Hope, grief & a very un-Hollywood ending: A year in thrall to Wrexham

With each goal, the sense of dread grew stronger.

By the third, there was a familiar feeling of inevitability, and by the fifth a resigned but no less painful acknowledgement that it was all over for another year.

Across 120 minutes, the overall experience for a typical Wrexham fan over the past couple of decades was encapsulated. Nervousness, hope, brief excitement, but in the end disappointment.

We have all been here before. Four defeats previously in the National League playoffs have numbed some of the more hardened supporters, but this one still hurt.

It hurt because this time it had felt different. Things were changing, on and off the pitch; surely this year, after 15 years of failure, would be the year.

It wasn’t. Once again, Wrexham fans were left to reflect, to hope, to look forward to that hypothetical day when promotion to the Football League becomes a reality.

It has, at times, felt like an eternal wait. So what’s another year in the grand scheme of things?

The season promised big things. There was a palpable sense of anticipation and excitement around Wrexham AFC, not least because of the high-profile takeover by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

They had already brought in lucrative sponsorships from TikTok and Expedia, helping to fund a summer of serious investment in the playing squad. Paul Mullin, League Two’s top scorer in 2020-21, was signed from Cambridge, while Ben Tozer and Aaron Hayden were pried away from Cheltenham and Carlisle respectively.

These were established EFL players, far too good for the National League. With their arrival, expectation rose, and even the most pessimistic, cynical, fatalistic Wrexham fans began to believe.

I am certainly in that bracket, reluctant to ever truly expect