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'I was handed a hula hoop as the boys played football, now we've changed everything'
For Rhian Willkinson and her team, it must have felt like a lifetime.
A journey years in the making, one that had already seen a couple of gut-wrenching near-misses, now boiled down to a measly, yet stomach-knotting eight minutes of stoppage time.
It felt like it would never come. But when that final whistle did pierce its way through the wall of tension that had built up over an absorbing hour and a half of action, the corner holding the small pocket of travelling Wales fans at a largely stunned Aviva Stadium didn't so much erupt, but collectively sighed in glorious relief. The burden of all those years in the footballing wilderness instantly washed away in the gentle drizzle hanging over Dublin.
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History has been made. For the first time ever, a Wales side is heading to a major women's football tournament.
The groundwork of her predecessors, and indeed the trailblazing players themselves, isn't lost on the current boss, who now has the honour of leading an exciting new chapter in the history of Welsh football at Euro 2025.
"I've said it probably ad nauseum. I've come at the sprint end," she tells WalesOnline. "So for those that have been here for the ride, it probably has felt a meteoric rise.
"But for me, I was inheriting a criminally underrated team with some of the best players in the world that are only undervalued because they come from a small nation.
"I hate the word potential because potential to me means nothing if you haven't ever achieved anything. But I did see a group of women who I felt were really good footballers.
"No one outside of Wales, maybe even inside of Wales, will be expecting much from us [in Switzerland]. But we're not going there to make up the numbers."
Rhian's right to hail the talent in this squad. The likes of Rhiannon Roberts, Sophie Ingle and Angharad James are all plying their trade at some of the biggest clubs in women's football.
Then there's Jess Fishlock, so often the lightning rod for inspiration for this team, particularly in their times of need. Some may well have scoffed when Rhian compared the Seattle Reign star to Welsh footballing deity Gareth Bale.
But when you consider the enduring level of influence the 37-year-old has on this team, not to mention the cultural significance of being Welsh football's most-capped player of all time, it's actually a pretty reasonable premise.
"I'm not embarrassed to compare her to Gareth Bale," Rhian says. "I think if you look at Welsh sports men and women, Jess is right up there, and with what she's done, she didn't need to qualify for the Euros to have an influential career. She has already changed the sport.
"She's carried this team for many years along with Sophie Ingle. But to be able to deliver that moment... That made qualifying even more special.
"I'm not overly emotional about sport. I've had enough happen to me in my life that I'm well aware it is a huge privilege to get to work in football, but in the end it's still football. Someone wins and someone loses.
"But after that game in Dublin, watching some of those women. I'm watching their families and watching some of the staff that have been on this ride for decades. It was emotional for me because that transcended sport, and that is really what gets me is seeing that. So that was something I'll never forget."
With 156 caps to her name, Fishlock has a better understanding than most of the highs and lows that have preceded this momentous qualification campaign.
Indeed, when she made her debut in 2006, ironically against Euro 2025 hosts Switzerland, the women's game was in a very different place.
Qualification for a major tournament was largely seen as a pipe dream - as was the prospect of 16,000 fans clicking through the turnstiles.
The marginalisation of young girls wanting to play the game was not only common, but largely accepted.
But the tides are clearly turning, as those who witness the deafening red hot atmosphere in Dublin will testify.
Attendances are up, and participation among young girls has climbed an estimated 45 per cent since 2021.
Reaching a major tournament for the first time will surely only take those figures further over the coming years.
Rhian knows all too well what things used to be like. Indeed, her personal experiences are likely one of the key drivers behind her constant push to address perceived sporting inequality.
Sport was a central part of life growing up in Quebec. Rhian's father Keith was a former rugby player and director on the board of the Canadian Rugby Union, and she herself was an accomplished player in her younger days.
"It wasn't like football all the way through for me," she explains. "I played rugby. I played ice hockey. I ran track and field. I did horseback riding when I was living here in Wales. I chased the horse more than I rode it but I had exposure to a ton of skiing growing up.
"Football was just one thing that I did. I only chose football when I got a sports scholarship [to the University of Tennessee]. Up until then, I was probably a better ice hockey player than I was a footballer."
However, when the family returned to Wales, the land of her mother Shan, who was born in Bont Faen, the landscape was very different.
"It was hard for my mother," she remembers. "I don't think she ever planned to leave Wales. She went for an experience and then ended up having three children in Canada and ended up having a good job in teaching, and they both took a sabbatical year to give Wales a chance and to see what life would have been like if my mum had moved back home.
"We'd spend every holiday back in Wales anyway with my grandparents in Llantwit Major. So we had a real attachment to the country already.
"It was important to my mother that I knew my aunts and uncles and my cousins, so they moved us back."
The eight-year-old Rhian would attend Bont Faen Primary in Cowbridge - and the culture shock would turn out to be profound.
