Shopping for disaster

Silly season in the club shop is over. Finally, the real footy starts.

I spotted someone trying to squeeze a very big van through a very small gate the other week. It ended just how you might expect.

As the vehicle inched forward, the walls seemed to close in, and an awful screech filled the sky as the paint on the van was stripped away, leaving non-descript debris scattered across the tarmac.

The driver slapped his head and roared profanities into the morning sunshine as he barrelled through into the car park, cursing the world for his own misfortune.

It was all avoidable, really. But that driver wasn’t alone. Disasters like this happen every day. For proof, all you’d needed to do was pop your head into Wrexham AFC’s club shop over the summer.

Without a ref to shout at or an underperforming player to critique, football fans had been bereft of channels in which to pour their frustration. So the mess-up in the merch department couldn’t have come at a worse time.

The club - and poor old Sam Smith who was the unwitting face of this fiasco - were probably caught by surprise by the intensity of the response. But like the van driver who gambled on a small gate and ended up having to say goodbye to his no-claims bonus, this was all too bold.

Creating a swanky new jacket with a white dragon instead of an English one could be considered a piece of sloppy oversight (the Italians over in the Macron offices are probably not as well versed in the mythology of Wales as your average Red), but trying to sell a Wrexham cap with an England flag emblazoned on the side is a fool’s errand.

When the images of both products surfaced online, it was like watching someone enter a bird sanctuary covered head to toe in seed mix - with species flocking from as far as Swansea and Cardiff to peck at the pictures with a deranged hunger.

The club can easily swallow the cost of poor sales for a couple of bits of clothing these days. But it has raised a question as to how they could not see this coming.

Two theories emerged. One is that an undercover Englishman is operating somewhere in the retail department, playing an elaborate prank by smuggling a St George Cross design into Welsh kits to distract him from England’s inevitable World Cup exit. But the other - and more likely - theory is that the club decided to take some big risks that just backfired.

If there’s a lesson in all this, it’s don’t ever piss about with the Welsh dragon. Now, we can all move on. Football is the thing that we ought to be getting really worked up about after all, rather than leisurewear.

The friendlies offered some respite, but not much. There were no angry goalkeepers kung-fu kicking our star strikers in the chest this summer, and whilst the calibre of opposition was high, there was little to rage about or celebrate. I messaged one Red who had flown over for the Poland game, envious of his afternoon getting to see the Reds in Kraków, asking him how it all went.

“I spent most of the game queuing for drinks,” he replied.

Hmm. Turns out there really is no substitute for the drama of the real season. The good news is that the opening fixture at Cardiff City is only days away now - a game which is guaranteed to leave us all hollering and hooting with the kind of unreasonable enthusiasm that will put that van driver’s rant to shame.

It’s always a jolting transition jumping from the mundanity of pre-season to the explosive intensity of the domestic league, so it’s quite nice to have something of a warm-up in the form of a knockout fixture at Boro.

The League Cup is one of those competitions everyone forgets exists until the Round One games muscle their way into schedules - and getting to visit the Riverside in this tournament provides something of a free hit. The stakes are high enough - but a defeat won’t keep us up at night.

It’ll also give us a chance to take a peek at how the new-look side is shaping up. The general consensus is that this side remains incomplete, with Imray and Whiteman the only two signings so far. Parky has promised “a few more additions”, which bodes well. He’s choosing carefully and taking his time. Which is something the club shop might also do in the future.

It’s all getting serious again.

On to the Riverside.

COYR.