There’s an argument to be made when this is Wrexham at their best: dogged, determined, needing to Do A Job and Dog Gone Doing It. Luck comes into it, what’s luck if not made? “Law of averages,” sung Wrexham boss Phil Parkinson after his side’s emphatic 2-0 win over promotion rivals Mansfield. “We were due one.”
If Paul Mullin’s spot-kick and Wrexham’s second goal felt a little tetchy and capricious, to an extent Wrexham earned their stroke of fortune. Mansfield are League Two’s more lethal attacking force and Wrexham – now sitting third in the league table level on points with The Stags in second and one point off leaders Stockport who tout a game in hand – restricted Nigel Clough’s side to just one shot on target: a fizzing low-driven effort from substitute James Gale shortly after the interval. Wrexham were resolute, obstinate and in the end, triumphant.
Six games remain, and while Parkinson is right (nothing is decided here, not in this colosseum of fourth tier football) to undermine the significance of this victory in a claustrophobic promotion battle would be harebrained. On Sunday as Wrexham Women piled 2,000 fans into the Stoke Cold Brew stand, one eye was cast towards today.
The parallels to last season were tantalising, shades of the 3-2 Notts County bouncing around before the day had even begun: roughly the same time, the same jeopardy, albeit the previous two-horse race has exploded into a five-horse race, a cavalcade sprinting towards League One. But it’s all the same: win here and the season promises to fall into place.
Even so, the story going into Friday afternoon’s promotion clash was money: how much Wrexham were making, how much they were spending, how much they were losing and owing.
Glancing at the numbers – £10.5million revenue, £6.9million in wages, £5.1million in losses, £9million owed to the co-owners in total – you can struggle to put it all into the context of real life. In these lower echelons of English football, it’s Monopoly money. But what’s a bit of cash owed and extra 000s on the end of a wage bill when these are the scenes: a bouncing Racecourse declaring in no uncertain terms that their rivals are nothing more than a **** Notts County ?
Mansfield’s misfortune began early, Clough’s side forced into an unwanted change less than three minutes in as James McClean – returning from a two-game suspension – clattered into Elliott Hewitt. The 29-year-old was making his first appearance in 11 months since suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury and saw his day ended prematurely as Stephen McLaughlin was called to replace him. McClean was deservedly put into official Lewis Smith’s book.
That was until the half-hour mark. Wrexham finally found an iota of a foothold down the right, Andy Cannon foraying forward and whistling a cross into the box which evaded Aden Flint and Lewis Brunt. There’s a cruel irony about Mullin in how he makes scoring goals look so splendidly rudimentary. There was technique required here, a latent instinct. And in the end – as so often he does – Mullin was wheeling away, number 17 of the campaign tucked away, number 98 of an increasingly glittering Wrexham tenure, a crowd in paroxysms as the promotion race bent evermore in their favour.
Make no mistake. This is what you get for money well spent: a striker who, despite spending the last two seasons in the National League, has scored the joint-second most goals in League Two since the 2020-21 season.
Mansfield entered the second half with a point to prove, but barring Gale’s shot, Mansfield toiled to produce or create anything of note. Wrexham saw a gilt-edged chance to double their advantage scuppered as Luke Bolton dallied too long before finding Mullin. Okonkwo’s dithering on the edge of the box looked to be duly punished by Mansfield’s leading goalscorer Davis Keillor-Dunn, who nicked the ball out of the keeper’s outstretched hands, knocked it around him and fired into an empty net – only for Smith to declare Okonkwo had managed to get two hands to the ball before Keillor-Dunn’s pilfering.
Before the striker’s grievances could settle, Bolton was clumsily chopped down outside Mansfield’s box. Bolton dived, laudably landing on the chalk-white line of the penalty area and after some time Smith pointed to the spot, much to the stunned chagrin of the visiting fans and the unbridled delight of the home support.
Mullin stopped up and rifled his spot-kick into the roof of the net, the venom of his 18th goal of the campaign and 99th of his Wrexham career breaking through keeper Christy Pym’s fingertips.
No one here is bandying around the words fairy tale anymore than they are bandying around the words automatic promotion. A penchant for bottling, as one fan behind the media desk declared, isn’t exorcised with one promotion.
But there’s an argument to be made that Wrexham are prepared for this battleground now, not only with the familiar experience from last season but the addition of such signings like McClean, a player with two previous promotions under his belt.
“James in particular, the bigger the game, the better he plays and Mulls as well,” said Parkinson. “The finishing line is getting closer and they can smell that sweet smell of hopefully success, we know there’s work to be done. The lads are relishing it and they should, we’ve worked hard to get into the top three and we’ve got six games to go, it’s about staying there.”
If you want to straw-clutch, there’s an argument to be made that an ownership group coming into a club and prudently ploughing in ginormous lump sums with positive upturns is Fairy Tale territory, especially when juxtaposed with modern football’s fondness for spending money as if at a Las Vegas craps table, wondering where it’s all gone at dawn [see: Everton Football Club].
