According to Shakespeare, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”. Well, the shiny hat looks a good fit last Sunday. Wrexham celebrated our first league game as champions of Wales with a fine performance.

We beat Aberystwyth Town 4-0, but that was only half the story.

The margin of victory could have been far greater were it not for a number of factors: a resilient opponent who stuck to their defensive principles and fought with spirit; a debutant goalkeeper who made a string of fine saves; and a series of chances which we might have converted into goals.

When you have around 50 shots on goal (really!), maybe four is a disappointing return, but you can’t argue against the manner of the performance!

It wasn’t about the result, anyway. We were so well-grooved in our shape, passing and movement. Aberystwyth did well to live with us.

Last Summer’s appointment of Jenny Sugarman and Beccy Sawiuk as the management team was transformational, but it came quite late in the closed season.

They did a terrific job of preparing a side which was assembled swiftly – for much of the Summer Lili Jones was our only contracted player.

This Summer they have had to grapple with the opposite issue. Our pre-season has been ludicrously long.

We’ve paid the price for this before, when the women joined the men on the Wrex Coast tour of the States and found that playing friendlies so soon before our league programme began led to serious problems when we tried to maintain our fitness and preparedness.

We lost the first three games of the season and we needed a sensational run of wins at the end of Phase One to reach the top half of the table, culminating in a dramatic final game at Swansea.

Skipper Keren Allen’s last minute winner put us into fourth place for the first time all season, followed by two superb saves by Lizzie Craven to ensure there wasn’t a twist in the twist in the tale!

This time we’ve turned a challenge into an advantage. By wisely easing off after our Champions League adventure before ramping things up again, we tapered our preparation perfectly and hit the ground running on Sunday.

In contrast to last Summer, the squad was assembled early, with our five exciting new signings drafted in before the European games.

With all the players together, they could benefit from the high level coaching of Sugarman and her team. It showed.

The rotations were dazzling, and the players were impressively comfortable with the overall shape of the team, with a clear understanding of the responsibilities of each position in different phases of play.

That meant that, apart from positional rotations, there was a striking level of more permanent exchanges in role. Players would happily fill in for each other for a greater length of time, totally comfortable with the station they were stepping into.

It all added up to a thrilling introduction to the campaign.

And so we come to next Sunday. I don’t like it when people talk about six-pointers early in the season, but oddly our second league game of the campaign feels a bit like one.

While we started in fine manner, Cardiff City stumbled to a defeat against Swansea which immediately put them under pressure.

With a new manager and an overhauled squad, they are something of an unknown quantity. Under Iain Darbyshire they dominated Welsh football until last season, but in taking their title, and one of their best players in Mikayla Cook, we disrupted the Adran Premier order.

They have lost other good players too, and while their recruits look interesting on paper, there is clearly a bedding-in process required.

I’m sure they would have rather had some points under their belt before facing us, and memories of the Phase Two match at the Cardiff City Stadium, in which we were convincing winners, will surely be in their minds.

Beating them 4-1 at The Racecourse to clinch the title in the return match hurt them too. Seven goals in two league games, and a couple in our Adran Trophy final victory in between, represent a turning of the tide, and victory on Sunday would only serve to confirm our status as the team to beat in Wales.

Cardiff aren’t the only potential challengers for our title, and in a league season of just 20 games there’s more scope for an upset: the sample size is small and there’s little time to open up a significant lead.

Still, it would feel terrifically significant, even at this early point in the season, to go six points clear of them. It would pile pressure on their next game too, an awkward affair against Briton Ferry, who enjoyed an emphatic away win on the opening day of the season.

Let’s see if we can’t pile the pressure on with another emphatic performance on Sunday. After all, if the crown fits, wear it!