What’s in a name?
Andy Holt was a name we used to associate with professionalism, stability and class at Wrexham AFC.
We had a left back who went by that title once upon a time, and most Reds will remember him fondly. You could always count on Holty: Snuffing out the opposition attack and bombing forward himself when the opportunity arose.
He was a good egg, was Andy Holt.
It’s regrettable that any mention of his name will now conjure up another figure in Red conversation down the pub, as we’re forced to clarify: “Do you mean player Andy Holt? Or chairman Andy Holt?”
Not that it’ll take long to clear up. The fact that both these men work in football is where the similarity ends. One was a tidy player, the other is a social media motormouth.
Accrington Stanley’s figurehead Andy Holt, who bizarrely put his club up for sale on Twitter only a matter of days prior to our match saying he was “spent”, apparently found a new lease of life when he saw Wrexham next up on his fixture list.
Sniffing the chance of a big payday with 2,500 Reds in town, he quietly raised the prices for visiting fans, prompting Wrexham AFC to take the moral high ground and lower costs for the return fixture later this season - meaning Reds would get their fiver back when we played Accy in March.
This did not go down well with Holt. Not at all. The chairman downed a gallon of milk, wiped the dribble from his chin, and launched into a semi-skimmed diatribe about Wrexham’s “triggering” behaviour, attacking North Wales via keyboard throughout the day with increasing intensity. By sunset, Holt was so wound up he tried to mock our chairmen and documentary… but missed one of them out whilst mentioning the wrong streaming service.
Some people just can’t handle their drink, whether it’s full fat or organic, and Holt appeared to wake up full of remorse - as many of us do - on Monday morning, writing: “I probably shouldn’t have done the tweet, but that applies to a lot of things I’ve done…”
His players would have been feeling a little worse for wear, too, after Stanley took all three points at the sodden Wham Stadium and celebrated the result by partying like it was 1999. We must be pretty damn good if teams are bouncing around like the crowd at Glastonbury Pyramid Stage when they beat us.
Between the mud-slinging off and on the pitch (which included a Mullin penalty miss) it was an ugly Saturday for the large travelling Red Army - many of whom will still be wringing the rain out of their kits by the time the next matchday rolls around.
We’ll get no sympathy on that from our opposition - shrimp aficionados Morecambe FC - who play in the shadow of a damp, blustery bay on the Irish Sea, and they’ll paddle into North Wales feeling fresh after their game was postponed last week.
Morecambe are another side attempting to anchor themselves down in the choppy, changing seas of the League Two play-offs. We seem to play a different promotion contender every week in this division - which is more of a Grand National than the two horse race we rode in last season - and Parky will be expecting a big response after being washed out at the Wham Stadium.
That’s pretty much all we have to go on. It’s been a while since we’ve faced Morecambe in the league - so long ago in fact that our last clash took place at a ground that no longer exists, in a world where “Now You’re Gone” by Basshunter was number one in the charts and Drewe Broughton was just a struggling striker and not “The Fear Coach” he is going by today.
We scored two penalties that night and returned home feeling happy with a point: We were bottom of the league back then and we’d take anything we could get. But that sort of mentality doesn’t really cut the mustard at Wrexham anymore. Anything less than a win - particularly on home turf - isn’t regarded as good enough.
2008 Wrexham isn't the same entity as 2023 Wrexham. As we’ve learned, just because two things share the same name doesn’t mean they’re anything alike…