There’s only one place to be this weekend, one football match which demands our attention. It’s not often you get an opportunity to see Wrexham achieve something we’ve never done in our 162-year history.
On Sunday we face Cardiff City; at stake is the Adran Premier title. How big is it?
We’ve never won a top tier league title before. That’s massive.
Heck, this is only the third year any Wrexham side has been in the top flight, and here we are, looking to win the whole thing!
The direction of travel is upwards, and this is a chance to jump on board at an early stage and enjoy the ride.
The international break came at just the right time for Phil Parkinson’s side to recharge their batteries for the run-in, and it also offers a chance to focus on this monster of a match without distraction.
Anyone who knows me will recognise my enthusiasm for Jenny Sugarman’s team. Commentating on their games has been an unexpected joy, a bonus which came about as a direct consequence of Rob and Ryan’s takeover.
I consider myself incredibly lucky to be given a second team to throw my wholehearted support behind, and with the zeal of the convert I love spreading the word. Why should I keep all the fun of watching this tremendous team to myself?
The exciting thing is that this is just a starting point. We’ve risen incredibly from playing at Ponciau Banks just three seasons ago to putting on a remarkable show at the Cardiff City Stadium in from of FIFA Big Cheese Gianni Infantino last month.
We’re going to keep driving on from this point. It’s an exciting thought: the direction of travel is upwards, and this is a chance to jump on board at an early stage and enjoy the ride.
Sunday’s match is a Titanic struggle, made all the more exciting by its context. We have made our first sustained tilt at winning the league title this season, and it has been one heck of a ride.
Jenny Sugarman‘s team has been terrific to watch, thrilling in attack, and turning up at the big moments.
We’ve won our first ever major trophy, taking the League Cup, reached the semi-finals of the Welsh Cup, and now we go for the league title.
Only one thing stands in our way. The dominant force in Welsh football.
Toppling Cardiff from their throne would be a remarkable achievement. I’ll go further and say it would feel like a potential changing of the guard.
Thrillingly, our momentum is firmly upwards, and we will surely go from strength to strength.
Cardiff, both on and off the pitch, set the standards that we need to meet. If we can win two trophies out of the three available in Welsh football, we will be well on the way to achieving just that.
It’s an intriguing match up, made all the more tasty by the fact that we’ve just had an exciting triple header against the Bluebirds.
Remember that Titanic struggle between Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona and Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid, where they duked it out for all the Spanish trophies and met in the semi final of the Champions League to boot, with a succession of matches played back-to-back?
That sequence of games descended into rancour and tedium as the two sides proved that familiarity can indeed lead to contempt. It wasn’t helped by Mourinho’s realisation that the only way his team could confound a remarkable Barcelona side was by resorting to the dark arts on a consistent basis!
Our familiarity with Cardiff City has not gone down that road: quite the opposite.
The three games were all very different. The first was the Adran Trophy final in which we took our first ever significant trophy.
Then we went to Cardiff in the league and put on a heck of a show, winning 3-1 and it could have been more.
The stakes were high. If we’d lost, the title would have been all but gone: Cardiff would have had to suffer an unthinkable lapse to lose it.
Instead, that win wrested the fate of the title back into our hands, and boy was it thrilling!
The fluency with which we attacked, the pace with which we struck, the quality of our play, our overall dominance: they were all a joy.
When we met the next weekend, it felt like a chance to strike the final blow and irrevocably turn the tide in Welsh domestic football.
There was just one problem with this theory: Cardiff City’s unquenchable spirit. The spirit of champions.
They didn’t become the best accidentally, and they showed it with a performance of incredible resilience, displaying remarkable heart, spirit and quality to strike back and beat us 2-1 in the semi-final of the Welsh Cup.
It was all about them, not us, as they made amends for what happened on their own patch the weekend before.
We now need to show that same calibre at the SToK Cae Ras, and what a day it will be!
The atmosphere at the Wrexham games this season has been something the Adran Premier has never seen before. The Wrexham Women Supporters Group, born from the fantastic Wrexham Ultras, show terrific commitment to the team home and away, and has brought amazing life to our matches.
This is the pinnacle of the domestic game, but it still retains an element of the grass roots football it has sprung from.
The players are accessible and, after every game, they don’t just go to acknowledge their fans: they join them for a pitch-side chat.
They share generously with the fans and are quick to acknowledge the brilliant backing that they get. Following this team makes you part of a community.
It’s embodies what attracted Rob and Ryan to the club in the first place.
Now we stand on the threshold of something remarkable, cheered on by an excellent crowd, testing ourselves against the very best with the ultimate prize lying behind.
When I say ultimate prize, obviously I’m talking about winning a league title for the first time ever. However there’s more beyond that!
Should we win the league, European football will return to the SToK Cae Ras!
What a thought that is! Wrexham in the Champions League!
Don’t you want to be a part of all this?
With the prices as cheap as £3 for adults, with £20 hospitality, I want to know why you wouldn’t attend. In fact, I’m insisting on a note from your parents if you don’t turn up on Sunday!
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