One of the greats left us this week.

Paul Mullin’s contribution to Wrexham was for the ages. I think the best way to express that is to look back at a point in his Racecourse prime when he had an opportunity to leave on his own terms.

It was while he was banging goals in to propel us into League One that a story began to circulate: a Saudi Arabian team was after him.

This provoked panic among Wrexham fans who were mortified at the prospect of their hero decamping to the land of sun, sand and stupendous salaries.

However, there was never any chance of him departing, and the reasons for this are revealing in a number of ways.

Firstly, and clearly most importantly, he was never going to uproot his son, Alby.

We have all seen how devoted Mullin is to his little boy, and his contribution to the conversation around autism is a genuinely important contribution to the national discourse which trumps even his spectacular goalscoring.

Mullin was never going to uproot Alby, never going to force an unfamiliar life on a child in a well-grooved environment.

Secondly, Mullin’s humility showed through in his autobiography as well as “Welcome to Wrexham.” Sure, he has the swagger of a goalscorer and the confidence of a man who shoulders that responsibility naturally. He’s deeply attached to his working class roots though and understands that a life-transforming amount of money isn’t everything, especially if it transforms a life which is going along rather nicely.

Thirdly, and this really should not be under-stated, where else would he find what he had earned at Wrexham?

A starring role in a global TV show, an unexpected platform to campaign for a better life for his boy, and crucially, a workplace where he attracted adulation.

Go to Saudi, and be another expensive player in a squad, with a very different pressure on you to score: an expectation to perform to justify the bloated outlay on him. [1]

Stay in Wrexham, and enjoy something very few players at the top level ever get to experience: be worshipped as a God!

Because, let’s be clear, Mullin was worshipped by the Tech End. The post-victory ritual of fist-pumping to the cheers of the crowd was an expression of this, a holy sign of reverence, a communion between a man and his disciples.

Mullin would perform miracles for us, and we would sing hymns of praise. Transformed, we finally completed our fifteen-year journey.

Okay, I’m getting carried away. However, he was a phenomenon. Why would he move away from a place that gave him all this?

It was a reciprocal deal of course: he gave a heck of a lot to us.

The statistics put him into context: he is one of the finest players to ever pull on a shirt in our name.

Only five players have scored more goals for Wrexham; only three managed more I the league.

The remarkable Tommy Bamford is the only player to score more in a season than Mullin’s 47 in 2022-23. His 38 league goals in that season is also only second to the Welsh international’s efforts in 1933-34, when he struck 44 in the Third Division North and 50 in all competitions.

Likewise, his six hat tricks are matched only by Gary Bennett and Andy Morrell and bettered only by the inevitable Bamford.

He did have the best scoring ratio of goals per game after Bamford too, but his difficulties in the latter days of his Wrexham career meant Bennett is narrowly ahead.

Still, you can make a strong argument for Mullin being Wrexham’s greatest striker after Bamford. That’s quite a statement.

It’s such a shame that the last two seasons of his time with us were unhappy. It could have turned out very differently.

When I suggested earlier that he shouldered responsibility naturally, I omitted to add an important condition. Since promotion to League One, that quality became a burden.

He had always been the man who turned up, the man who struck when he was needed. The difference-maker.

When he started to struggle for goals, that responsibility started to weigh him down. If there was ever a player who was trying too hard to make things happen, it was Mullin in 2024-25.

However, we need to understand why it turned out like that.

Mullin was affected by the lack of goals because he cared. He wanted to be the player who won games, and desperation crept in when he ceased being so.

That’s because one of the most important qualities Mullin had in a Wrexham shirt was that he cared and transmitted that to the fans.

He would not stop in his quest to pursue a Wrexham victory. We loved how he would race deep into his own half in the closing minutes to hunt down an opponent. That whole-hearted desire to win with us became a handicap when the ball just wouldn’t go in for him. He would try harder and harder to score, and that was the problem. He was trying to force it, and that wasn’t what made him great. His natural ability to turn up when needed and finish with a carefree glee was.

The accepted wisdom is that League One was a step too far for him. That’s facile nonsense.

Mullin could have continued to rip through the third tier, I’m certain. However, circumstances counted against him.

The horrible injury he sustained in the 2023 pre-season against Manchester United was a huge setback.

He didn’t look right until the run-in of the following season, once he’d finally returned to the team, but did something incredible.

He kept ticked over, chipping in with goals, and finally looked right physically in the final six weeks of the season. He then went to town, scoring freely and powering our promotion surge.

However, the physical issues he had overcome so nobly were still there. He needed an operation the following season, and that was what did for him.

Missing one pre-season is debilitating, and his ability to recover from that was amazing.

Missing consecutive pre-seasons is utterly devastating. It’s understandable that even he couldn’t repeat his heroics in the following campaign.

There’s no doubt he could have flourished at the higher level.

A player who is out of his depth disappears, and that is certainly not what happened to Mullin in League One.

Instead, this unhappy time was characterised by missed opportunities; if he had been at his usual level of sharpness, they would have gone in.

Time doesn’t stand still, even for legends, when you’re engaged on a crazy path up the leagues. Phil Parkinson couldn’t wait and hope for a renaissance: he had to move on.

Mullin should not be defined by his latter struggles, though. The good days far outweigh them.

Players only manage to leave with their reputation untarnished because they choose to leave before the decline begins. Mullin chose not to, and we should acknowledge that.

When we discuss the best of the best, Mullin must be in that conversation.

---

[1] Darwin Nunez left Liverpool for that Saudi promise and was rewarded by being left out of his club’s squad when they brought in another shiny new striker soon afterwards, exceeding their quota of foreign players. His World Cup was ruined by a lack of match practice, just when he ought to have been in his prime.