Salopian underdogs: The rarest of creatures
You’re probably skiving at work a little more often these days - turning off your camera on important Zoom calls or sneaking away for suspiciously long toilet breaks to smash the refresh button on Ticketmaster for the 10am drops.
You might also be dedicating too much time to the website owned by space crackpot Elmo Stench: Constantly monitoring his online hellscape ‘X’ for Red news and updates.
And you may find that your partner is growing truly sick and tired of hearing off-key renditions of “JAMES MCCLEEEEEEANNNNN AHA!” being howled from the shower on Sunday mornings.
But apart from that, everything is hunky-dory right now, isn’t it? For Reds, all is right with the world. Sure, an outbreak of horrific global conflict has never been closer and the UK almost burnt itself down as recently as summertime. But our team is bloody good at footy. In our tiny, little, closed-off corner of the world, we’re bendigedig.
Wrexham’s most recent triumph was not just your “good three points on the road that, la”. It was something else altogether. Yeah, we grabbed a draw at Bolton and we’ve been mighty impressive in our home fortress, palming off Wycombe and Reading in succession. But to go to London Road and win without breaking a sweat? That’s the sort of performance you tend to see from teams that finish near the top of League One, isn’t it?
Wrexham seem more confident than Zlatan Ibrahimovic playing a penalty shootout tournament against a blindfolded Michael Bakare with his boots on the wrong feet. We are absolutely flying, and most of us can’t remember the last time we looked so good.
So, there’s never been a worse weekend for derby day to roll around.
For the first time in a Wrexham-Salop fixture in about 20 years, Shrewsbury Town will spit and swear their way across the border on Saturday to arrive in Wales as underdogs. They might be the longest-standing chair in the League One living room, but Salop’s blue and amber fittings are looking increasingly outdated after the latest summer renovation to the division.
Indeed, the most surprising Shrewsbury-related news this week - apart from the plod forgetting to swap the 3pm k/o time for the derby - was the fact their football club actually won a game. Salop had been enjoyably crap up until Saturday when they beat Leyton Orient, and not even a victory over some fellow relegation zone dwellers has swayed the bookies into thinking they might avoid the drop.
Anyone whacking a tenner on Salop will get £70 back if they emerge victorious at Y Cae Ras. It would be easy to claim that only the foolhardy would place such a wager. But that little saying we have, “Sod’s Law”, tends to creep into play when this sort of situation presents itself at Wrexham AFC.
Years of following this football club has taught us that a very nasty comedown follows every glorious high: Even the back-to-back promotion seasons gave us some tough nights like Halifax (A) and Tranmere (H): Games we were nailed on to win and somehow managed to lose.
The Pessimistic Wrexham Brain says that Shrewsbury could be one of those games.
Ok, this all may sound pointlessly fatalistic. Many of us are just hard-wired to expect a big crash after a beautiful take-off, and all the logical signs point to a big derby day triumph that will leave Salop even more miserable than they were when Michael Proctor pinged one home at Gay Meadow.
Will logic prevail? We called Peterborough a statement win. But beating Salop will be a bigger indication of where we’re at. Because these are the games when Sod’s Law can change everything. If we can ward off that old axiom, we might be an even better team than we thought…
COYR.