Wales talisman Bale opened the scoring on 10 minutes with a left-footed free-kick, but Robson-Kanu netted the victor after Ondrej Duda had levelled on the hour. Robson-Kanu is out of contract at Reading and this dramatic intervention, no matter how fortunate, will have done his future prospects no harm at all.
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Gareth Bale has spent much of the build-up to Euro 2016 insisting that Wales – Bales, if you will – are not a one-man team.
England’s draw with Russian Federation means Wales could deliver a damaging blow when the teams meet in a match dubbed the Battle of Britain.
Bale, who got the opening goal with a devilish free-kick, said that backing from the Wales crowd measuring some 20,000 “definitely” helped.
FW Hal Robson-Kanu, 9 – He may have just missed our usual 70-minute rating curfew, but how can you ignore Wales’ cult-hero in his finest hour? There were loud cheers at the final whistle; it remarked Wales’ first win in a major tournament since 1958.
“I’m not going to toy about with the formation, I’m not going to play mind games”.
FW Jonny Williams, 7 – Showed why he’s loved by the Welsh support, with some great touches and a couple of mazy runs despite close attention from the Slovak defenders.
After nine minutes, Wales had fashioned the ideal start.
Joe Allen had an opportunity to get on the scoresheet when a weak punched clearance from goalkeeper Matus Kozacik fell to the feet of the Liverpool midfielder, but he failed to get a shot away and the ball was scrambled clear.
Watch the moment the Eiffel Tower turned Welsh in the video above.
But Slovakia, playing at their first major tournament as an independent nation, began to improve and Duda equalised within a minute of coming off the bench. The only goal of the game came after just five minutes through a header from centre-back Fabian Schar, after a mistake by Albanian ‘keeper Etrit Berisha.
So when the Welsh were drawn to play Slovakia in their first game, a side considered to be as reliant on Napoli star Marek Hamsik as Chris Coleman’s men are on Bale, there were plenty of conclusions ready to be immediately drawn.
“They stuck with us again – they’ve done it time and time again – and the boys worked their socks off and we got what we deserved in the end”. We got the three points which is fantastic, but more importantly was the performance.
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“This is one of the games ticked off and three points, which is our best case scenario and I think our focus is now to make sure that complacency doesn’t set in in our preparations for the next game”.
