Dirty plates at the banquet
For the first time in yonks, the all-you-can-eat Reds buffet is low on sustenance
Chomping at the bit for goals
We’ve seen hundreds of goals at Y Cae Ras since the Transatlantic Twosome choppered into The Turf in 2021 and began unloading dollar sign bags into Parky’s office like The Seven Dwarfs whistling their merry ditty of “heigh-ho, heigh ho.”
And all that big Disney money has been well spent - whisking Reds fans Goodfellas-style through the cluttered kitchen of non-league and into the prestigious seats of the FL - plating up mouthwatering stories we can dine out on for the rest of our lives.
For three years, The Racecourse has been the theatre of showstoppers. That Notts County game. That Dover comeback. Sheffield. Barnet. Swindon. Salford. Stockport. An all-you-can-eat buffet of goals that has been served and replenished every single Saturday without fail. Unencumbered thrills.
So, it stood to reason that the Bradford blank we suffered back in February was just an anomaly - a lone, unimportant, empty dish amid a smorgasbord of sweet strikes and delicious headers.
But when Pele Mullin blasted the ball over the bar in the last minute against Harrogate last Tuesday, the Bradford result was no longer an aberration. And when the whistle shrieked to signal a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Tranmere, it had become a pattern.
A few dirty plates have begun to pile up at the Racecourse Banquet. In both matches last week, we could have kept playing until the new Kop opened and we still wouldn’t have scored. There was nothing for us to savour at all.
Harrogate’s titan-style defending might have gone some way to explaining why their town often ranks among the happiest places to live in the UK - you can’t help but be cheerful when your team is as heroic as that. But then, Tranmere turned up four days later and did an equally sterling job, and nobody in Birkenhead is ever smiling. So it’s probably a safe bet to state that the mood of these towns is dictated less by the results of their clubs than what’s happening in the wider regions.
In Wrexham, though, football is all we know. So losing our all-access pass to a spread of goals has left us hangry.
“We’ve had so much play around the box… so many crosses have gone in and we just couldn’t get a goal,” Parky grumbled at his post-match presser on Saturday evening, flicking his eyes back and forth as if quietly scanning the skies for some unseen, malevolent entity which has tractor-beamed the appetite out of our forwards’ boots.
Gaffer doesn’t have the foggiest as to why an all-star attacking force of Mullin, Palmer, Dalby, Fletcher, Lee, Marriott, Davies, Barnett, Mendy and Bolton have all been unable to ripple the net this past week. And you can’t blame him. It’s left us feeling a little groggy and off-kilter. But that tends to happen when you’ve been gorging non-stop for such a long period of time. It can’t go on forever.
But the good news is you can always survive a couple of weeks without goals. So much of the hard work is already done, and there are signs that some of the teams around us are also starting to huff and puff. This is a wild league and there will be ups and downs aplenty in the run-in.
We’re back on the road again this weekend - which for once, feels like a blessing. And those travelling to Grimsby ought to remember three things.
First: Give a big wave to Shaun Pearson and even ex-Red Richard Hope if you’re feeling generous - a man who was last seen toiling away on oil rigs in the North Sea after his post-Wrexham career at Blundell Park didn’t work out.
Second: Pray hard that whatever force has been starving our forward line has decided to move on to another target. Because every point - and every goal - counts at this stage.
Three: We’re still in a glorious position. So close to League One.
I’m not sure we’re ready to put down our knives and forks just yet.