AS Wrexham celebrated FA Trophy success on their first-ever trip to Wembley, one man’s juvenile exuberance stood out.
Step… sorry, slide forward Andy Morrell, the Dragons’ player-manager. It’s time to skid across the pitch and join the team photo.
After then side-step skipping from one cor ner flag to the other, whipping up the near-20,000 travelling throng before collapsing in a heap with goalkeeper Chris Maxwell, you had the two poles of this Wrexham team: the young and the very, very old.
“I got my second wind, probably 45 minutes too late,” laughed Morrell, who had brought himself off on the hour of the penalty shoot-out win over Grimsby feeling every single day of his 38 years.
On-loan Maxwell – if Wrexham can get their youth-team product back from Fleetwood – represents the future, along with two fellow 22-year-olds in winning spot-kick taker Johnny Hunt and a real Pole, flying substitute Adrian Cieslewicz, who stretched the Mariners’ tiring legs as the game aged.
A second trip to England’s national stadium in five weeks’ time, for a play-off final that could be the end of the darkest five-year period in Wrexham’s history, could well be the end of the road for several of Racecourse legend Morrell’s team if they get there.
And what a ‘Wembley Way’ to bow out it would be for players who have been the model of consistency since Morrell replaced Dean Saunders in September 2011.
In 92 games going into this weekend, Morrell had won 54, drawn 22 (including two that ultimately went to penalty shoot-outs) and lost just 16.
He has gained a result in a phenomenal 83 per cent of his matches. Sticking with the maths, the average age of the north Walians’ team last Sunday was 29.5 years.
Scruffy
In selecting Stephen Wright (33), Chris Westwood (36), Dean Keates (34), Brett Ormerod (36) and himself in the starting XI, it was clear Morrell felt that big-game experience would be crucial.
Asked if there was method to selecting the old heads and legs, Morrell replied: “A little bit I suppose, down the spine. The idea was not just to stay in the game – you hope you’re 3-0 up after ten minutes of course, but it doesn’t always work like that.
“But the idea was that Ciz and Rob (Ogleby) are both quick and fit lads, so to bring them on late in a game – especially if it was going to go to extra-time – was always going to be key for us.
“I didn’t want them to peter out midway through the second half, just when you need your spark. There was a bit of method in it, but also having the experienced heads calms you down a little bit.
“It was a bit fraught the first 15 minutes, but I think we were the better team overall and deserved to win the game. And so it’s worked.” And it did.
Morrell has been a credit to himself, his club and the league over the past three seasons since he returned to the Racecourse after starring for Coventry City, Blackpool and Bury. As a manager he is lear ning so quickly, with his assistant Billy Barr a pillar to lean on and trust to make the right decisions when he’s playing, even if he does tend to take the gaffer off!
Morrell’s honesty and candour is always refreshing. Even midfielder Jay Harris – magnificent last Sunday alongside the equally omnipresent skipper Keates – admits he deserved to be dubbed “an idiot” by his teammate and gaffer recently for being sent off.
Mozza often speaks of his team and their performances with a ‘one-of-the-lads’ laugh or a caring ‘Bless him’. And his admission that they “forgot” to practise penalties in training the day before the final, because “it was too cold and we just went straight in”, was brilliant.
Westwood was the sponsors’ man-of-the-match for the way he helped Martin Riley snuff out Ross Hannah and, bar one brief moment for the Town goal, the aerial threat of Andy Cook.
Wright’s lack of pace might sometimes get exposed, but the one-time £3m man carries top-flight experience from Liverpool and Sunderland to see him and his pals through, while Ormerod looks as scruffy as he ever did in the Premier League, but scraps for every ball.
Cameo
As Keates told me recently, he has been fitter than ever since he turned 28 and Morrell paid tribute to his old guard – not forgetting 37-year-old sub Glen ‘Blakey’ Little, of course – and their work ethic when he said:
“The lads are so fit. They are true, true professionals, especially the older ones. That’s why we bring them in. They look after themselves.”
I’m not writing off any of Morrell’s side. The likes of Ryan Giggs and Kevin Phillips are proving at much higher levels that players can go on for longer in the moder n era.
But all teams that go up from the Conference eventually get dismantled within a few months, apart from maybe the Stevenage side of 2009-10.
Youth team graduate Hunt has played in midfield and up front whenever I’ve seen Wrexham this season, but on Sunday, he filled in admirably for injured left-back Neil Ashton.
Kevin Thornton may be 26, but Sunday was only the 57th professional start of the ex-Coventry and Northampton playmaker’s career, so he can still be considered a young ‘un.
The penalty equaliser he netted in normal time was his fifth goal in seven starts for the Dragons, and although he’s had his lifestyle problems in the past he is thriving under Morrell, who he knows well from their Coventry City days.
And then there is Cieslewicz. The Dragons’ longest-serving player strikes fear into every Conference defender, but often frustrates by drifting out of games. Before this weekend, the ex-Manchester City scholar hadn’t started one since January 4.
But if last week’s does prove a dress rehearsal for a bigger Wembley date, Cis’s scintillating cameo (he’d have scored twice but for a brilliant display from Grimsby keeper James McKeown) will surely see him given that chance as rising Wrexham ready themselves for a changing of the old guard.
