Wales’s most capped player is one win away from a World Cup but is under no illusions as to how difficult it will be against England

When the final whistle blew on their scoreless draw with England in April, the Wales players celebrated.

On Friday England head to Newport’s Rodney Parade for the return and the two unbeaten sides know a win would secure a place at next summer’s World Cup. It’s a delicious scenario.

The Welsh delirium at St Mary’s was so great that sections of the England faithful questioned it. After all, who celebrates a draw?

“It. Was. Huge,” says Jess Fishlock, Wales’s most-capped player, male or female. “It basically defined the campaign. Every game that is played, for a team like us who are seeded third in a group, you just can’t mess up.

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“To qualify for the World Cup is a very hard thing to do in Europe. Going to England, when they were third in the world and already planning their hotel for the World Cup, and getting a point was incredible.

“So yes, we celebrated immensely, because it wasn’t just about the point, it was about so much more. It was about women’s football in Wales and starting to close the gap on the world giants that have so much money and can do whatever they want. It was our little country saying: ‘Hang on, it doesn’t matter. When it comes to football, it doesn’t matter.’”

The passion is infectious, and it does not exude from Fishlock alone. This Wales team have a satisfying balance of experience and youth, and a togetherness defined by a backs-to-the-wall display against a formidable England front line of Jodie Taylor, Fran Kirby and Toni Duggan.

“I think that we’re in such a good spot as a group right now,” Fishlock says. “Even if you take football away from it, which I know sounds daft.”

When Rodney Parade was announced as the venue for this crunch tie, there were rumblings. With the 8,000 tickets selling out in less than 24 hours, the empty-handed were left disappointed and ambitions have been questioned. But Fishlock is adamant that the decision was correct.

“Look I get it,” Wales’s No 10 says. “I understand that people are going to say: ‘You should have gone bigger.’ But we had to make sure as a country, because it’s not really a home or away game, that we didn’t go and sell out 20,000-25,000 and the majority of that be English.

“There were 8,000 tickets, they sold out in a day, that speaks volumes about what we’ve done and what we’ve achieved. But 8,000 tickets for us is an 800% increase on what we’ve had in the past.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jess Fishlock’s club side, Seattle Reign, secured a play-off place in the NWSL earlier this week. Photograph: Stephen Brashear/ISI/REX/Shutterstock

“I don’t think it’s our association not going big, it’s them thinking: ‘Where can we go and how do we fill it with Welsh people?’ Equally it’s about them putting the football and the campaign before selling tickets.

“I get that people are not going to understand it, or agree with it, but they’ve done the one-off spectacle in the past and it bit us in the ass as a nation, and they are learning from it.

“It isn’t an event; that’s something that some people don’t understand. It’s so much more than that.

It would be by far, by far, the best thing in my life, let alone my career. It would mean the world Jess Fishlock

Fishlock is talking a day after her club side, Seattle Reign, secured a play-off place in the NWSL in the US thanks to two goals from England’s Taylor. “I’m going to give her a little kick in the ankle before I go home, that’s for sure; an ‘accidental’ late challenge in training maybe,” she laughs. “No, look, Jodie is phenomenal. She’s been absolutely fantastic for us – there’s nothing we can do about how good the England players are. All we can do is collectively try to stop them.”

Although England dominated in Southampton, Wales left aggrieved. A rare Wales corner took a number of deflections before falling at the feet of Natasha Harding. Her shot crossed the line but was booted clear and the referee waved away appeals for the goal to stand.

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“It’s a lot easier to go to the World Cup if we just win but we are under no illusion about how difficult that will be,” Fishlock says. “If we’re going to be completely frank, we should have had three points against them last time. That ball crossed the line and if we had VAR we would have had a goal. Would it have changed the game? Absolutely. So you can’t say that we still would have won. But it shows that initially we caused them some problems.

“Are we going to give them a huge amount of space so the likes of Fran Kirby can just go and do what she wants to do? No, that would be silly. Obviously we’re going to try and cut off the spaces to their players because without space they can’t do an awful lot. I would be completely surprised if we don’t go in with the same mentality because we know it works.”

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For Fishlock, who will be 32 in January and has picked up trophies in four countries, success with her national team is everything, and with World Cup qualification so close she has the chance to scratch a longstanding itch: “It would be by far, by far, the best thing in my life, let alone my career. It would mean the world.

“I’ve always said that achieving with my national team is the bug I just keep missing, that I keep failing at. I’m not scared to use the word failure because if you don’t go through life failing then you’ve not tried. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen, but I’m just going to keep trying and trying until it does.”