hauwe… all quality top flight players available to England (the manager, not the country) during that decade.

The Euro 1984 campaign was perhaps the most ridiculous near-miss in a long list, with Phil Stead, author of ‘Red Dragons – the story of Welsh football’ describing the series of events that led to Wales’ failure to qualify for the tournament in France that summer as ‘astounding’.

Only one team would qualify from the group and that team looked like Wales with only nine minutes of their final qualification game remaining. Needing a win to guarantee a place at the finals, a Robbie James strike had put the home side in charge against Bulgaria during a dominant display, only for a Bazdarevic drive to level the game in the closing stages.

Crestfallen

All hope was not lost though. The final game of the group saw the Bulgarians take on Yugoslavia. Any sort of win at all would be enough for the Yugoslavs, while Bulgaria needed a two goal victory to progress. A draw or one goal win for Bulgaria would see Wales qualify. At 2-2 in the 92nd minute, defender Ljubomir Radanov headed home a winner to leave Yugoslavia jubilant and Mike England crestfallen; ‘I have never felt so disappointed. We were forty seconds away from qualification. There is no more to say’.

That Wales missed out on Euro 88 was largely a reflection of how hard the team found it to claim competitive victories on the continent in those days. One victory from the final two games would be enough, the problem being that those games were in Denmark and Czechoslovakia. The Danes won 1-0 in Copenhagen despite a decent Welsh display but a disinterested and out of contention Czechoslovakia would surely provide a bigger opportunity to claim that win.

Only 6000 fans turned up in Prague. According to Ian Rush ‘we shrugged off the eerie lack of atmosphere to batter them for the whole of the first half… I missed a couple of good chances. If either had gone in, I am certain it would have set us up for a convincing triumph’. In the event, the Czechs won the match 2-0 and Denmark, not Wales, went to the finals in West Germany.

In the 1980s, the World Cup was the one though. So, more painful than the Euros misses were the two times Wales failed to reach the sport’s showpiece event that decade, with the island of Iceland at the heart of both failures.

The 1982 campaign started with five clean sheets and four victories, including a 4-0 in Reykjavik, Mike England’s first qualifying game as manager. The first dropped point came with a 0-0 draw in Wrexham to the USSR in the fifth game (it was 2 points for a win in those days).

A 2-0 loss in Prague against Czechoslovakia followed but that wasn’t too much of a problem considering Wales had a game at home against Iceland to come, and having eased to victory in the Icelandic capital the previous year, surely it would represent a pushover.

The game was at the Vetch Field, which made sense as the Swans were flying high in the top flight at the time. Six Swansea players were in the starting line up. It was a hugely talented team but perhaps crucially, midfield lynchpin Brian Flynn was missing due to a knee injury sustained whilst playing for Leeds United. To give an indication of how important Flynn was to the team at the time, imagine a 2014-2019 Wales going into a crunch game without Joe Allen and you get the idea.

With Wales 1-0 up and the referee about to blow the whistle for half time the lights went out. The players, and the 20,000 crowd were plunged into darkness due to a fire in the electricity supply box. Joey Jones recalled the incident in his autobiography: ‘We were taken off for 45 minutes. It was a break which cost us our concentration and rhythm and although we were professionals, it was hard to keep our minds tuned in when the body was stiffening up’.

When the players finally returned, they played the final minute of the first half before immediately turning around to start the second half. Iceland then equalised and although Alan Curtis restored the Welsh lead, the forward-loaded Welsh side were vulnerable to counter attacks and conceded again, the game ending 2-2.

Tbilisi

That left Wales needing to get a point in Tbilisi against a crack Soviet team, unquestionably the hardest game in the group, especially considering the rigmarole of travelling such distances in those days. A tired looking Wales went down 3-0 to leave World Cup hopes in tatters.

The group’s two Eastern bloc countries – USSR and Czechoslovakia – then played out a friendly draw to ensure both teams qualified and Wales stuck at home. It was all so predictable, but then, Joey Jones was very honest when concluding, ‘we blew it – no question’.

Ludicrous

Wales’ World Cup 1986 campaign was quite frankly ludicrous in it’s topsy turvy nature. Ian Rush missed for the first two matches, something which Mike England saw as the key factor in Wales’ appalling start to qualification.

Wales travelled to Reykjavik in the September of 1984 for the first game. Defender Joey Jones main memory is of ‘loads of banners saying ‘GO HOME MONKEY THOMAS’..we couldn’t work it out at all – every time Mickey (Thomas) touched the ball the crowd went mad, booing and whistling’.

At half time Mike England asked Thomas if he’d punched one of their players: ‘No. I’ve not done a thing, honest’ was the maverick midfielder’s reply.

