The opening minutes were exactly what the occasion promised: nothing.
Not nothing in the dismissive sense, but nothing in the way that two sides feeling each other out tend to produce: lots of effort, lots of movement, yet very little of either amounted to anything meaningful.
The ball moved from defence to midfield and back again.
Both teams pressed when they had the energy and retreated when they didn't, and the overall shape of it was less football match and more negotiation, two parties circling a table, neither was ready to sit down yet.
The DW crowd watched, waited and made noise where they could find reasons to, but the reasons were getting scarcer as the minutes moved by.
So much so that they began to cheer even the faintest of things
