Beneath the jibes from the terraces, the mocking fly-by and even Paddy Madden goading the locals with Queen’s We Are The Champions as the Stockport County team bus arrived in Wrexham before kick-off, there’s a lot more that unites than divides the teams who have finished first and second in League Two this season.
Both boast a proud history that counted for little as they tumbled down the divisions, a sense of despair enveloping long-suffering supporters until a saviour arrived.
In Wrexham’s case, Hollywood rode to the rescue in the guise of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. Stockport, meanwhile, owe their revival to someone a lot closer to home in local businessman Mark Stott, who turned to football in 2020 after having big success in property. Following an exhaustive search that included taking a close look at neighbours Macclesfield Town, Stockport fitted the bill.
And that’s another thing this weekend’s final-day-of-the-season protagonists at the Racecourse Ground have in common, with Reynolds and McElhenney casting their net far and wide before settling on Wrexham, leaving Hartlepool United to bemoan their own Sliding Doors moment.
Other striking similarities include employing promotion specialists as their manager — five for Phil Parkinson and seven for Dave Challinor, including three in six years at the helm of AFC Fylde.
Then there’s how both managers channelled the pain of losing in the play-offs during the rise of their current clubs.
Challinor hung a photo of their dressing room at Wembley after last May’s penalty shootout loss to Carlisle United on a wall at Stockport’s training ground as a reminder that nobody at the club wanted to feel like that again.
As with Parkinson’s pledge to use as motivation Wrexham being pipped to the 2021-22 National League title, and the single automatic promotion spot that came with it, by Stockport and then losing 5-4 after extra time to Grimsby Town in an epic play-off semi-final, the ploy worked, with Challinor’s men being crowned League Two champions 12 months on with a couple of games to spare.
Above all, though, what most unites these two old foes in 2024 — having first played each other more than a century ago — is a burning drive to find more success. And fast.
“There is an edge between us and Stockport after the year we had in the National League,” admits Parkinson, after his side rounded off the season with a 2-1 victory over them. “You can’t hide away from that fact, especially as, geographically, it is a derby.
“We have been progressing together. Everyone has said they are ahead of us in terms of that progression. They’ve had longer in this division, two years. Also, they’ve had longer with their owners and longer to work on their infrastructure. But we are catching them quickly. We showed that in today’s game.”
Going toe-to-toe for a league title twice in three years has given fixtures between two clubs separated by 50 miles (80km) and the England-Wales border a real edge. Stockport prevailing both times meant they had the bragging rights going into Saturday’s season-finale meeting.
The English visitors were not shy in making that point, striker Madden continuing the jibes he’d started when getting off the team bus by also mimicking the lifting of an imaginary trophy in front of the jeering home fans when warming up on the touchline during the first half with his fellow substitutes.
Another league title in the bag
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Champions again ole ole ole https://t.co/sdRfKzGq8w— Paddy madden (@Paddymadden) April 17, 2024
This was followed a fly-by organised by Stockport supporters, the plane that flew over the Racecourse shortly after kick-off trailing a banner with the message ‘SCFC Champions again, olé olé’.
Having afforded the champions a guard of honour onto the pitch — “We felt it was the right thing to do,” Parkinson said afterwards — Wrexham’s players quickly set about the task of bringing them down a peg or two.
Revenge was sweet, Andy Cannon’s 87th-minute winner enough to seal runners-up spot to go with their back-to-back promotions. More pertinently, the entertainment in a high-quality contest showed why this rivalry is likely to endure in League One next season.
Wrexham and Stockport will both spend again on players this summer, but already these two clubs look capable of coping with the step up to the third tier. Stockport’s spine looks particularly strong, with goalkeeper Ben Hinchcliffe, centre-back Fraser Horsfall and midfielder Callum Camps all catching the eye on Saturday.
Their 21-goal top scorer Isaac Oloafe was missing through injury, but Challinor’s men still carried sufficient attacking threat to carve out 10 efforts on goal against the side with the best home record in the division.
Wrexham, too, are in fine fettle, with another promotion push possible if a quality goalkeeper (this season’s loanee Arthur Okonkwo is returning to his Premier League parent club Arsenal) and a strike partner for 26-goal top scorer Paul Mullin can be added in the coming window.
Money is unlikely to be an issue for either club, with their ambitious owners not afraid to spend big — Wrexham lost £5.1million ($6.4m) in their most recent set of accounts and Stockport £4.7m over the same 2022-23 season.
“We are bang on schedule,” says Challinor about his club’s rise since being taken over by Stott. “The two clubs are very different in terms of where we are at. We went through a buying phase, where we went to get the players in to get us to this point. We now need to go a little bit differently and look to build. Whereas from Wrexham’s perspective, that probably won’t be the case. They will look to really go again.”
Parkinson expects to go head-to-head with Challinor in the future, on and off the field.
“Stockport are as ambitious as ourselves,” he adds. “We probably get a bit more publicity. because of the (Welcome To Wrexham) documentary, but I am sure we will be competing with them in the summer for players.
“This has happened in the past, and I’m sure it will happen again. We have to make sure we get our targets in position, but Stockport will be fighting hard to get those players as well.”
Forget the release of Deadpool 3 this summer, starring co-owner Reynolds, the real sequel of note seems likely to be the third instalment of Wrexham going head-to-head with Stockport for promotion, this time to the Championship.
Roll on August.
(Top photo: Ben Roberts Photo/Getty Images)
