Hamish Champ: Sharing the Welsh nation's pain

I watched the Welsh rugby team crash out of the World Cup to Fiji at the weekend in a lovely little pub in North Wales.

I had a professional reason to be in this particular pub in the Principality, but watching such a crucial game involving the Welsh hadn't been on my agenda. All the same, it was a happy coincidence and an exciting - if ultimately unsatisfactory - experience.

Although I was technically a neutral I still wanted Wales to win. However I didn't want them to win anywhere near as much as the dozen or so lads who crowded into the pub's back bar to watch the game on TV, their joy and frustration expressed in equal measure for much of the 80 minutes.

The game had seemingly been over after the Fijians took a shock lead of some margin in the first half, only for the Welsh to come back at them once the Men In Red had recovered from their reverie.

I stood at the back of a bar alongside the local boys, most of whom were the size of brick outhouses and almost to a man were wearing Welsh rubgy team shirts. I couldn't help thinking they looked like the kind of blokes you'd want on your side in a match, rather than them bearing down on you with the ball.

Oh how they leapt for joy when Martyn Williams intercepted a stray pass with a few minutes to go and pelted pell-mell and unchallenged towards the Fijian line. And oh how they sank back into their seats, glumfaced, as the resulting conversion was right royally fluffed.

Then the Fijians scored a controversial try in the dying moments of the game and the air was positively blue with curses, the referee the main target of language that would have made a sergeant major blush.

As a neutral I thought it a thrilling contest, but what struck me was that it was so much more of a spectacle to be watching it in a pub in the heart of one of the country's taking part. Not that I could've afforded the airfare to Fiji mind.

True, I had no emotional investment in the proceedings, but I felt the Welsh nation's pain. Well, almost.

Meanwhile a couple of hundred miles to the southeast of me, the wheels were coming off Chelsea FC, my beloved football team, as they battled to a nil-nil draw with our 'poorer' neighbours, Fulham.

An hour later and I had joined the mourning Welsh contingent in the bar for a few beers, united in the grief of unfulfilled expectations.