What next for Wales?

Ahead of the start of their World Cup qualifying campaign, Wales midfielder Dave Edwards speaks to Adam Bate to reflect on an extraordinary summer in France and the importance of using that success as a springboard all the way to Russia in 2018.

While Wales partied, their players were living inside the Euro 2016 cocoon. “Where we were in Dinard, our base, it was pretty quiet so we didn’t really know what was going on,” says Dave Edwards. “We had Sky Sports News in our rooms but that was about it really.”

The world that Chris Coleman’s squad emerged to after reaching the semi-finals – the best ever finish by a British nation at a major tournament on foreign soil – was a very different one. “It was pretty special,” Edwards adds when harking back to the celebrations in Cardiff.

“To see how many fans turned out was just unreal. You hear that it’s gripping the nation but until you actually see it… It was remarkable, right from the airport all the way to the castle it was busy. And then when you came out of the castle it was a sea of red everywhere.

“It’s something people never would have expected us to have done. I think it’ll take a while for what we’ve achieved to sink in.” These were the 100/1 shots who stunned highly-fancied Belgium and got to within a game and a half of winning the whole tournament.

Edwards played his part, starting the opening game against Slovakia and featuring against England. But injury then scuppered his involvement and the Wolves man had to experience the Belgium game and “the amazing atmosphere in Lille that night” from the sides.

“Going into the Belgium game I picked up a little injury,” he says. “I was hoping it was going to be fine and I did the warm-up. But it just wasn’t right and it was too big a game for me to go into with a risky injury. From there on I was fighting hard to be fit for the …

continue reading in source www.skysports.com