Long-Distance Loyalty Of Striker-Turned-Pundit

Welsh football has another trail-blazing team these days and, for Iwan Roberts, there is more good news beyond the rise and rise of Wrexham FC.

Namely that the new man at the top of the sport in the principality is his former Norwich team-mate, Craig Bellamy.

We bumped into the more imposing half of that Little-and-Large partnership at the recent Albion v Swansea Championship clash, found him as cheerful and friendly as ever in his media work and were left in no doubt that he is thoroughly relishing his busy start to the season.

“We’ve already had a South Wales derby to digest, seen Wrexham adapt brilliantly to League One in the first few weeks and had the interest in how Craig starts off in the national job,” Roberts said.

“There has been plenty to get stuck into in August and the first half of September and who knows what the months ahead have in store?”

Since calling time on a playing career that brought him a hugely impressive total of 239 goals and deciding coaching wasn’t for him, the 56-year-old has happily submerged himself in a broadcasting role that makes him one of the most influential voices on the other side of the border.

But don’t expect to agree with every word he utters. In fact, don’t expect to understand half of what he says.

Iwan is from a Welsh-speaking family and originally from a village near the north-west coast where that was the main language. 

So there is much BBC Wales analysis from him like this Facebook Live | Facebook that those of us from these parts will find impossible to comprehend as he dissects the action from grounds or the studio.

What makes his longevity in the role all the more remarkable is that he still lives in Norwich and was about to head back there when we said farewell to him at The Hawthorns. It’s certainly a fair hike from home in East Anglia to the bottom of those valleys!

Never a trip to West Bromwich passes for him without memories of his 1996 hat-trick for Mark McGhee’s Wolves there being rekindled.

But it does sting a bit that the best of a man who played under Graham Taylor and Colin Lee at Watford, and then signed for Brian Little at Leicester came after McGhee sold him to Norwich in the summer of 1997.

Roberts is a legend there and was paired up for his first few seasons at Carrow Road with Bellamy – the new man in the Welsh hot seat after the departure of Robert Page. 

Which might just have given him a privileged inside track for when he co-commentated on the home draw against Turkey at the Cardiff City Stadium five days ago and then, from a studio, scrutinised the follow-up victory in Montenegro.

Roberts has some important credentials for venturing his opinion in this area. He won 17 international caps despite being up against the likes of Ian Rush, Mark Hughes and Dean Saunders in the battle for a senior jersey.