WALES take on Belgium on Friday knowing they are within touching distance of a major tournament for the first time since 1958 – and now it’s time to turn that dream into reality, writes Andrew Penman.

Assistant manager Osian Roberts says he and national boss Chris Coleman and the whole Wales playing and coaching staff are all determined to finish the job and get to Euro 2016.

Gareth Bale and teammates are second in their qualifying group, behind the Belgians on points difference only, and victory at the Cardiff City Stadium on Friday night would put them on the brink of history.

Roberts paid tribute to Coleman, who took over from the late Gary Speed in 2012, and vowed that Wales will not miss out again after so many disappointments in the past.

“We know what football is like – it’s all governed by results – but for us it has to be more than that,” said Roberts.

“It’s about embedding a style of play and a philosophy that has grown for the last four or five years since we’ve been involved.

“Since Chris has come in he’s been the leader and everyone has followed.

“He’s tweaked it and what’s great is that we’ve got a spirit in the camp – everyone wants to pull together.

“When he came in it was the most horrendous of times to take over but the way he’s turned it round and galvanised everybody, and built a nation’s hopes, all credit to him.

“It’s the first campaign that I’ve been involved in where we’re entering the second half of the campaign with a chance,” he added.

“We’ve raised people’s hopes but that’s all we’ve done and we’re aware of that.

“We want to turn that into reality now and to do that we have to keep working hard and keep building on the foundation that’s been put in place.

“At the same time we makes sure that everyone is grounded and that everyone knows that all the hard work is ahead of us.”

Facing the multi-talented Belgians will indeed be hard work but, having earned a 0-0 draw in Brussels in November, Roberts is convinced that Wales can cause the visitors problems.

“We’re under no illusions about how difficult it’s going to be and the quality they’ve got,” he said, having watched Marc Wilmots’ side beat France 4-3 in a Friendly in Paris at the weekend.

“They’ve been playing in that way for a while but I think what you saw is that they’re in a rich vein of form.

“That’s the best I’ve seen them play for a while.

“To go to the Stade de France and score four is impressive and it could have been six or seven.

“But we feel that we learned one or two things that can work in our favour.

“When they go forward they are quite awesome but at the same time they did concede three so there’s a question mark there.

“We’re aware of their strengths but at the same time we know what we can do when we have the ball.

“We didn’t quite capitalise on those strengths in the away game but if we just have that little extra bit of quality in the transitions then we can cause them some problems, for sure.”