AFTER the long journey back from Lens to Dinard it was a quiet day at the Wales media centre today with the players licking their wounds and all press conferences cancelled.

That was a nice change from Lens, which was anything but quiet from start to finish.

Stan Collymore’s war reports from the mean streets of Lille made for interesting and worrying viewing.

But in Lens itself, a town with a population smaller than the 41,000 capacity at the Stade Bollaert-Delelis, there was thankfully no sign of any trouble.

Wales and England fans mixed peacefully with each other and with the French and Germans present, with a lot of good humour on all sides.

The closest anyone came to violence, as far as I know, was the night before the game when I was kept awake until the small hours by a group of well-oiled England fans.

They were friendly enough but the experience of listening to 15 to 20 boozed-up Brummies singing Three Lions and Vindaloo at the top of their voices at 3am right next door is not one I wish to repeat any time soon.

Inside the stadium it was a similar theme with the English outnumbering the Wales fans by around three to one.

But the wall of red was still present and the Wales fans still made themselves heard and even the anthems were respected, for the most part.

If only they had held out for another 90 seconds it would have been the perfect day for Chris Coleman’s men and their fans.

Daniel Sturridge’s late winner was a sickening blow and launched a thousand rewrites in the press box.

Former Wales defender Danny Gabbidon was there commentating for TalkSport alongside Collymore and he revealed that his family suffered a double whammy on Thursday.

The radio pundit from Cwmbran was making his way back to Brittany after watching his former teammates suffer last-gasp agony when he received a message from his brother, who had put a bet on Northern Ireland to beat Ukraine 1-0 with Gareth McAuley scoring the winner.

Gabbidon said: "He'd turned the telly off around 95 minutes... I had to break it to him that Northern Ireland had scored a second!"

South Wales Argus: