Where’s Wally?: Wrexham AFC Edition
Can you spot the red-and-white, bespectacled character in The Maelor?
Bubble wrap and armbands
“ARRRGHHHH!”
Anyone living in an LL postcode might have heard this pained cry sporadically bursting out of back doors and windows left ajar across the lovely old town last Thursday morning.
News that in-form Tom O’Connor had pulled a hammy left Reds wailing loudly into their cornflakes, with the latest addition to a growing injury list turning Wrexham AFC into a candidate for a new edition of Where’s Wally?. Indeed, The Maelor is currently an idyllic setting for the puzzle book’s next double-page spread - with the red-and-white-shirted bespectacled protagonist easily capable of hiding himself between the bandaged Wrexham players piled high across the A&E waiting room.
A crocked TOC brought the total number of first teamers queuing up for the treatment table to six. Squaring off against Billy Sharp, the Wealdstone Raider, and some tough nuts from Woking - who put an end to our best run of home victories since the dawn of The Roaring Twenties - in a matter of days has left us completely knackered. World War I veteran turned player-coach David Jones may even need to get out of his rocking chair to play a few minutes at some stage before the month is out.
We’ve been so confident for so long. But the combination of a depleted dressing room and Notts County’s fist-clenchingly frustrating, pig-headed refusal to drop a single point in this title fight left many of us a little wobbled in the lead-up to Aldershot (A). Thankfully, one of the few refusing to lose his cool was Parky, who treated a potential car crash scenario as a mere bump in the road.
“We have had injuries before and contended with them, and we will do the same again,” he cooed to the press - although the “fanny f***ing footballers” footage we all saw in Disney’s doc does suggest there’s every chance the gaffer could secretly be walloping the walls in anger behind closed doors.
Weekends without football usually leave us purposelessly gazing into space like a Marge Simpson meme, but this was a rare occasion when we would have relished a Saturday off. And out of all the games we could have played, a fixture at The Recreation Ground - a stadium which morphed into a swimming pool when Wrexham visited during a downpour in October 2021 - was among the least appealing of all.
Most of us would take our chances on Rhyl’s seafront before going snorkelling in Hampshire again, and some of our players are probably still irked by that infamous postponement which saw them voluntarily grabbing household cleaning items to sweep the water off the pitch. It was an infuriating and fruitless scene. All that hard work, 2-0 up, and the reward was an abandoned game. In the nights that followed, Aaron Hayden’s Mrs probably had to guide her poor partner back to bed on a regular basis, as the defender started sleepwalking and shuffling a mop through the house - muttering something about getting the game back on so he could head some more footballs.
An injury sustained in the Sheff Utd game meant there would be no Vietnam flashback for Hayden at Aldershot in 2023 - as he was one one of many who would fail to pass a fitness test for Saturday’s match at The Rec.
Parky reshuffled his pack and tenderly encased Pele Mullin in bubble wrap and armbands, lowering his star striker onto the centre circle like a gardener releasing an exotic butterfly back out into the wild - hoping and praying he would be safe.
He needn’t have worried. Pele was fit as a fiddle and an absolute menace from the moment he was unleashed upon the Aldershot defence, scoring a sort-of-hat-trick in a topsy-turvy tie that left us locked level at 3-3 in the dying embers. In the end, though, it was his substitute who stole the headlines. Big Sam’s Big Head - which has already set limbs loose in the Red end earlier this season - was the hero, flicking the ball into the far corner in the 96th minute.
Back home, another “ARRRGHHHH!” boomed across Wrexham for the second time in three days. Only this time, it was a scream of joy. Battered and bruised we might be, but it’s reassuring to see that the lads waiting in the wings can cut the mustard when called upon.
Notts County are behaving like a dog in the park that’s been trapped inside the house all day long, simply refusing to get bored of this Catch The Title game. So, every victory we manage to fashion - whether that’s an emphatic thrashing or snatching it from the jaws of defeat - will continue to be touted as our BIGGEST WIN OF THE SEASON! With so many of our A-Listers unable to take the red carpet right now, any type of three points - no matter how they come - are truly welcome.
There’s no time to pat ourselves on the back too much, though. There’s another game of football looming and before you know it, we’ll be back down south again - this time at Maidenhead, on the box.
On and on it goes.