A Super Saturday healed wounds for Wrexham AFC faithful

Leader Live

10-05-2025

The symbolic healing of wounds suffered over more than a decade at the start of the century took place at Sincil Bank, an uncannily appropriate venue for the occasion.
No club has done what we've done. No fans have ever been fortunate enough to enjoy a run of seasons like we've experienced. What a glorious time to be a Wrexham fan.
Last Saturday was a party, but also an opportunity for reflection.
In 2008 we travelled to Lincoln for the last day of the season, knowing we'd hit the lowest point in our history.
With the typical dark humour football fans are known for, Wrexham's fans decided to commemorate the occasion with a fancy dress party.
They dressed as superheroes, clowns and monsters: outfits that unintentionally parodied the dramatis personae which had dominated our story over the previous years. The fans and people on the football side of the club were always stoic, often heroic, but the club was dragged down the plughole by a grim cast of off-field characters.
That morbid party illustrated the indefatigable nature of Wrexham's fans. No matter what, we refused to accept disaster and believed we could come back, stronger and better than ever.
We had to wait a heck of a long time for that turning point, but it was well worth it, and all the sweeter for all the suffering we've gone through to get here.
Incredibly, we returned to Lincoln exactly 17 years to the day since that gloriously bizarre farewell to the EFL. There was no irony about last Saturday's party though: we've earned the right to revel in what we've achieved, and the mind-blowing possibilities of what is to come.
A second circle is also being closed, and this one goes back much further. For many fans, the four years we spent in the old Second Division is an unimaginable period of the club's history. For those of us who experienced it, it feels like another world. The prospect of returning to that level was unthinkable as we descended and shrunk as a club.
The thought of Wrexham in the Championship became an unattainable dream. Just like the dream of owning a farm which sustained George and Lennie in 'Of Mice and Men' (if you attended secondary school in the last 20 years you're bound to have read Steinbeck's classic of the Depression), we were motivated by a dream which, deep down, we knew would never come true.
'Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head. They're all the time talkin' about it, but it's jus' in their head.'
The phenomenal feats of the 1977-78 season have passed into folklore. Our sojourn in the promised land was brief and, ultimately, bitter.
We invested in upgrading The Racecourse but the recession of the 1980s made us pay for that ambition.
The likes of Mickey Thomas and Bobby Shinton were sold as funds ran low until we were running on empty.
We seemed to have secured an unlikely escape from relegation in 1982, only to see our spell in the Second Division end abruptly as we failed to win in seven games as the season came to a close.
Another strange coincidence: having been relegated with one game left to play, we welcomed Rotherham United to The Racecourse for a meaningless match that was, nevertheless, packed with symbolism.
We'd clinched that unprecedented promotion by beating The Millers 7-1 in 1978.
Four years later we faced them again and bade farewell to the second tier with a final, defiant gesture, claiming a hollow 3-2 victory with Mick Vinter scoring a hat-trick.
Too late, and as we were relegated again the following season, thus beginning nine years of financial struggle in the Fourth Division, it seemed we'd never return to those heights.
Those book-ended wins over Rotherham felt hollow. We might have got the better of them, but they remained in the second tier while we plummeted.
Sounds familiar? We rounded off the dismal 2008 season with a 4-2 win at Lincoln, a sudden flaring of what might have been now it was too late. Not only was it the first time we'd scored four times that season, we hadn't even managed three goals in a game!
It was the first time we'd scored three goals in an away game since…yes, you guessed it, we played Lincoln 13 months earlier. Last Saturday really did feel like the pulling together of a lot of loose ends.
Forty-three years later we celebrated our return to the second division, and hopefully we have grounds for optimism. The highest we finished in that four-year period was 15th, but we can reasonably hope to make more of an impact this time round.
Hopefully we can say goodbye to the third tier with a bit more conviction this time round.