Jess Fishlock’s extra-time goal gives Wales World Cup playoff victory

The games just keep getting bigger for Wales. They secured an extra-time victory over Bosnia to move one step closer to reaching the World Cup and a first major tournament. Jess Fishlock’s superb volley at the end of first-half stoppage time in extra time was enough to earn a trip to Zurich to face Switzerland on Tuesday.

Fishlock is Wales’s most decorated player – last week she won the NWSL Shield with Seattle-based OL Reign and has twice won the Champions League – but her 35th goal on her 135th cap was the kind of match-winning moment that may well eclipse the lot.

For so long it seemed as though Wales’s night was destined to end in misery – they had four goals disallowed in normal time – but eventually triumphed when Fishlock, one of three players to have an effort chalked off for offside, converted Rachel Rowe’s free-kick.

Wales keep breaking records, too, this the biggest crowd at a Wales women’s game and while the 15,200 here had to do their fair share of suffering, with Kayleigh Green twice denied by the offside flag before the substitute Ffion Morgan and Fishlock, who departed the pitch to a standing ovation with five minutes to play, saw goals ruled out, they ended on a huge high.

The two best-ranked playoff final winners will secure places at the World Cup, with the other victorious side going into the inter-confederation play-offs in New Zealand in February. Bosnia had to weather the storm but failed to fashion many chances of their own. Wales almost gave the visitors a leg-up 10 minutes into the second half when centre-back Hayley Ladd inadvertently gave her goalkeeper, Laura O’Sullivan, a fright.

The Bosnia captain, Melisa Hasanbegovic, pinged a pass upfield that split the Wales defence and the bounce of the