Sunday saw Wrexham Women play their last game before the Christmas break, and it was possibly the most important match the club has been involved in this season so far.

A win was imperative, or our prospects of finishing in the top four, meaning we’d qualify for the title play-offs and maintain the terrific progress we’ve enjoyed over the last two seasons.

Naturally, it wasn’t a straightforward affair. The second half was the most exhilarating, exasperating, downright crazy football I’ve watched all season, and that’s saying something, considering the fun we’ve had with the men’s team.

The journey Steve Dale and his side have been on has been remarkable, and it has really struck a chord with Wrexham’s freshly-minted international support.

Lazily, plenty of people ascribe this interest to the much higher profile which women’s football enjoys in the USA compared to over here. I suppose there’s some truth to that, but I think there’s a much more fundamental cause of the side’s popularity internationally.

They fell in love with the club through “Welcome to Wrexham”, a TV show which many mistakenly think is about football.

It absolutely isn’t. “Welcome to Wrexham” is about people and community. It expresses a tangible sense of civic pride, togetherness through its portrayal of the club and, by extension, the city. That’s what draws people in: the warmth, not the football.

Let’s not forget that investing in the place as well as the team was also the idea which drew Rob and Ryan in. They’ve told the story of what attracted them to Wrexham, and it has captivated a whole new audience.

An awful lot of the international fans who discovered Wrexham through what some still bizarrely call “The Netflix Documentary” were not football fans, or often even sports fans, beforehand. In my experience, people who added Wrexham to their portfolio of football interests are a small minority of our new fans.

Instead, they fell in love with the people and the place first, and then developed an addiction to football.

That’s a massive factor in the popularity of the women’s team internationally. They are extremely likeable anyway, and some of them were given an opportunity to illustrate those qualities on the show. How could you not enjoy watching Lili Jones, Rosie Hughes and Gemma Owen striving to succeed when you know their stories and what motivates them?

For me, while seeing Wrexham’s men tour the USA remains a mind-blowing delight, it was the women’s trip to the States which was the big story.

These are semi-professional players, remember. Serious athletes, yes, but each of them still has to balance their training and playing with the day job.

I was fortunate enough to be joined in commentary on Sunday by Louisha Doran, an inspirationally fiery centre back. She expressed perfectly how the development of the club is a genuine dream come true.

For our players, getting to go on tour, to play in front of big crowds – over 10,000 watched them in Portland – to be recognised on the street and mobbed by fans is the stuff of fantasy.

That human element is what makes this team so popular, and makes them worth following. So why was last Sunday so important for them?

The Adran Premier splits into two parts once every has played each other home and away, with the top 4 fighting it out for the league and the rest playing off to avoid relegation.

Last season was our first campaign in the top tier, and we qualified for the top four with plenty to spare. It was a magnificent performance, but this season started badly.

We lost our first 3 games, and have been playing catch-up ever since. To be fair, we’ve generally played well, but the chances just haven’t been going in. As a consequence, we’ve been stuck in 6th place, well clear of the relegation scrap, but struggling to threaten the top four.

We’ve been stringing some good results together lately though: since mid-October we’ve only dropped points away to the top two in the league.

By Sunday, we’d narrowed the gap to fourth place to four points, and our final match before the Christmas break was at home to the side which occupied that coveted position: Barry Town United.

We’d played them twice at their place already this season, losing 1-0 in a match which we totally dominated, then winning 3-1 in a match which followed a very similar pattern.

That victory came a week before we met them again at The Rock and got off to a perfect start through Phoebe Davies, a player who has been crucial player over the years, but had never scored a league goal for us before.

At half time we led 1-0. It could have been five, and an exceptionally well-executed plan meant Barry had genuine problems getting out of their defensive third. Another convincing win, which would leave us one point from fourth place and send us into the break with well-founded confidence that we could leapfrog Barry, was on the cards.

Twenty four seconds after the restart, she’d set up Barry’s equaliser.

We wobbled, and three minutes later Preece hit the post and Del Morgan had to make a save from the rebound. It felt like an unthinkable capitulation was on the cards.

However, there were two teams on that 3G pitch who were brimming over with fight, and we regained control of the match. Liv Fuller scored with a high quality finish, Carra Jones hit the bar, and after a remarkable spell of pressure in which we kept the ball in the danger area for a ludicrous 23 seconds, in which three close range shots were blocked on the line, Ava Suckley (below) managed to force the ball home.

3-1 up. We’d averted a catastrophe and were back in control. But there was still over half an hour left.

Five minutes later it’s 3-2. Then Brooke Cairns hits the bar for us.Barry’s keeper makes a literally astounded close range save with her face, we have a penalty shout rejected and send to strong efforts just over. Straight from the goal kick after the second of those shots, Preece makes it 3-3 with 12 minutes left.

A draw means we’ll be 4 points off 4^th with 4 games left. That’s a treble 4 nobody wanted, and Barry go close to making the situation even worse: they nearly score from a corner and Amber Lightfoot has to make a fabulous all-or-nothing tackle in our box.

We respond, the crowd willing the ball to go in. Rosie Hughes looks like she’s given us the lead with a powerful header, but it’s a fraction too high. We hit the bar for the third time in the half.

It doesn’t look like the winner’s coming – for the first time in 2 games our threat decreases. But then, in the 89^th minute, after another agonisingly long spell of possession in front of their goal, Hughes combines with Fuller, who cooly slots the ball home from an angle.

Four added minutes turn into eight, but we hold on. The season is still alive. We desperately needed the result, in a season when our performances haven’t been fairly rewarded, and stepped up when it counted.

Fans around the world were spluttering over their breakfast and suffering over their supper throughout, because they care about this team. Being able to also provide such drama certainly helps to make sure they’re worth following.