Thanks again to Rory Sheehan who will be providing match reports and feature articles
Northwich 1 Wrexham 2
A run of 8 games without a win for Wrexham was ended with this victory away to ‘local’ rivals, struggling Northwich Victoria. The win puts the Dragons back in touch with the BSP play-off pack and raises hope for the end-of-season run-in.
Michael Proctor replaced the absent Jefferson Louis up front, Nathan Fairhurst came back into midfield, and Carl Tremarco returned from a long spell out of the side in place of Sam Williamson at left-back.
The Northwich line-up featured ex-Wrexham midfielder Matty Crowell, while another former Dragons midfielder Jeff Whitley would be an unused substitute.
The game didn’t really get going until the home side opened the scoring on 13 minutes via a horrendous lapse in communication between goalkeeper Anthony Williams and centre-half Ashley Westwood.
Williams needlessly surged out of his area and into Westwood as well as ‘Vics’ forward Kyle Perry. It was Perry who was quickest to recover, taking advantage of the mess by tapping into the empty net.
Just a minute later Wrexham were back on level terms. Matt Jansen received the ball around the penalty area, equalising with a terrific shot past ‘Vics’ goalkeeper Ryan Clarke. It was Jansen’s first goal for 6 years and more than hinted at his former Premiership pedigree.
Wrexham were in the ascendancy but the home side contained them, albeit at full stretch. The ‘Vics’ missed a golden opportunity when Jonny Allen’s attempt was just cleared by Westwood as it seemed set to go in. The half-time whistle blew 10 minutes later.
Into the second period the Dragons superior fitness and class began to show and continued after the introduction of Jon Brown in place of Wes Baynes.
With 25 minutes to go the hero of the first-half Jansen missed a sitter. Set-up by Proctor, he did the hard part in taking it around Clarke in the area but with an open goal at his mercy – put his effort over! Fortunately that miss wasn’t to detract from Jansen’s all-round excellent performance.
Proctor gave way to Obi Anoruo and for the third game running the teenager made an impact from the bench with Northwich now flagging.
Shortly after some superb defending by Ryan Flynn, and with quarter of an hour to go, the Dragons grabbed the winner. Nathan Fairhurst hit a long-range screamer from nowhere to give Wrexham the advantage they deserved.
From then on the Dragons were in control as the pace of Anoruo and Brown served as a constant attacking outlet and Northwich had little left to offer.
At last the large Wrexham following were able to celebrate a well-earned win, putting an end to the barren spell of the last month.
Suddenly the BSP table looks a lot closer nearer the top with plenty of games still left to play. This was not a perfect performance but it’s certainly something to build on, starting at home to fellow play-off hopefuls Crawley on Saturday.
Categories :
Archives