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.

Hannah Snape is a player who got a lot of Wrexham fans exciting throughout her one season with us. Her set piece delivery was spectacular, especially from corners, which she bent in wickedly with pace. They were a nightmare to defend.

Indeed, her overall quality on the ball and combination play was very impressive as she broke down the left from her starting position as a left wing-back. It therefore caught many by surprise when she became the only one of last summer’s first team signings to depart the following Summer, with the only other 2025 arrival to leave being 17-year old Neve Adams.

However, a glance at the starting line-ups for the season suggest there was always a liklihood that Jenny Sugarman would look for a different option next season.

She featured in each of the first 17 games of the season, starting 15; a sequence which ended with the emphatic Adran Trophy semi-final win against Briton Ferry in January.

However, she started only one of the next nine matches – and that was for 65 minutes against lower division opposition – and wasn’t on the bench for five of them. She doesn’t appear to have been injured, merely not selected.

She made a return to the team for the last game of the season, which was a dead rubber, and marked her final appearance for us with a terrific assist for Katie Barker to get her 25th goal of the season against Swansea City.

So what happened to mark this change of direction? Clearly part of the explanation lies in a transfer window upgrade to the left side of defence.

Mikayla Wildgoose and Sarah Harvey arrived, and they looked to have the left side of the defensive unit locked down until the centre-back’s unfortunate injury necessitated a change of role for Harvey. However, Snape had already been replaced in anticipation of the rejig, with the position rotated between Leah Burke and Carra Jones. When Harvey stepped into the back three, Snape didn’t return until the last match, with the position filled by Jones, Josie Smith and, most strikingly, Ava Suckley.

If Snape wasn’t to be selected, we would clearly be looking to bring in an experienced left-footed wide player as our run-in was characterised by the selection of a series of right-footed players and Suckley, who for all her commitment and adaptability is not a natural defender.

It’s a great shame it didn’t work out for Snape. Perhaps the seeds of doubt were sown in our third match of the season: she had shown her creative value a week earlier, marking her first start with two goals in the laboured win over Barry Town United at a soaking Racecourse. However, the following Sunday we switched to a back four with Snape at left back at TNS, and put in our sole poor performance of the season.

Snape was by no means the only player to have a rough time that day, as we seemed to struggle with adapting to the change of shape. Still, it might have suggested to the coaching staff that she was not a player who would fulfil the defensive side of the left back role if we opted to play a back four.

Some rather basic statistics bear this theory out. In all games we conceded a goal every 87 minutes when Snape was on the ptich, a highly impressive figure which looks even better in context: when she wasn’t playing we let a goal in every 67 minutes. However, there is a world of difference between playing top tier opposition and the sides in the divisions below the Adran Premier, and when we look at league statistics alone the story is very different. In the league we conceded every 65minutes when Snape was in the defensive unit and every 85 minutes when she wasn’t.

It’s only a rough measure, and obviously doesn’t reflect the individual causes of each goal, which might have had nothing to do with her. Furthermore, there are instances like the Adran Trophy quarter-final against Aberystwyth Town where her substitution seemed to contribute to them fighting their way back into the match as Lily Moralee-Hughes was shifted to the right and scored within three minutes before going on to cause major issues down that flank as Town fought back to take the game to penalties.

It would be unfair to judge Snape on such figures without the context of what Wrexham are looking to do in the near future. Snape is clearly a very high quality player in terms of the Adran Premier, with The Red Dragons being probably the only side she would not automatically hold a place in the first eleven. However, as Sugarman looks to push the clubs boundaries beyond domestic trophies, it’s understandable that she wants to draft in a left-sided equivalent of Maria Francis-Jones. Snape won a lot of fans with her performances this season, and leaves with two medals. She is a part of club history and should be proud of that, even if she must now move on.