Well, we’ve done it!

Our minds are blown, as we collectively try to let it all sink in. We’re owned by stars, loved around the world and incredibly well-run. We’ve never had it so good.

If we want to appreciate what we’ve achieved, we need to place it into context. When you look back over 160 years of history, it’s important to understand just how remarkable getting back into the second tier is.

Where does last Saturday rank in the list of great days in our long history? The wins over Arsenal and Porto have to be at the top, but clinching promotion to the second tier by beating Rotherham 7-1 in 1978 deserves to be alongside them, and our dismantling of Charlton is surely equally sigmagnificant (I’m searching for the right way to squash magnificent and significant together because I know Susie Dent reads this column religiously. If Wrexham can go back to back to back, anything is possible, including me getting into the Oxford English Dictionary.¹)

That remarkable symbiotic relationship between fans and players was as strong as it has ever been, The noise before the game was incredible, and ramped up even more when we started on the front foot.

Ollie Rathbone did an Ollie Rathbone thing in the first twenty minutes, crunching in with a whole-hearted challenge to stop Charlton escaping after we’d penned them in their penalty area from the kick-off, and the noise level rose even further. The fans got the message, the players got the message: we were all in it together, we were all going to do our bit, and we weren’t going to be denied. No way.

Once more, the players have been remarkable in the run-in to the season, a common factor in Parkinson’s four seasons with us.

The only reason we didn’t get promoted in his first season was because we were restricted by having to bring players in solely during the transfer windows, while the rest of the National League weren’t hampered by such restrictions.

We managed to stay in contention, but it was when Parkinson drafted in Ollie Palmer, Callum McFadzean and Tom O’Connor in January that his side finally felt complete.

In the seventeen league games before the final match of the season, by which point our title hopes were marginal, we won thirteen, dropping just ten points from a possible 51!

The following season, when we saw off Notts County’s sustained challenge, we held our nerve down the finishing straight. You could argue we starting our final spirit rather early, as we only lost one match after early October!

However, to take a more orthodox view of things, we won the title by completing our eighth win in ten games.

Last season we won our last five league matches, or seven from the last eight if you prefer, and this time we’re currently on our longest unbeaten league run of the season.

That tells you a lot about the character of the players Phil Parkinson has accumulated over the years: when the chips are down they show up.

Last week we faced two in-form teams, Blackpool and Charlton. We played with such intensity that neither of them threatened to take anything out of those games. We were dynamic, decisive and delightful to watch.

I love thinking about and learning about tactics and tend to be unimpressed when people condense the game down to effort and who “wants it more”. However, it cannot be denied that, for all the qualities Parkinson’s teams have shown, their sheer bloody-mindedness is such an important factor in our success.

We have a great mix of experience and youth, but there’s a common factor: a deeply engrained desire to win. They’ve risen to the big occasions and performed under pressure.

This team is incredible and deserves to be seen as a such when we consider the history of the club.

The great names of the 1977-78 promotion team rolls off the tongue: Davies, Davis, Evans, Sutton, Thomas, McNeil, Shinton, Whittle.

The stars of the 2024-25 sides have earned the right to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them. Decades into the future young Wrexham fans will be weaned on tales of Okonkwo’s great saves, Cleworth’s class, the indomitable spirit of McClean, Barnett’s assists, Rathbone’s energy, Lee’s wizardry, Palmer’s power and Mullin’s match-winning genius.

We are so lucky to watch this team, to experience these days and dream of what is to come. We are watching legends on the Racecourse pitch, who have taken us to the greatest heights the proud red shirt has ever achieved. Let it sink in while bearing in mind that this isn’t hyperbole: it’s fact.

I did have a failed attempt to get into the dictionary when I decided that small dogs aren’t actually dogs, but a different species. The word I coined for them was “Brolax”, and working on the basis that words become accepted into the dictionary by being widely used I tried to launch a lexicographical ambush by encouraging the children I taught to use the word in conversation as regularly as possible.

e.g. Look at that brolax weeing on a lamppost!  

That pug is the most adorable brolax I’ve ever seen!

Hitler was a terrible man, but they say he was kind to dogs and brolaxi (that’s the plural).

The kids let me down. To be fair, I could have gone one step further by teaching them that it was a real word, but I bottled it.