Road to South Africa starts now, says Wales skipper Davies

The stand-in skipper made the declaration ahead of Wednesday's friendly with Norway that he says kicks-off preparations for the 2010 qualification campaign.

Davies, who will lead out the Principality for the third time in Craig Bellamy's absence at Wrexham, believes that overhauling Germany may be out of reach of a group of players who are still some way short of international maturity.

But he believes that finishing behind Joachim Low's team is a realistic goal in a tough group that includes Russia and Finland as significant competition.

"The manager has been saying that he has been building for this for a long time," said the Fulham midfielder, "so there should be no excuses.

"We have to be ready. I believe we can do it, although the most important thing is to do it. We have the belief. But we have to be realistic.

"Finishing second is our best chance. Germany will be the favourites. The Russian game will be massive. Then we need to beat the teams in and around us. Finland will not be easy, either. But we need results against the big teams if we want to qualify for a tournament.

"The draw we earned in Germany has given us a lot of confidence, but we have to re-produce it again. The last campaign was all about gaining experience and getting experience in the squad with respect to the younger lads who were coming in.

"Hopefully they have benefited from that and now we should have the belief that we are in the best shape we can be going into this campaign."

Wales have not qualified for any World Cup tournament since 1958. Davies was part of Mark Hughes's squad that narrowly failed in a play-off to reach Euro 2004.

Despite a host of high-profile retirements since then, subsequent teams have not come anywhere close. However, Toshack has stuck to his principles and thrown in players perhaps ahead of their time in a bid to immerse them in the dos and don'ts of the international game.

The first qualification games do not take place for another seven months, but Davies said it was important to get momentum going. However, it will not be easy against Age Hareide's side. Wales have not beaten Norway in eight attempts since Ian Rush's solitary goal at the Vetch Field proved sufficient 26 years ago.

"It is definitely a building process," added Davies, "so the campaign starts now.

"We need to get that winning momentum going. It's important because that will give us confidence and by the time September comes around we want to be in the best shape possible.

"There's no other way to do that, other than by winning. That momentum is massive in qualifying groups as we saw in 2004 when we just failed in the end. A good start and we get the country behind us and we can start filling the stadiums again."

Heavy rainfall in north Wales and a pitch that has been used regularly at the Racecourse Ground means that it may be survival of the fittest.

"We need to battle and see what we can get from there," added Davies, "if we don't battle and compete then we are not going to be able to play football against most teams in international football. So first and foremost we need to get into them, compete with them.

"Because we aren't good enough to play around teams in international football."

Wales: (probable) Hennessey, Ricketts, Nyatanga, Morgan, Evans, Gunter, Davies, Fletcher, Edwards, Koumas, Eastwood.

Norway: (probable) Opdal, Storbaek, Hangeland, Kah, Riise, Stromstad, Andresen, Nevland, Braaten, Carew, Pedersen.

Referee: D McKeon (Rep. of Ireland)