In the 50th minute Magnus Bergs scored for the home team and a flat Welsh side were unable to mount any sort of response.

Fuming at the final whistle, England told the players ‘I’m not going to say anything about the game now…but you,’ turning to Thomas, ‘you upset everyone and had everyone on at us.’

The players went out to drown their sorrows and it was only in a Reykjavik nightclub that the ‘monkey’ mystery was solved.  ‘Where’s your monkey mask now Thomas?’ asked an Icelander. Joey Jones recalls that ‘Mickey and I turned to each other and laughed’.

Ahead of the game at the Vetch in ’81, Jones and Thomas had done an interview for the Daily Star, wearing monkey masks (for some unexplained reason!).  The headline was ‘WE’LL MAKE MONKEYS OUT OF ICELAND’. It had apparently become a story in Iceland, one that the locals remembered three years down the line.

Thomas was able to gain some measure of redemption when he scored at Ninian Park in the return game two months later. Mark Hughes got the other as Wales scraped a 2-1 win.  Thomas’s goal was the only Welsh goal not scored by Ian Rush or Mark Hughes during the campaign, with the pair  – considered by England ‘the two best strikers in Europe at the moment’ – scoring three apiece.

This low key victory was – unexpectedly – followed by two all time great Welsh wins; 1-0 in Scotland, and 3-0 at home to Spain.

A result at home to Scotland would have seen Wales into a play off to face the winner of the Oceania section. If Iceland were to take points off Scotland, that result would be a draw. A Scottish win in Reykjavik would leave Wales needing a victory. It seemed the Icelanders would do us a favour, with the score still 0-0 going into the final stages, before an 86th minute Jim Bett strike made the Scottish task easier and the Welsh task harder.

Showdown

Only a win would do now in a Ninian Park showdown in the September of 1985. A confident Welsh team raced into an early lead when Mark Hughes blasted home in the 13th minute but as the clocked ticked down the Welsh performance became nervier and with only ten minutes remaining the ball was smashed against Dave Phillips’ hand.  The Scots were awarded a lucky penalty (once again…Joe Jordan in 1977 and all that), Davie Cooper put it away and Scotland were virtually guaranteed a World Cup place. Sadly, their manager Jock Stein had a fatal heart attack close to the end of the game.

There was still a slim chance of Wales reaching the World Cup if Spain were to lose to Iceland in Seville. Guðmundur Þorbjörnsson put the visitors ahead in the 35th minute to raise Welsh hopes but Spain came back to win 2-1.

Iceland, you big teases…

So, why were Wales able to beat Spain and Scotland but not Iceland? England himself put it down to the absence of his star striker Ian Rush, saying ‘ having a fit Ian Rush in the side would, I believe, have made all the difference’, but perhaps there was also an issue closer to home.

When I asked Brian Flynn for his opinion of England’s management, he chose his words carefully; ‘er…how can I put this…not the most tactically astute’. England was a motivator, not a tactician. When it came to the supposed ‘minnows’, there seemed to be a belief that the extra quality in the Welsh team would take care of the result.

In contrast, predecessor Mike Smith was meticulous in his approach for every single game. For example, in 1974 he had photographs of Luxembourg’s players blown-up ‘as a means of ensuring that every player knows what his opponent looks like’. Wales won 5-0, Mike England won his 44th and final cap.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wales didn’t ever slip up against the lowest ranked teams they faced during the Mike Smith era. Full points were taken from Luxembourg in the Euro 76 campaign, full points from Malta in the Euro 1980 campaign.

Iceland, despite their recent successes in qualifying for the Euros in 2016 (where, famously, they knocked England out) and the World Cup in 2018, were very much minnows in the Eighties. A country with a smaller population than Luxembourg with no star players in any of Europe’s big leagues.

Rush or no Rush, Wales shouldn’t have been losing to Iceland at the time. Floodlight failure or no floodlight failure Wales shouldn’t have been drawing at home to Iceland at the time. Excuses were spouted but surely the preparation should have been better on both occasions.

It has to be said though, that Mike England was generally very popular amongst his players.

Despite nicknaming him ‘Howdy’, due to the American drawl (‘dee-fence’) he’d picked up from spending five years with Seattle Sounders, Joey Jones claimed ‘all the players had a deep respect for him’. ‘A great manager and superb person’ wrote defender Pat Van Den Hauwe in his autobiography.

Considering the England era Jones was also to opine that ‘he brought a more laid-back attitude, a few free kicks and lots of five-a-side’. If it hadn’t been for Iceland, it’s fair to say he would most likely have brought a World Cup qualification too.