Go elsewhere for the 5 Moments of Greatest Garethness or the 5 Whitchurch Women Who Withered, Unwanted. For the goss and the factoids, go elsewhere. We’re gonna talk about poetry. Bale the Blistering Wingman of Doom; Bale the Arch-archer of Dead-Ball Wizardry. Gareth the Flier and Gossamer Druid.

He raced in to our lives and lifted the sport and the bloody, blood-red country. More direct, more threatening and winningly more committed to the cause than Giggs, Bale really did seem to ooze Welshness; it was inseparable from his outsize talent, bleeding across a series of developing Red Armies until a Qatar seemed inevitable. And he did it all crocked.

Isolate a few goals – haring down the wing for Tottenham/clubbing obscenely overhead, for Real – and you may have the sense of the generationally-spectacular talent: but there will always be a tension in the wider world around the Bale Enigma thing. By its nature it’s probably unresolvable but that won’t stop the lads on TalkBollocksFM blathering, between farts…

• How crocked was he, for how long?
• When did he know he would have to ‘manage his way’ through?
• (Or) was he just one of those blokes with a lowish pain-threshold?

Not sure many Wales fans were asking or will ask these questions but…

• Why did the Real die-hards hate him – did he really spend most of his life on the golf course?
• Was he really such an Ex-Pat Air-head that he failed, over all that time, to join in?

Minor fascinations for some. Much of the evidence for his relationships with colleagues points to a good, funny, humble bloke. So an admittedly weird mix of convivial laddishness and excommunication. It’s feasible Bale was both chirpy and ‘quiet’. Certainly he was a low-octane captain for his country, sure enough or quiet enough to single out his moments of import or intervention *at interval*. Meaning he neither blazed nor bawled: he was a god of stealth and inspiration.

Wales has felt blessed to carry him and Bale, wonderfully, has deeply understood and reciprocated. He’s poured what he had back into the surge towards legitimacy. For aeons, the national side simply had no players, or so few that even the crackle and hwyl of their honesty and pride would not, could not get them to the tournaments that mattered. Not quite. Then Bale and Ramsey found themselves amongst a matrix of goodish, competitive individuals. Yes they still had to punch above but the squad could hold their own… and wait for one of those moments.

Gareth Bale provided and kept on doing it. ‘Til the good folks of Abertillery and Aberaeron could finally stop talking about ’58.

If we say little about Qatar it’s because Wales plainly underperformed. The skipper himself was peripheral; unable to string things together, never mind electrify the campaign in the way he and His Country had hoped. But Gareth Bale had already passed into legend – in that sense his work was done. He was bard-like, he was totemic, he was a real Prince of the People already.

Some of us said (and wrote), immediately after the tournament exit that the lad from Whitchurch Comp should call it a day – that it was right and that he deserved to stop. Enough of that nursing.

Feels good that he’s listened. He’s been special.