Pissing on our fireworks
The Red feel-good train arrives with eighties bangers and urine-resistant pyrotechnics
All aboard the feel-good train
As local cheese and apple enthusiast Liz Truss tottered into Balmoral on Tuesday to swill from the poisoned chalice that is reserved exclusively for Prime Ministers of the UK, a procession of her old, questionable quips promptly marched through social feeds.
The aim of these posts was to show that yet another disingenuous human being has won the right to run Blighty. And with them came the old familiar call: “Why can’t we just have someone in the hot seat that just tells it like it is?”
For those seeking a more forthright master and commander, Dorking Wanderers manager Marc White might fit the bill.
Sure, he might look like a fella you’d spot in the cobwebbed corner of a decrepit bookies with a fist-full of paper tickets, screaming at a flickering TV screen showing the 3.20 at Kempton Park, but don’t let his chunky cap and puffy black raincoat fool you. White actually occupies the top three echelons of the Dorking Wanderers Football Club hierarchy as owner, chairman and manager. He is a born general - masterminding a meteoric rise for the team he co-founded as recently as 1999, securing 12 promotions en route.
Dorking are on even footing in the fifth tier with fallen Football League giants, today. It’s a remarkable story, really - even if some of the bigger boys in the National League are less than pleased to share a table with White’s team.
Back in summer, new Oldham Athletic chairman Frank Rothwell delivered a rousing pre-season speech during which his audience of Latics supporters laughed off the mere mention of Dorking on the fixture list. This video has not aged well. Three months on, the current league table has the two sides sitting right beside one another, just one point apart.
Indeed, by the end of this season, a few more might know who Dorking Wanderers are - with White working hard to defy his side’s assumed status as the league’s whipping boys by picking up a few early points whilst pushing the likes of Chesterfield and Oldham very close.
The Reds headed down to Meadowbank on Saturday under no illusions this could be a potential banana skin that threatened to derail the Red Feel Good Train - which had been chugging through our town with gathering momentum after three wins on the trot - and send it toppling over the tracks at Wrexham General.
Mercifully, though, any pre-match jitters were drowned out by two developments in the lead up to the game.
The first: Some butchered lyrics of an eighties banger that guaranteed no Red will ever be able to listen to a-ha’s Take On Me without hearing “Doooorrrrkiiiiing away” ever again.
The second: Comments from the opposite dugout that didn’t disparage Wrexham’s newfound fame and fortune.
Dorking manager White - who has forgotten more about running a grassroots football club than most will ever know - voiced his support for our supposed sell-out Hollywood regime, describing it as “brilliant”.
“I dunno why people begrudge them at all? It’s pathetic. Why would you begrudge meaningful owners who want to take the club forward… wanna take the town forward?” he said.
Nice to see a guy like him gets it.
Having already endeared himself to the Red Army with that statement, White went one further on matchday, wandering into the boozer where Wrexham fans were grabbing pre-game refreshments and stuffing £300 worth of sheets - possibly from a trifecta win at the bookies, possibly not - into a kitty for the away fans.
Hospitality aside, winning remained White’s aim - claiming he would be doing his utmost to “piss on [Wrexham’s] fireworks” at kick-off. Thankfully, the Reds produced a urine-resistant pyrotechnic display from minute one - with Ollie Palmer The Billionaire Bulldozer (2), an OG, Jacob Mendy and He Goes By The Name Of slicing apart dozing Dorking like a hot knife through butter for a 5-0 victory.
“We can’t defend for shit, and at the moment if we fell into a barrel of tits we’d come out sucking our own thumbs,” tutted White after the match, persisting with the kind of frank scatalogical analysis of football matches found more often in Top Spoons than in press rooms.
Still, at least White has something to look forward to on the return trip - with RR McReynolds promising the Dorking manager a warm welcome after his treatment of the Reds over the weekend.
They might even let him use that Rob McElhenney urinal: It’s a safe distance from any fireworks, after all.
Pele vs Maiden-red
Up next - Maidenhead.
Stop furrowing your brows and digging into your pockets to pull out that Wrexham season ticket to double-check our season fixture list. We did not whomp these fellas 5-0 as recently as last month. That was Maidstone, although you could be forgiven for getting your wires crossed.
There are plenty of parallels. Aside from sharing a domestic servant prefix and occupying a position in England so southern to Reds fans it might as well be in the same vicinity as Maidstone (anywhere below Birmingham is all the same to us), Maidenhead also occupy the lower middle-table of the National League in its current guise - plummeting down to 17th after three defeats and a draw in their last four matches.
A little fact that can help you to set these two clubs apart is that Maidenhead were the first set of opposition our chairmen got to see in the flesh after quietly touching down in the UK almost a year ago.
But most frustratingly of all, they are the team that manage to get Pele Mullin banned every time they play against him.
Our superstar striker was sidelined after throwing an elbow in front of Rob and Ryan during that head-smacking 3-2 defeat in Berkshire last October (but only after the National League confirmed that Bryce Hosannah was the man who had inexplicably and erroneously been sent off during the match itself). Then, in the reverse fixture back home, Pele was kicked off the field after just four minutes for a stamp. No arguments about who the real culprit was on this occasion.
But if Pele can temper his temper on Saturday, he has a good shot of adding to his current strike tally against a team who seem to have turned into eleven Moheta Molango’s in their inability to put the ball in the net. Maidenhead have only managed one goal in their last four outings - and even that solitary strike came against FC Halifax Town, who are puzzlingly scrapping around in the red zone in the early stages of the season.
With two more servings of Welcome to Wrexham whetting the appetite for another matchday and more eyeballs on us than ever before - no matter how hard the National League tries to prevent us from being broadcasted across the world - the scene is set for Wrexham to climb to the summit of the National League.
There’s nothing stopping us. Except for the fact we haven’t beaten Maidenhead since 2019, Pele is probably already being red-carded right now to save some time, and Paul “Look At Me” Marsden is the fella tasked with refereeing the occasion.
Yep. Easy, peasy…