Global interest for Wales

The WRU website has received hundreds of good luck messages from up to forty different countries around the world and traffic has risen to an average of 2,400 unique visitors a day.

Simon Bennett, living in Australia after moving from Cardiff, sends his good wishes and 8-year-old Shelley from Swansea says her cousin will be at the matches supporting Duncan and Adam Jones in particular.

Mark Cummings is in Canada and he says the Cannucks are boasting in local papers that they can ‘physically take us on’, but he doesn’t believe it for a minute.

Ex-pats over the Severn Bridge in England have a strong voice too as the forty-year exiled Timms family from Halifax point out ‘We’ve taken enough stick in recent seasons it’s time to give the rest of the World something to think about.’

And Phil Davies, who has left Pontypridd to be posted to an English Regiment in Germany adds ‘it would give me no greater pleasure than seeing you (Wales) do brilliantly well, meeting the old enemy in the quarter final and, of course, beating them.’

But the accolade for biggest fan in Wales must go to Rob Evans, a pub and club bouncer from Carmarthen, who has emailed in with over five pages worth of Bruce Lee style motivational mantra, which includes:
‘Fear is the friend of Exceptional people’, a phrase apparently used by boxing trainer Cus Damato to a young Mike Tyson, ‘Hesitation Begets defeat’ as Sun Tzu once said and finally from Rob himself ‘…the outside world will see Wales as an underdog and we should take this to the pitch as part of our mental and psychological armoury…we can and we will prove everyone wrong.’

The WRU website Ezine is emailed to over 10,000 registered fans every week to keep them in touch with the side and a recent survey, which asked visitors where they logged on from, returned the following list of forty different countries:

Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bermuda, Canada, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Dubai, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Jersey, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria , Norway, Poland, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, the United states of America, and of course Wales.