Dusting down for Derby Day
Weird, this ‘not winning’ thing, isn’t it? Can we bounce back for the biggie?
Bad days in Bala and falling for fairy hoaxes
“It’s shit, losing. Init, lads?” the manager needlessly reminded his crestfallen ring of players, who were all sat with their heads bowed between their legs, blinking at their mud-caked boots.
This was the team’s fifth defeat in a row. Against the division’s bottom side. After conceding in the last minute.
A deathly silence - save for the odd whack of spit crashing onto the grass - hung over that circle of footballers, creating the eerie look of a seance, as if all 11 of these young lads were trying to connect with a being in another realm who could teach them the error of their ways.
But there was no enlightenment here. No otherworldly experience. No spiritual awakening. Just a group of sopping wet, pissed-off athletes - sat in the rain on a field in Bala that appeared to serve as a dumping ground for sheep on laxatives six days of the week when football wasn’t on.
Anyone who’s played sport at any level has a memory like this: A perfectly depressing portrait of a very bad day at the office. That rotten Saturday in Bala is mine - where local lads who all seemed to be called Gwydion or Osian ran rings around us and banged in a winner with the last kick of the game. It happened many moons ago now - back in the days of youth football in the North East Wales leagues. But the image occasionally creeps back into my mind whenever Wrexham are in a bit of a rut. It was bad enough as a kid, but as a professional, surely it’s worse when you’re struggling to win?
Defeat on pens in the Energy Drink Cup this week makes it just two victories from seven matches so far in 23/24 for Parky’s boys. You have to wonder what the atmosphere in the changing room is like right now.
Of course, thanks to the glut of modern documentaries (including our own) committed to showing fans real footage of screaming matches behind the scenes, the mystery of what goes on when players disappear inside the tunnel at half/full-time isn’t the enigma that it used to be. But even in a world where teammates can TikTok during their tea breaks, we’ll still never see everything.
How is this group of Wrexham players - the squad that couldn’t comprehend the meaning of draws and defeats a few weeks ago - reacting to the realisation they are not entitled to winning every game?
In truth, things are broadly fine. The spirit is there - see the glorious 5-5 comeback vs Swindon for proof. So, is the naivety - again, see Swindon. Problem is, with the bookies confidently declaring Wrexham as Champions before the season even started - along with the bowlfuls of hype being dumped onto social media from around the world - our players and fans could be forgiven for thinking we’d be a little higher up on the league ladder - and further in the cup - than we are by now.
We haven’t really got going yet. Everyone’s got their own opinion as to why - from the obnoxious guy sat behind you who you disagree with every week, to that shadowy steward who watches home matches from atop the slag heap at the derelict end of Y Cae Ras looking like The Emperor of the Fallen Kop.
What we can all agree on, however, is that things will get a bit better when Pele returns. Sadly, we can’t ask the FA to postpone our matches until the day Mullin is personally airlifted by a perspiring Rob McElhenney into the Cae Ras centre-circle in a cryogenic pod encased in bubble wrap decorated with FRAGILE stickers. So, we need to find a way to thrive without our talisman (it seems like a Wycombe forward may be en route to fill the void).
There have been more than a few glimpses of good stuff. We should have been out of sight after that first half at Barrow last weekend. And we suffered bad luck in the Energy Drink Cup on Tuesday - with referee Ben Speedie awarding a penalty after falling for the biggest dupe to come out of Bradford since Arthur Conan Doyle was convinced by the Cottingley Fairies.
But we need to crank it up a gear. And there’s no better time for it all to click than Saturday lunch-time. Because it’s Derby Day. Sort of.
Squaring off against the Birkenhead Bunch is the closest thing we have to a proper rivalry these days. Even Chester’s local zoo has given up trying to fake any enthusiasm for its local team and switched allegiances to the Reds - naming its penguins after our chairmen. We won’t be playing that lot anytime soon. So all the angry attention for now is focused squarely on the Prenton Park Plastic Scousers.
Wrexham vs Tranmere is always a tasty tie. One Saturday back in 2017, a Tranny cabbie warned us to keep our heads down and our mouths shut around the area in case we bumped into any Rovers supporters or one of their defenders - whom the driver claimed had a second job running a crime syndicate in the Liverpool area. The only act of violence we actually saw that day was Sam Wedgbury’s kung-fu sending off, but somehow we won anyway and spent the rest of the night boogying in Beatles Land to celebrate an unlikely 1-0 victory.
See, that’s football. For every memory of a bad day in Bala, there’s one of a party in Liverpool to even it out.
The good times are always up for grabs.