In October 2014, Diehard’s Carl Field took the Millennium Stadium tour with a view to seeing first hand the locations featured in DT’s Season 8 Play Off Final and Season 9 League and FA Cup Finals, the memories they brought back and how it looked in person compared to how it appeared on-screen.

On Left, Carl's images from the visit; On Right, screencaps of the Millennium from DT 8.31/8.32 (TX: 22/05/05 & 29/05/2005)

Just down there…that’s where they all piled on top of Presley when he scored.

Those were the words that came into my head when I strolled out of the tunnel at the Millennium Stadium and looked left – stood on almost the exact same spot as Darren Tyson when he said pretty much the same thing in Dream Team season nine.

I was – and still am – an avid fan of the show and, as someone who now lives not too far from Cardiff, I was excited when I recently got the chance to go and have a look round the famous stadium.

You normally more commonly associate grounds at Millwall (The Dragon’s Lair) and Watford (Addison Road) with Harchester United.

But let’s forget some of the best – and worst – moments in the Dragons’ proud history actually came at the Millennium.

Lee Presley scoring the winner against West Ham in the 2005 Championship play-off final, Curtis Alexander lifting the trophy, Viv ‘Jaws’ Wright’s rousing half time team talk, the team coach blowing up after Don Barker drove into it.

Who can also forget the emotional moment ‘the three survivors’ Danny Sullivan, Tyson and Ryan Naysmith revisited the scene when the team returned the following year.

Then there’s the tackle from Liam Mackay that ended the career of Asa Malione in that 2006 League Cup final defeat to Chelsea… Naysmith’s speech afterwards…and then Tyson bagging a brace against Arsenal to secure the club’s second FA Cup later that same season.

The list goes on and on…

And, despite the fact the cameras stopped rolling on Dream Team in 2007, I was keen to go and indulge myself in a bit of nostalgia!

Oddly enough, none of that was on the DVD the tour guide plays you of the stadium’s history and memorable moments before they take you up into the stadium for the tour…I can’t for the life of me think why!

And, while everyone else in my tour group was recounting past Welsh rugby glories and such like as we were taken through the corridors, past the changing rooms and out the tunnel, I was busy trying to pinpoint and capture things I remember from the show! I’m not Welsh either but that’s by the by!

The one thing that did really strike me about the experience was how different certain things appeared from how I remember them in those episodes on the show – in particularly the layout of the tunnel and changing rooms in real life to how they were made to look on TV.

I wasn’t really able to get a ‘this is the spot where Jaws stood when he gave that team talk’ speech kind of moment in the dressing room because it’s unclear how much of those scenes were shot using another set probably nowhere Wales!

I guess that’s one of the tricks of TV and putting a show like that together. That being said, we are talking a good few years ago now and the look and layout of certain areas of the stadium may well have changed since then,

Of course – if any of the cast or crew are reading this and can shed a bit of a light on that for us, we’d be delighted

Although we here at Diehard did discover that the team hotel Harchester used before the play-off final – The Red Dragon – wasn’t actually in Cardiff either! A little birdie (and ex-DT regular) told us a while back that particular location is actually ‘on the south side of the Blackwall tunnel in London!’

The things you discover with a bit of digging – particularly after I’d asked a few of my native Cardiff colleagues beforehand if they knew where it was!

However one location that is synonymous with the Millennium itself is the area underneath the stadium where the team coach drove in and stopped for the last time before Barker went and drove into it and wiping out nearly the entire squad – the famous VIP car park!

I actually made a point before I went of contacting the stadium tour centre and asking if there’s any chance I could go down there and have a look where the Harchester team coach blew up!

They must have thought I was off my rocker! As expected, they politely declined my request due to ‘safety and security reasons’ but I managed to grab a snap of it from a distance – trying to get as close as I could without getting myself arrested!

They’ve obviously really tightened up their security since the Barker incident!

As I walked away from the stadium, I couldn’t help thinking back to something Sully said once: You’d have thought there would have been a plaque….or statue…or…something!

The show may have long since ended… but the Dream certainly lives on for many of us.

Carl Field is a sports journalist living and working in Wales.