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BBC News
10 hours ago
- Sport
- BBC News
How a mountain changed Wales' mindset as they seek Euro highs
It took Rhian Wilkinson the length of a game to climb Yr Wyddfa on Thursday at 06:00 BST – texting Football Association of Wales (FAW) staff to let them know she would not be joining them on the train to Wales' highest peak – she took some time for herself at the top 90 minutes was the sixth time she had scaled the 3,500-foot mountain since being named Wales head coach little more than a year ago, but her attachment to the spectacular summit stretches a lot parents – dad Keith and Welsh mother Shan - took their honeymoon in the Eryri national park. When the family returned from Canada for a year when Wilkinson was a schoolgirl, they would regularly holiday in an area they loved to her father died, six months before she took the Wales job, it felt the fitting place tor the family to hold a ceremony to remember him."It feels quite full circle," Wilkinson said, back on the mountain as she named her Wales squad for a summer where they will attempt to scale new heights in their first appearance at a major also felt fitting. Whether fate or coincidence, the FAW had no idea of Wilkinson's bond with the breathtaking landscape when they decided there was no better spot to show how their side – not even officially recognised until 1993 – now deserves to be high on a platform of its own for everyone to the 43-year-old former Canada international had also used the mountain, also known as Snowden, to help change a mindset."This place is what we based our journey on," said defender Rhiannon Roberts, who could not resist a trip to the summit for the announcement, having seen images of it throughout the qualifiers. "From the start of the campaign, we'd have our badge and all the fixtures going up the mountain and then our goal, our summit, at the top."Each game, we'd climb up the mountain, ticking them off one by one. And here we are."As well as the PowerPoint to start international weeks, posters were dotted around the team's breakfast and meeting rooms."We got on board with every camp as we moved up and onto the next fixture," said goalkeeper Olivia Clark. "And then we reached the top with qualifying, but we're going again because we're at the tournament with a new mountain."One that perhaps represents a bigger challenge, hence the inclusion of the influential and experienced Sophie Ingle in the 23-player squad for Switzerland - where Wales face the Netherlands, France and England - represented such a timely boost after nine months 33 and having won 141 caps, has been on this journey longer than most, one that Wilkinson admitted some players and staff openly wondered if they would ever accomplish given the number of near misses to suspected a mental block, so brought in a mental performance coach to try and place past baggage behind them, and returned to the mountain."It was used as a theme because it was always going to be an uphill battle, with setbacks," Wilkinson said. "The challenge of steeper parts, the flattening off, all these parallels."And as we move towards the Euros, we've started talking about the Everest part of it, that something is impossible until it isn't. And we're there."Getting 'there' is new for Wales, but not for Wilkinson. She won two bronze medals from three Olympics and appeared at four World Cups during her 181-cap career with Canada, being inducted into their hall of fame and recognised as one of their greatest players."They were huge moments for me, realising a dream to be an Olympian, but helping this team create a moment for themselves is very special," she aim is for more moments."We will surprise people," promised Wilkinson, who added that she also expects some of the lower-profile players in the squad, beyond the likes of Ingle and the iconic Jess Fishlock, to catch the eye now the platform is she put it: "These names should be known."They might well be if the lowest-ranked side at the Euros do cause the surprise she of the fixtures against three of the European game's heavyweights - holders, past winners, and former semi-finalists - was put into suitable climbing context, with the audience told things would be taken step by step in the two and a half weeks before the opener against the Dutch in obvious questions on England came, but were not the focus. No-one thought to ask whether the Wyddfa legend of a slain giant being entombed at the summit was another metaphor Wilkinson was about to lean a Portugal training camp is next for the squad – plus three as-yet unnamed training players – and a hectic schedule before the first game on 5 to come, but a longer-term future was also on Wilkinson's mind as she took her walk up the the interviews and photos at the summit, where only the haze of the sunshine prevented the view reaching Pembrokeshire 96 miles to the south, Wilkinson joined the media and officials on the train for the trip back down the mountain and a reminder that the impact of this side has stretched just as historic trip, even for a railtrack in operation for 129 years, as a local team welcomed Wilkinson in front of a giant Wales shirt – dubbed Ein Crys Cymru/Our Wales shirt - about to set off on a tour of the country to engage with the next generation. Participation figures are thought to be close to a 2026 target of 20,000 girls, if not already passed ahead of the some of those numbers smiled for one last photo, Yr Wyddfa stared back at Wilkinson, the mountain that has motivated her team and the 23 heading to so a new journey – and a new summit – awaits.
