Wilfried Bony scored his first goal at the World Cup finals in the early hours of this morning and in the process became the first Swansea City player to score a goal at the final stages of the competition since Ivor Allchurch netted for Wales back in 1958.

Bony's header in the second half of the Ivory Coast's opening fixture with Japan bought his side level before former Arsenal man Gervinho scored just two minutes later to seal the win and move them joint top of their group after the opening round of fixtures.

Allchurch scored two goals in the final stages of the competition 56 years ago - one against Mexico in a 1-1 draw and one against Hungary in a 2-1 win which is still Wales only victory in the final stages of the competition.

Bony's goal was hot on the heels of Jonathan De Guzman becoming the first Swans player (OK, we know he is technically on loan to us) to appear in the final stages since Allchurch & Co in Sweden as our interest in the World Cup increases due to the increase in representation that we have there.

Bony was of course in fine form for us at the end of last season and he has continued that into the competition and whilst there was already interest in securing his services the bad news is that more goals at the World Cup will increase that interest but from our point of view will also add some £ onto his street value.

We may as well get it straight here and now in that I hope and pray that Bony will still be at Swansea next season but if that isn't to be the case then my other hope is that we manage to get as much money for him as possible as it will be very difficult to replace a player of his quality whilst keeping alive the quality of the squad that we have up front.

The fact that Wilf started ahead of Drogba in the game will make a few more people think on his ability and somebody posted this morning that Wilf has scored more goals in his first season for us than Drogba managed in all but 2 of his 8 seasons at Chelsea. That in itself is a stat that stands up looking for attention given the media love in with Drogba for much of his time at Stamford Bridge.

What we have to do now is enjoy the fact that we have one of the leading scorers in the Premier League in our midst and he is now transferring what we watched wee in week out in the Premier League onto the largest scale and turning it on for his country.

Whether we get to see more of it next season remains to be seen but all of Swansea should be proud of him and backing him to score more. Anyone fancy a cheeky tenner on him topping the charts in Brazil 2014?

So come on Wilfried Bony...

Photo: Action Images

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