Hal Robson-Kanu was Wales’ non-scoring non-striker.
He was a winger pressed into emergency service in attack for a country starved of quality specialist centre-forwards. He was the decoy runner whose job was to drag defenders out of position to create space for Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey. He was so impotent his first 31 caps produced a mere two goals.
His 32nd yielded a third, not merely his most important but Wales’ first winner at a major tournament for 58 years. It was reward for a selfless trier, a personal triumph for a stalwart of the qualifying campaign who was not deemed fit enough to begin Wales’ European Championship bow. He was the non-starter, recast as a replacement, but became Wales’ ultimate impact substitute.
After a dozen minutes on the pitch, Robson-Kanu did something out of character. He found the net. He wrestled the superstars out of the spotlight.
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Victory over Slovakia nevertheless bore their stamp. Ramsey supplied the inviting reverse pass that Robson-Kanu rolled into the net. Bale had opened the scoring. The Ryan Giggs comparisons have now been rendered redundant: Bale’s Wales career has not been confined to qualifiers anymore. Instead, he found himself bracketed with a less famous winger.
Terry Medwin, who played for Tottenham half a century before Bale, delivered Wales' previous goal on the main stage, against Hungary in the 1958 World Cup. Then Bale's free kick wobbled, and Matus Kozacik wrong-footed himself, taking a step to his left when the ball went to his right. Bale struck it with swerve, but scarcely into the corner. It was a goalkeeping error, but it brought a sense of symmetry: Bale's first goal for Wales was a free kick against Slovakia. So, a decade later, was his first on the biggest of stages.
At which point, this threatened to live up to the pre-match billing as a meeting of one-man teams. Fantastista 0 Galactico 1. Napoli playmaker Marek Hamsik almost scored in stunning style. Real Madrid winger Bale did break the deadlock. Yet even that was a reminder that the margins can be narrow and that even the most luminous of talents can benefit from assistance.
Bale was celebrating seven minutes after he was culpable. He was dispossessed by Hamsik when the Slovakian sashayed through. Ben Davies materialised from nowhere to clear his shot off the line. The significance of the supporting cast was underlined, too, when Slovakia levelled. Ondrej Duda scored with his second touch to place himself in distinguished company: the previous player to find the Welsh net in a major tournament was Pele.
Duda’s strike followed a determined burst from Robert Mak who, rather than Hamsik, was the catalyst for a comeback. Yet in a match where the emotions swung along with the balance of power, it continued a theme: the excellence of the lesser lights.
Jonny Williams, with a trick, won the free kick for Bale's goal. The Crystal Palace midfielder was a surprise inclusion, incorporated as Chris Coleman benched Robson-Kanu, but a justified one. He has had a stop-start club career, pockmarked by injuries and loan spells, and Coleman has shown more faith in a diminutive technician than a series of Palace managers.
Nicknamed, rather fancifully, "Joniesta", Williams showed his class, if not quite the sublime touches of Barcelona's World Cup winner. One dart into the box should have brought a penalty when Martin Skrtel, with typically needless clumsiness, elbowed him aside.
It was a reprieve for Slovakia, who roughed up Williams. His afternoon was curtailed when Coleman reversed his earlier move, bringing on Robson-Kanu, to provide a dramatic conclusion: Robson-Kanu had crossed for Ramsey to head wastefully over before he scored.
That allowed Bale to surge away on a series of counter-attacks. He was liberated, though, because Robson-Kanu had struck, the world’s most expensive player again aided by the man who is available on a free transfer after being released by Reading.
As opposites were twinned on the scoresheet for once, it is a recurring theme.
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