​[Getty Images]”Walking to the ground in Bordeaux and what I find hilarious, in hindsight, is how low our expectations were.”Elis James was not alone.Wales had gone more than half a century without playing at a major tournament, so it was understandable that expectations were modest.Generations of fans had been scarred by agonising near misses and downright dismal failures of the past so, when Wales finally realised a nation’s dream by qualifying for Euro 2016, just being there was enough for many.Bordeaux was bathed in sunshine on the afternoon of Saturday, 11 June, tens of thousands of Welsh supporters descending on the French city for their opening game against Slovakia.”We were all saying things like, ‘Oh, the anthem’s going to be good, that’s guaranteed’. We could have lost 10-0 but they were definitely playing the anthem,” the comedian and presenter tells BBC Sport Wales as part of Iconic: The Summer that Changed Welsh Football.An anthem heard at a major tournament for the first time in 58 years. Glorious catharsis to stir the soul.Wales had ridden a wave of emotion to get there, a golden generation of players – Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey et al – scaling new heights under the guidance of their charismatic manager Chris Coleman.”I was saying to all the players, ‘Keep calm, don’t act like we’re too excited to be here’,” Coleman recalls.”But Bordeaux was like the centre of Cardiff, Welsh fans everywhere outside the hotel and, as soon as we were getting on the bus, I was chanting with the fans! I was like, ‘What am I doing? Calm down’. I got lost in it.”Coleman and his players eventually composed themselves. After a trademark Bale free-kick had put Wales in front, Hal Robson-Kanu came off the bench to score a late winner and send a nation into raptures.”Euro 2016 was a turning point for Welsh football,” says Ben Davies, the Tottenham Hotspur defender who made a crucial goalline block early in the game.”There was so much talk about 1958 and I’d heard about it, I’d seen the odd clip about it, but it felt like a pipedream to actually have Wales in a major tournament.”So to do it, forget about how well we did in it, just to even get to that tournament, it gave us a belief that it was possible.”For those among the sea of red shirts in Bordeaux that day, it did not feel like life could get any better – but this was only the beginning.This was the summer that would change Welsh football forever.Until Euro 2016, Wales’ story had been dominated by tales of heartache, Joe Jordan’s handball in 1977 and the Romania defeat of 1993 among many painful chapters.But by getting to France, Wales freed themselves from that history.”There had been some really low points for Wales, so to finally do that was a huge achievement,” says Ramsey, the then Arsenal midfielder who would go on to be named in Uefa’s team of the tournament.Wales had momentum they had never felt before coming into the competition. Victory over Slovakia – and the prospect of getting to the second r