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.
The FAW’s decision to close down the North Wales U19 league was bound to have major repercussions for young players, but the fabulous range of attacking options available to Jenny Sugarman – with the promise of more to come over the Summer – will also have played a part in the sad departure from the club of Grace Morris.
A talented striker with real pace, she had a couple of promising substitute appearances under her belt at the start of last season already, but with hindsight the fact that she was kept out of the first team set-up by Wrexham’s enhanced options, combined with an increasing tendency to play one up front as the season went on, prepared us for her departure.
Over the last couple of seasons, the Under-19s’ matches have been characterised by Morris’ pace and subsequent goal threat. It’s a comment on the lack of resources being pushed into girls’ football by the FAW, even in the south where the U19 league will continue, that there’s no route into the top tier for the outstanding player in the Adran League’s best youth side side over the past two seasons.
Defenders couldn’t stop her once she got sprinting through the heart of them, with or without the ball, and despite her small stature she had strength to complement her balance and could hold off much bigger opponents.
In 2024-25 she dominated the northern U19 league. Wrexham were champions, and she chipped in with 11 goals in 12 games. That’s a third of all the goals we scored. We went into the last game of the season needing to beat Connah’s Quay at Airbus to clinch the title and she stepped up to the plate in typical fashion. By half time we were 3-0 up, she’d scored two and the title race was over.
The season would end cruelly for Wrexham and her. The national championship would be decided by a play-off with Cardiff City, the southern champions, at Newtown and The Red Dragons did themselves proud. The season before we had been beaten comprehensively in the fixture; this time we took the lead after four minutes and ought to have put the game beyond doubt as we continued to dominate. However, we didn’t and paid the price when The Bluebirds equalised midway through the second half.
The game went to penalties and it was Morris who missed the crucial kick. The data tell us that penalties struck higher than halfway up the goal have a very high success rate, but Morris was unlucky: keeper Grace Olsen simply failed to move quickly enough, and ended up fortunate enough to find the ball soaring over her head. she got a hand to it and created the chance for City to score the winning kick, and did so herself.
As I mentioned, by this point Morris had made two first team appearances off the bench. She’d come on for the last 13 minutes of a 1-0 defeat at TNS and injected some energy into the front line as we pushed for an equaliser, and then got five minutes at Barry where she still had the chance to show her strength and ability to wriggle out of tight spaces against a physical defence.
The 2025-26 season started spectacularly as she repeated her feat of the previous season by claiming the golden boot for the Adran North U19 league. The competition had been devalued by the withdrawal of Newtown and consisted of just six games. Morris scored eight goals in them, and also chipped in with three assists, a total exceeded only by her team mate Sienna Perry.
We then moved on to the hastily-arranged, for-one-season-only, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it national U19 championship. It was never going to be a permanent solution; the logistical challenges were far too great. Morris didn’t miss a minute of it, and put in a match-winning performance in the second round of games, scoring two and assisting another in a 5-2 win over Cardiff which set Wrexham up for a title-winning campaign.
She finished the campaign in fine fashion too, scoring an equaliser in a 1-1 draw at Cardiff which halted a brief slump in mid-season and set us up for a perfect run-in through the last four games. Morris’ contribution was four goals and an assist in our last five games. Eight goals and four assists in ten games meant that yet again she was the golden boot, and she was one assist short of the league’s top creator, Perry once again.
Which brings me back to my opening point. Clearly, Morris is at the very top end of what the Adran U19 Leagues can produce. However, after a valedictory trip to Hong Kong last week her time at Wrexham is over. If she chooses to remain in the Welsh system she is likely to find success, but for a player of her promise to need to find a new path is a sign that the FAW’s neglect of girls football has not created a pathway capable of deterring an ambitious club from buying in talent rather than look to its young players, with nothing in place to bridge to senior football.
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