New York Times
12 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Rhian Wilkinson, Wales' highest mountain and a Euro 2025 squad announcement with a difference
Rhian Wilkinson didn't tell anyone. The Wales Women's manager just woke up and left with the sunrise, bound for the top of Wales' highest peak, Yr Wyddfa. Wilkinson knows this mountain well (known as 'Snowdon' in English). She was born in Canada, but her family relocated to Cowbridge, Wales, where her mum, Shan, is originally from, for a year when she was eight — the same age she first went up Yr Wyddfa — before moving back to Canada permanently. The Wilkinsons would travel to Wales quite a lot after that. Advertisement The former Canada international's parents were married in the pub at the bottom of the mountain, with their honeymoon spent at the top. And just beneath the summit, overlooking the mountain's west side, is where Wilkinson held a ceremony for her father, Keith, the former head coach of Canada's national rugby team, after his passing six months before she was named Wales head coach at the end of February 2024. It's here where The Athletic runs into Wilkinson before the train of assembled media and Football Association of Wales (FAW) representatives arrive for Wales' Euro 2025 squad announcement. 'My dad used to make me visualise as a kid,' Wilkinson says as the wind whips across scrags of rock. 'He tried all the time (when I was) going to training, going to games, in the car. He'd be like, 'Can you picture yourself? Can you feel the grass?' I'm like, 'Oh God, shut up'. Even now, it drives me wild.' Wilkinson is smiling because, you know what, maybe the visualisation thing works. On her first national camp, Wilkinson showed the squad a photo of Yr Wyddfa with the Euro 2025 qualifying matches assembled in an upward trajectory to the summit imposed over the top. The Wales badge sat at the mountain's base. 'At first, we were like: 'What is this?'' says goalkeeper Olivia Clark, laughing. 'But then we began making it up the mountain. Now we have posters of it dotted around the food room, the training room. It's this metaphor.' And maybe it's the thinning oxygen at 1,085 meters (3,560 feet), but there lurks an irrepressible urge to make obvious poetry: this being Wales Women's final summit before their first major tournament summit. A manifestation of the team's grisly, uphill battle — first for recognition, then for funding, then for qualification for Euro 2025 — finally conquered. Today, Wilkinson and her squad stand atop their own history and can look out to the vastness beyond. To new mountains to be scaled. If you squint hard enough, you can even see Switzerland. That last part isn't true (you can see Bangor and, apparently, the coast of Ireland on a good day). And while the gloriously hot sunshine and baby blue skies feels like an omen — the FAW and weather gods somehow complicit in wishing the team good fortune — a mountain is also a good place to be reminded of one's size. Wales are the tournament's lowest-ranked squad (30), with a group consisting of the Netherlands (11th in rankings), France (10th) and England (fifth). Advertisement They are one of two major tournament debutants, alongside Poland. There is a nine per cent chance of Wales making it out of the group, according to Opta. But at 8:45am the boldness of the setting is dizzying; the sensation of feeling puny, in the ascent and, eventually, from the top, inescapable. 'I love heights,' says Wilkinson, who led Portland Thorns to the 2022 NWSL Championship in her first year in charge at the club. 'In Vancouver, I live on a mountain. I like the exertion of climbing, the fatigue. I beat everyone up here. They didn't even know they were racing me.' There's a temerity in forcing assembled media to the top of a mountain before 9am for a squad announcement, a boldness in preparing to defy the fickleness of Welsh weather in the summer and internet signal at 1,000ft above sea level, that is not readily synonymous with Wales. But the boldness is welcomed. The FAW is the third-oldest football association in the world. Yet a national women's football team was not formed until 1973, three years after the near 50-year ban of women's football in the nation was lifted. The FAW refused to formerly recognise the women's national team until 1993, a 20-year window in which the team suffered countless 'deaths' according to players from the time, the result of volunteer energy and benevolence running dry. Ten years after recognition was granted, funding for the senior women's team was cut for three years amid the men's team's Euro 2004 qualification campaign. But always by some divinity (or, let's call it by its real name, the stubbornness of women), the team resuscitated. 'It's the mentality of the why not,' Wilkinson says. 'People outside of Wales can think whatever you want, they can look at rankings. Our goal is to be really present and deliver to the best of our ability. 'People will be looking up Wales on a map soon.' dreamy — Megan Feringa (@megan_feringa) June 19, 2025 Wilkinson's squad is as strong as it can be. Sophie Ingle's inclusion is a boon, the former Chelsea midfielder having returned to fitness after tearing her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in a pre-season friendly against Feyenoord last September. The remaining faces are familiar: Seattle Reign and Wales centurion Jess Fishlock, fellow Reign team-mate Angharad James-Turner, Leicester City forward Hannah Cain, Everton defender Hayley Ladd. And for any potential claims of big-headedness that might come with making assembled media scale a mountain (most actually took the train, though The Athletic did not) before 9am, there's a still a palpable humility. As Wilkinson waits at the top for the entourage to arrive, three members of the Swiss embassy to the UK stand near her. When they clock her Wales-branded trousers, one asks: 'You're the head coach?' Advertisement She nods. She obliges with a photograph, answers questions of her nerve. While walking to the top (accomplished in 'just under an hour and a half' she says with no air of bravado), she listened to The New York Times' Daily podcast, happy to have time to herself. 'I actually debated whether I listen to anything, and I decided I'm going to listen to something because I feel ready.' Goalkeepers: Olivia Clark (Leicester City), Safia Middleton-Patel (Manchester United), Poppy Soper (Unattached) Defenders: Charlie Estcourt (DC Power), Gemma Evans (Liverpool), Josie Green (Crystal Palace), Hayley Ladd (Everton), Esther Morgan (Sheffield United), Ella Powell (Bristol City), Rhiannon Roberts (Unattached), Lily Woodham (Seattle Reign) Midfielders: Jess Fishlock (Seattle Reign), Alice Griffiths (Unattached), Ceri Holland (Liverpool), Sophie Ingle (Unattached), Angharad James (Seattle Reign), Lois Joel (Newcastle United) Forwards: Rachel Rowe (Southampton), Kayleigh Barton (Unattached), Hannah Cain (Leicester City), Elise Hughes (Crystal Palace), Carrie Jones (IFK Norrköping), Ffion Morgan (Bristol City).
