A FOND FAREWELL
Over the next fortnight we’ll pay a daily tribute to one of the players who are leaving Wrexham AFC this month.

On the face of it, Chloe Ankers’ departure is an unusual one, but in reality it reflects the issues facing a club in a semi-professional league and its players as it looks to transition to something more professional.

Retiring at the age of 19 is not an orthodox move. Of course, in reality it’s not as simple as that, and Ankers has made it clear that she is leaving the door to a return open. Let’s hope she does reactivate her playing career at some point, because even at her young age she has already shown herself to be a promising goalkeeper who could undoubtedly develop into one of the best in the Adran Premier.

The headline statistic from Ankers’ Wrexham career is an impressive one: she has never conceded a first team goal! That’s not the boast of a one-gane wonder either, as she has accumulated three clean sheets in the course of her teenage first team career. She was thrown into her debut in dramatic circumstances. During our first season in the Welsh top division we travelled to Cardiff Met without regular goalkeeper Del Morgan, who was unavailable due to her coaching commtments. We had drafted in Charlotte Bolland as cover for Morgan in the knowledge that her roles with Liverpool and Wales meant she would occasionally be absent, and she had already filled in three times, once on a remarkable opening day of the season when Morgan was forced off through injury in a 3-3 draw with Swansea City. However, she was injured on this particular November afternoon, so Wrexham’s only option was the 16 year-old Ankers!

She had only played two Under-19 games that season, the most recent being a month earlier when Connah’s Quay Nomads had beaten us 5-3. However, she took this remarkable promotion into the first team in her stride, making a key early save as Wrexham scored three times in the last half hour to secure a 3-0 win.

She wouldn’t get another chance to show what she could do in the first team until this season, but developed well in the Under-19s, taking the captain’s armband and steering the side through to the national play-off in both of her first two seasons, to be thwarted by Cardiff on both occasions. This season, of course, the Under-19s, like the first team, broke the pattern of Bluebird domination and won the league, with Ankers still young enough to wear the armband as she shared goalkeeping duties with Nash. She made two more first team appearances as well, in cup matches against Penybont and NFA, both of which were won comfortably.

A confident, tall goalkeeper with a good reach and nimble feet, she is certainly more athletic than most goalkeepers we com up against in the Adran Premier. However, the club were always likely to look for a more experienced goalkeeper to join Lizzie Craven and Sophie Nash as we look to embark on a European adventure. Still, she remains in the game, developing the coaching work which has already established her as a valuable member of the Wrexham Foundation’s staff (if you want a reference, my God-daughter Isabella is a fan!) and who knows? Maybe we’ll see her playing at The Rock again one day, either for or against us.