Keeping it simple
As the convoy of Pat’s Coaches rumbled down the sunrise-dappled motorways to the English capital at Stupid O’Clock on a bright spring Saturday dawn, and the Transport for Wales carriages hissed out of Wrexham General carrying a cadre of early risers, every Red travelling to London was upbeat.
The completion of Mission:Promotion never seemed more attainable.
Seven points in seven days. That’s all we had to do. A straightforward assignment by anyone’s reckoning. Simple.
But in all the giddiness, we forgot something important: “Simple” has never been a part of Wrexham vernacular.
If every city has its own genetic traits - Manchester does things “differently”; London does things “prestigiously”; and Newcastle does things “shirtlessly” - then Wrexham does things “complicatedly”.
Whether it’s finishing with 98 points and getting unceremoniously dumped out of the play-offs (2012), or reaching Wembley only for our ex-Premier League goalscorer to miss a sitter (2013), or beating the league leaders on tele then missing out on the eliminators after losing four of last six matches (2016), we have a clockwork reliability when it comes to slipping on banana peels mere yards from the finish line.
That’s why we were perhaps naive to expect Barnet (A) to go perfectly. In true Wrexham style, the Reds followed up their historic Easter Monday victory with a decidedly less convincing display.
BT Sport had already set the tone for a trickier away day by obnoxiously bringing kick-off up to lunch-time to leave hundreds of fans hundreds of pounds out of pocket, and the game itself was unusually uneventful until the ref spotted Callum McFadzean stumbling into Bees’ goalkeeper Laurie Walker.
Barnet’s shot-stopper appeared to act up in the aftermath and went full Tim Robbins in his self-appointed role of Leading Man after that, blowing kisses to his audience and standing with arms outstretched in a hail of vapes and pint cups raining down from the stand like he was Andy Dufresne on The Shawshank Redemption poster.
We’d turned up expecting fireworks rather than fisticuffs, and the angriest critic of all actually proved to be Parky - with our gaffer storming onto the field and delivering a scathing in-person diatribe of a review against the goalie’s theatrics that led to him being promptly ejected from the theatre.
0-0 it ended, and with Reds fans split on whether the dismissals were warranted or not, we dispersed The Hive in two separate groups. Some buzzed away to the Big Smoke boozers where they spent the evening slurping inflation-priced lager and somersaulting into ticket gates at Euston Station, others flew back to the peace and quiet of their own nests, reassuring themselves en route home that whilst the day hadn’t quite gone to plan, we were nonetheless one point closer to getting everything we ever wanted.
Later that afternoon, Notts County responded with a baffling, pig-headed, logic-defying refusal to back down - a bit like their old player Gary Mills when he’s told it’s probably not a good idea to take his team out for flaming sambucas before a big fixture - and they gained ground on us again.
The Magpies waltzing through their toughest remaining fixture felt like a kick in the shin, but on the plus side it made our new mission even neater and tidier than before.
Two wins from our two remaining home games would do the trick.
The first would be the easier one, in theory.
Yeovil Town had suffered a miserable season and made the odyssey to North Wales on Tuesday knowing this would probably be the night they were going to be relegated to the sixth tier.
Nothing but a win would do for either of us, and both sets of supporters attempted to calm the jangling nerves on all three sides of Y Cae Ras with lung-busting renditions of their respective club anthems.
The cast of Always Sunny - who have become stars of the longest-running show on American television by finding humour in awkward moments - must have felt right at home watching their pal Rob squirm at the summit of the Cold Road Stand. But after an hour of gulps and gasps, the atmosphere all changed.
Anthony Forde’s shotgun strike blew up the bag of nerves fluttering in the Tech End and sent limbs exploding in discordant directions - putting us on course to a record-breaking 107 points.
If our red flags rattle the bullish Boreham Wood just enough this weekend, we’re in League Two.
A wave of realisation that we were one step away from finally winning this bloody league painted a picture of pure elation across Y Cae Ras at full-time. We wrapped our arms around the fans who just happened to be stood by our sides - hugging strangers whom we have embraced more often than many of our biological family members over the past few years - and exchanged knowing looks.
The Red Army is bigger now and we might not necessarily know everyone’s names, but we’ve gotten each other through some unspeakably tough times these past twenty-five years. After picking up our fellow fans - both verbally and physically - during the lowest of the lows, there’s a real feeling that on Saturday we might get to party together.
The story about how we deserve to go up has been told. But the truth is that football just doesn’t work that way. Life doesn’t work that way. What will be, will be. But nobody can stop us hoping.
Maybe - just this once - Wrexham do it the simple way. One more little win…
See you on the other side.
COME ON YOU REEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDSSSSSSSSSSSSS.