Thanks again to Rory Sheehan who will be providing match reports and feature articles
Torquay 1 Wrexham 1
A Friday night game live in front of the Setanta TV cameras saw Wrexham make the long trek down to automatic-promotion chasing Torquay, and come away with a well-deserved point.
There were no surprises in the starting line-up with Marc Williams and Ashley Westwood returning, while Simon Spender replaced the injured Neil Taylor at right-back.
Understandably, in difficult weather conditions, the early momentum was with the home side, the Gulls’ Nicky Wroe and Matt Green linking up to create chances and unsettle the dragons defence. Westwood and Mike Williams were up to the challenge, if a little stretched.
As Wrexham got into the game Westwood was influential at the other end, a glancing header requiring Torquay goalkeeper Scott Bevan to pull out the stops to keep it from going in. The respite was brief however as Torquay generally dominated though similarly to Wrexham recently were guilty of not taking their chances.
Ironically, against the run of play, Wrexham did take one of their few openings. Just past the half hour mark a cross from the byline by Jonathon Brown was met with a close-range volley from Ryan Flynn who’d powered into the area to connect. It was Flynn’s first goal for the club and gave Wrexham the lead.
Stung by the goal, Torquay applied most of the pressure until the break with Wrexham relying on counter-attacks for relief. Twice balls were played into the Torquay area without anyone to apply the finish, though the Dragons went into the break with the advantage.
The mounting yellow card count for the Wrexham back four early in the second-half was an indication of the difficulty they had in containing the likes of Green, Tim Sills and Roscoe D’Sane. With half an hour to go, it was D’Sane who drew the Gulls level.
A quick corner caught the Wrexham defence cold as impressive passing from Torquay produced an easy finish for D’Sane. It was hard to argue that the home side didn’t deserve to be back level.
Wrexham’s response to conceding the equaliser was a positive one. Without coming too close to regaining the lead, they pushed forward with the midfield starting to show their quality passing, getting Jonathon Brown into the game more out wide.
The Dragons efforts were further boosted with the arrival of Sam Aiston on for Flynn. Almost immediately he combined with Marc Williams who saw a well-struck shot pushed out by Bevan. The loose ball fell to Brown just begging to be struck home but the on-loan Cardiff player thought too much about it, and the best chance of the game came and went.
Still Wrexham finished the game the stronger of the two sides but could not fashion a real opportunity to win the game, having to settle for a single point instead.
The draw was a fair result, and a good one from a Wrexham perspective considering the run Torquay are on, their position in the league, and the difficulty in taking anything away from Plainmoor. The conditions were also tough to contend with.
It was a good advert for BSP football and will have entertained the Setanta viewers. However, Dean Saunders won’t be happy that we’ve only picked up 3 points out of a possible 9 in the last 3 BSP games. We showed during this game that we can match the best in this league. We have to show it over the course of the season however, and not drop any more points to the likes of Barrow and Woking…
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