AFTER a decade where Liam would venomously call Noel a ‘potato’ and Noel would describe his younger sibling as “angry as a man with a fork in a world of soup” the Gallagher brothers have silenced the big guns, or at least muffled them.

This Friday, the world’s eyes turn to Cardiff to watch and listen to what one of the best bands of their generation will sound like after shaking off the rust and rot of 16 years.

Will they still be supersonic or just slide away and join the long list of great bands who tarnished their legacy by reforming in their less meaner, less leaner, and greyer years?

Is it all about the pay check or have the Burnage boys still got a point to prove and history to make?

Either way, that most Mancunian of bands have chosen Cymru to launch their comeback. Which would be a bit like the Manic Street Preachers playing their first ever gig at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium after a 16-year lay off to eat crumpets and swig shandy.

Yet there is method in the madness.

When asked on social media why Oasis had chosen the Welsh capital to begin their new phase as the comeback kids on the block, Liam snarled, “Because Cardiff is the b*****!”

Although it’s understandable the attraction the bright lights and urban sophistication of a cosmopolitan wonderland like Cardiff may have for a disadvantaged kid from the industrial wasteland of the north, Oasis has always had a strong connection with the land that is not of their fathers.

It’s well documented that Oasis prepped Definitely Maybe at Monmouth’s Monnow Valley studio in 1993 and returned to the neighbourhood to record (What’s the Story) Morning Glory in 1995 at Rockfield Studios. It was here, when not busy fighting with cricket bats, they made their defining statement.

However, rewind three years and a less well-known Oasis were playing the legendary TJ's in Newport.

Owned by the late, great Johnny Sicolo, who for years lived in a house on the side of the canal in Gilwern, TJ's was a small venue which played host to some big, big names, before and after they were famous.

Alongside Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, Green Day, Iron Maiden, Ian Brown, and Fugazi all played there. And it’s also the place Kurt Cobain was said to have proposed to Courtney Love during a Hole gig.

Anyhow, back in 1993 when a young band of chancers from Manchester were just starting to make a name for themselves as ones to watch, Richard Parfitt of Newport band 60Ft Dolls recalled to Nation Cymru, “A couple of days before the show I got a phone call one night, and it was Oasis manager Marcus Russell who said ‘do you want to support Oasis at TJs?’ For 50 quid I said yeah.

“I told him we didn’t have a van on anything so he said just bring your guitars and use their kit. You know, you do that when you’re the support band sometimes.

“Anyway, I remember Oasis pulled up in a transit van, I’m pretty sure Bonehead was driving.

“They all came in and set their gear up and they started to soundcheck. I remember they were just playing, Day Tripper by The Beatles, that riff over and over.

“There was a guy stood next to me and I said ‘where’s the singer’ and he replied ‘I’m the singer’. It was Liam. He’d a massive row with Noel and he wasn’t going to sing with them!”

The name of Marcus Russell also brings us to another local connection. The Oasis manager was an Ebbw Vale boy and one of two Welshmen who helped get Oasis from there to here.

Russell was managing former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr when he first heard of Oasis.

He told Wales Online, “Johnny’s younger brother, Ian Marr, kept banging on about this band Oasis.

“I’d checked them out with other people in Manchester and they said ‘Nah, they’re not going to make it’. Tony Wilson, at Factory (Records), said he had passed on them a year before. The whole word round Manchester was they were ‘Stone Roses wannabees’. Nobody was interested in them.

“Then, one night, they were playing this pub called the Hop and Grape, which was part of the University of Manchester campus, and Johnny said ‘Come on, let’s go and see them’. It was June 1993. That’s when I first saw them. I liked where they were coming from - Slade, the Pistols, The Kinks. There were hints of it all there. But I didn’t think ‘These are going to be mega!’ Back in London the next day, I got a call from Noel Gallagher. He said he’d heard I’d seen them and that they were looking for a manager.

"Noel was very charismatic. He said ‘Manage us’. I said ‘Woah, that’s a big conversation’. He replied ‘Well, I’m up for a big conversation. You get my train fare and I’ll be with you in two hours’. I said OK. Three hours later, he’s sitting in a cafe in Marylebone. We got on really well. He gave me a cassette of demos. It had Up In The Sky, Whatever and Married with Children on it. I met the rest of the band and that was it. That’s how Oasis came to be managed by me, and the rest is history as they say.”

And last, but not least, Caernarfon boy Owen Morris was the sound engineer who took a version of Definitely Maybe that was good but not epic, gave it a new mix and turned it into an all snarling all conquering beast that would trample anything in its way with a smile on its lips and madness in its eyes.

So you see, Oasis launching their comeback in Cardiff wasn’t so much a choice, it was written in the stars. Biblical!