"I'd already grown up in sport and I went from playing eight different sports to not really being allowed to do P.E in school.
"Legitimately, the boys would go out to play football and I remember being in the gym and handed a hula hoop because it was raining outside.
"I was quite upset, but I joined the local Cowbridge football team. I was the only girl. I cut my hair really short. I didn't get the ball and didn't get passed to. It was a ridiculous, stereotypical girl's experience in Wales, which is that I wasn't wanted in that area.
"But sport for me was really important. My twin and my brother are both academically very strong, and it sounds terrible but when you're a twin you're often given a mantle. She was the smart one and I was the sporty one. It was incorrect because she was an incredible athlete, and I don't think I'm dumb!
"But I came to Wales and it felt like they took away the only thing I had.
"So my mum basically sacrificed having her family in her country, probably for the best interests of her daughters. You only realise that when you're older what a huge sacrifice something like that is."
Rhian recently went back to her old school, and it's fair to say things have changed since her time there.
"I was in that same gym, and it brought back memories of the hula hoop. But I met the head teacher there and heard about the amazing things they're doing to help give young boys and girls a strong athletic foundation as well as academics.
"That was a pretty full circle moment for me."
The young Rhian moved back to Canada, going on to enjoy a largely successful playing career, where she won an astonishing 181 caps for her country, and picked up two Olympic medals.
The 42-year-old still feels somewhat indebted to her mother for making that decision, although Rhian and her siblings were initially encouraged to pursue another potential career path.
"All of us had to play instruments," she remembers with a smile. "We're shocking. My brother played the violin so badly for about 18 years. 18 years. That's commitment.
"My sister played the piano, but couldn't play one song now. I myself played the violin when I was four, and I sat on it because I didn't want to practice any more.
"Then my mum got me a cello, which was bigger and had this spear on the end.
"I do still play. Very poorly, and I will never do it in public. I did it once in public and everyone laughed. So embarrassing.
"I do love music, though, and I think that was the gift of what she actually gave us because it definitely wasn't talent. My mother's a good singer, but nothing got handed on there. We all got the Englishness there."
Shan might not have had much luck in getting the Wilkinson family band off the ground, but the fierce pride in her Welsh roots clearly still resonated.
Few would have really blamed Rhian for carrying some bitterness for her ancestral home given the frustrating lack of opportunities. But Wales had already burrowed itself deep into the very fibre of her identity.
"Sunday dinners were always really important," she says recalling the Welsh influence on family life. "We always had Sunday dinner as a family.
"Also, my mum had a group of friends that were all expats, and we had an open-door policy so all of us children and their parents, I consider them my aunts and uncles, my cousins. That sense of family you have in Wales my mother recreated for us. We always had Christmas together. We always had Easter together. They created that Welsh farming community connection.
"We always had a giant Welsh dragon on our cars. Everyone knows which are our cars. My sister and brother continue to do the same even now.
"We're chapel people and my mum brought us up in the church. She's a deacon. None of us continue to go to church, but I do think there's a connection. My great-grandfather was a minister, my great-aunt was one of the first female ministers in Wales.
"There's a lot of tradition that's talked about. I've moved back to Wales to live near Cowbridge because that's where my family is. I didn't come back here just for my job."
One gets the feeling that taking the job was one of the easiest decisions of her career.
Having already had assistant roles with Canada, England and Great Britain, Rhian's first role as a head coach presented somewhat mixed memories.
Despite guiding the Portland Thorns to the NWSL title in October 2022, Rhian was forced to step down just three months later following an investigation into her conduct, after she and a member of her squad expressed feelings for each other.
After three weeks, Rhian was found not to have violated any team or league policies, and no legal wrongdoing or misconduct had occurred. However, she nevertheless made the decision to step down, stating that she felt she'd lost the confidence of her team.
To go from one extreme to the other in such a short space of time is perhaps one of the reasons she's tried to put the emotions of that famous night in Dublin in check.
"Football's a tough, tough job. Things are going really well right now, and it's lovely to get to talk about this team and this historical moment.
"But equally, you can get dragged through the mud and get fired very quickly. It's a wild ride.
"For me it's tough, but for my family it's 100 times harder. For my mother, watching my last job was tough.
"So for her, for me to come back to Wales was really important."
However, handing her mother, and indeed the nation, the joy of leading Wales into their first ever major tournament, will surely go a long way to drawing a line under those previous bumps in a road that's come full circle.
"Wales is my safe place, my family are here, and there's good people in Wales. Honest people. Hard-working people.
"For my loved ones, to be able to give them some good times is the only way I can try to explain to them why I do the job because otherwise why would you?"
"For her it was a big move, and for her it was a big move that meant a lot to her. Then to have been a part of this incredible achievement has made her unbelievably happy. That in turn has made me very happy."
