Face The Facts

A long lingering death like we've experienced this season is particularly hard. For a long time we've known there was little hope, but naturally we tried convince ourselves otherwise. I've constantly been looking at the fixtures, arguing that we can haul ourselves out of trouble if we win certain key games, and even before the Notts County game I believed in that argument. The difference was that, by then, I'd finally realised that although it was true, the team weren't going to deliver their side of the bargain. I think we'll look back at the end of the season and see that if we'd won our last four games we'd have stayed up. The problem with that equation's very simple; there's no way we'd win all four. One would be pushing it.
It's perhaps a natural way of coping with dropping out of the Football League that I've actually started to look forward to next season. It'll be nothing if not an adventure, after all! Of course, if it turns out to be not a brief interlude but a new, permanent level we have sunk to then the novelty might well wear off!
I've found myself in recent weeks hoping the dropping into the Blue Square Premiership might actually be enjoyable. We might actually get to watch our team win a few games and not have to look over our shoulders at the bottom of the table. Maybe so. Non-league football is no longer the black hole it has been, and there's a decent conversion rate of clubs able to haul themselves back into the league. However, we shouldn't assume that just because we're Wrexham we'll just be able to swagger into the Conference and bully the teams that are down there. That sort of attitude's a recipe for disaster. Relegated League two sides have no God-given right to succeed in the Conference. Just look at Halifax, who are currently locked in a battle to avoid the drop to the Conference North. You might argue there are extenuating circumstances, that their financial problems and ten-point penalty for entering administration are responsible for their diminished status. If you do you haven't learned the lesson of history; where are the guarantees that, with our ground as ripe for purchase and development as it was ten years ago, we won't follow them to the brink of the abyss at some future point?