Matchday migraines
This author has a headache. A dull, aching throb that just won’t budge.
What brought this on?
It might be the after-effects of being amongst 4,000 roaring Reds on the Road in 72 hours.
It might be altitude sickness after climbing quickly to the top of the league before crash landing back down again.
Or it might be due to one passenger on the way home from Nottingham, who spent every second of the two-hour plus journey walloping his fists against the van and wailing Oasis songs off key with erroneous lyrics.
It’s probably an accumulation of all the above. Either way, it’s been an ear-splitting week.
It started out with all the right noises, of course. Saturday 1 October 2022 will forever slot neatly on the shelf in Wrexham fans’ minds marked ‘Classic Away Days’ - a late equaliser from Ben Throwzer and a 96th-minute Pele Pen lifting the roof off Boundary Park as the Reds soared to the summit of the National League.
The racket after the match, however - where even members of Oldham’s exec boxes abandoned their rag pudding to send us off with death stares and sheep bleats - was less pleasurable. Getting out of the ground was akin to escaping a doomed city in a disaster film, with panic-stricken, ashen-faced police officers warning us away from the darkened alleys where Stone Island zombies lay in wait for fresh prey.
The first pint back in the safety of the pub never tasted so good.
Hangovers had barely subsided by the time we were packing up to hit the motorways again for Nottingham, but Reds seeking hair of the dog in liquid rapture form were left dry-mouthed at Meadow Lane.
The damp night air swirling through the Jimmy Sirrel stand was filled with groans and moans for 90 minutes - most of them directed towards The Billionaire Bulldozer Ollie Palmer who’d uncharacteristically left his shooting boots back on the other side of the border.
Chance after chance came and went, and most of us knew it wouldn’t be our night long before Youngy’s last-gasp free-kick drifted beyond the box with all the threat of a feather over no-man’s land - prompting the ‘The Pies’ fans to turn their smartphone torches in the direction of the away end and cast a mocking spotlight on the mass exodus of Welsh: who couldn’t wait to get home after another defeat in the East Midlands.
Our record at Meadow Lane absolutely stinks. We lose the entertaining games here and we lose the dull ones, too (remember that error-strewn encounter when Silvio Spann got sent off for hacking down his international teammate Hector Sam and County scored from the resulting free-kick?).
All of the above paints a pretty grim picture of a rainy Tuesday night in Nottingham, but in truth, it wasn’t all bad.
Celeb spotters got to tick off Shaun Pearson, Wayne Hennessy and Danny Ward. One of the toughest fixtures of the season is already out of the way. Mark Howard finally showed fans what Parky saw in him with a few stunning Superman saves. And someone else picked up the tab at Hooters for my pre-match Heineken - which somewhat compensated for a miserable discovery the previous Sunday when my bank statement revealed the Oldham kiosk had erroneously doubled my bill for three cans of Carling. No wonder that chairman of theirs is always laughing.
As our van rattled home through the mid-week rain and the radio tried its best (yet failed) to drown out the racket coming from the wankered passenger on the backseat, I began wondering whether we could expect something a little more drama-free for our next turnout.
Mad as a bee in a cup
Indeed, there were high hopes for a simpler Saturday.
Our visitors Barnet FC weren’t just a team in wobbly form - but one we’d stuck nine goals past last season.
There was every indication that our third match in the space of seven days would lack the previous pandemonium and instead provide a more comforting, constant chorus of joyful singing across Y Cae Ras: A soothing antidote of free-flowing, one-sided goals and Welsh hymns to take the edge off a brain-pounding week.
No such luck.
The Great British Travel Debacle - yet more train strikes and a partial closure of the M56 - brought that temporal tension to the surface again. Then, The Bees had the audacity to actually turn up and play.
An early finish from The Magic Hat was cancelled out by two quick Barnet goals, before Forgotten Man Tom O’Connor enjoyed a fortuitous deflection and Pele put us back in front with a pearler.
Four goals in nine minutes - and the promise of a leisurely afternoon kickabout had turned into a nerve-shredding goal-feast that was beginning to mirror the Dover debacle.
And the net just kept on bulging.
3-3. 4-3. 5-3. 6-3. 7-3. 7-4. 7-5. A match as mad as a bee trapped in a cup.
None of us needed that. Thank God it’s all over.
Time to lie down in a dark room with a cold flannel for a while.
We need to get well soon before The Magic of the Cup begins in Blyth on Saturday…