Gareth Bale brings main character energy to Wales’s victory over Austria

With 23 minutes gone there was a moment of uproar inside the Cardiff City Stadium as Harry Wilson was blocked off outside the Austria penalty area; uproar that gave way almost immediately as Szymon Marciniak blew his whistle for the free-kick.

Suddenly the air was alive with a weird kind of buzz, like the moment in a storm just before the lightning bolt hits and things start to lift: the hairs on your arms, seats flipped up, people in the stands starting to raise their hands above their heads. Gareth Bale paced it out and waited, charging the moment a little more.

There is a concept doing the rounds called “main character energy”. It describes those people who communicate at all times the certainty that whatever might be happening around them, they are the main character in this scene. A way of standing, talking, entering a room. It says: the camera is on me. This is my close-up. Thanks so much for coming.

This is quite a handy notion in sport. Main character energy: sports people need this stuff. Although not too much of it. And ideally, you actually are the main character. Welcome to Cardiff, Österreichische Fussballnationalmannschaft. And thanks, really, for coming.

Up to that point Bale had touched the ball 12 times. He’d floated a header wide. He’d tried to do some pressing. But was there ever any real doubt, as the ball was spotted and Bale took three paces back, who was doing the voiceover here, the cutaways?

Not that this was ever really going to work. Just look at the theatre of it. One-off game, win or bust. The home crowd hero. His first real sighter. Of course it’s thrilling, of course the crowd rises and stiffens. But people don’t score goals like this. It’s too difficult.

It’s also too difficult. The ball