Wrexham come from 5-2 down against Dover Athletic to win 6-5 and keep National League title hopes alive | Football News

Even Netflix could not have imagined the Wrexham story would become this good.

Their documentary cameras for an access-all-areas insight have not stopped rolling since Hollywood stars Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds took over the National League club in February last year with a dream to power them up the pyramid.

The pair have invested heavily on and off the pitch in a bid to win promotion to the Football League with several high-profile signings and the appointment of former Sunderland and Bradford boss Phil Parkinson.

Wrexham have established themselves firmly in the promotion race after a slow start to the season yet when they went 5-2 down at home to already relegated Dover Athletic on Saturday, their title hopes were all but over. However, at least one Wrexham player still believed.

“When Dover’s fifth goal went in, I was standing in the centre circle shouting at Paul Mullin and Jordan Davies saying, ‘I promise you we’re going to win this game’,” striker Ollie Palmer told Sky Sports. “I’d never felt so sure about it. It’s got to be one of the craziest games in Conference history.”

How Wrexham achieved the unthinkable

Wrexham were cruising to a seventh victory in their last eight league games when goals from Paul Mullin and James Jones put them in complete control after just 20 minutes.

But a thunderbolt from 17-year-old George Wilkinson gave Dover a way back before Alfie Pavey equalised to stun the hosts. The visitors, who have won just once all season, were then sent into dreamland when Michael Gyasi scored a 12-minute second-half hat-trick to give them an improbable 5-2 lead.

Big-spending Wrexham forked out £300,000 – an unprecedented fee in non-League – to lure Palmer from League One club AFC Wimbledon in January. The 30-year-old acted upon his rallying cry to net twice in four minutes to pull the score back to 5-4 with 20 minutes to play, taking his own tally to nine in 12.

Wrexham’s Jordan Davies – a homegrown talent – scored twice in injury time, the winner coming in the 97th minute to keep their automatic promotion hopes on track and leave co-owner Reynolds with a burial wish. “I just lost 9 years off my life,” he tweeted. “And I’m okay with that. Apologies to my family. Also, bury me in Wales.”

McElhenney was equally as stunned. He wrote: “I love this game. I hate this game. I love this game. UP THE TOWN.”

Palmer added: “Not one person celebrated the equaliser that says so much about the group of lads we’ve got. We got the ball, put it down [on the centre spot] and went and got a sixth. We should never have been in that position but we were and got ourselves out of it.

“Sometimes you press the cruise control button and then you crash. It’s a lesson but one we’ve not been punished with. We still have to take some key learning points out of it and put it in the mix for the rest of the games this season.”

Comeback keeps the title race alive

Only the National League champions are automatically promoted into League Two with the teams from second place down to seventh entering the play-offs in a bid to reach the Football League.

Wrexham sit 11 points behind leaders Stockport County with a game in hand and Palmer believes the title race is not over yet.

“We’ve got to play them at home and have a game in hand, of course it’s not over,” said Palmer. “Their run-in is very tough, they know that and we know that, we’re going to breathing down their necks.

“If they do win the league and win every game between no and the end of the season, I’ll be the first one to applaud them and say, ‘Fair enough, great job, well done’. We’ll then give everything we’ve got in the play-offs.”

Parkinson: The players showed character

Wrexham boss Phil Parkinson admitted at 5-2 he thought he’d got his team selection wrong.

“I was thinking, ‘I should have changed some players at the start of the game, should have freshened the team up’ because for whatever reason we were off the pace,” he said. “In saying that, the lads came off the bench were great.”

Substitutes Dior Angus and Liam McAlinden came on the final ten minutes to help Wrexham over the line.

“We changed to a diamond and tinkered around with it a little bit,” said Parkinson. “In the end, we had enough attacking talent to break them down.

“The fundamentals of defending, doing the right things in all areas of the pitch, weren’t in place hence we conceded some poor goals.

“But in terms of the character to come back at 5-2 down and win the game 6-5, it doesn’t matter who it’s against, that’s not easy. You’ve got to give the lads enormous credit the way we responded.

“We’ve got a strong mentality in the group and mentality is playing under a bit of pressure. When you’re getting beat at home or 1-0 down at Wealdstone, mentality is keep showing for the ball, keep trying to do the right things and that’s what we’ve got in the group.”

Hessenthaler: We ran out of legs but I’m proud

Dover began the campaign on -12 points after being punished by the National League for refusing to play matches last season while the rest of the division carried on when fans were unable to attend games due to the pandemic.

The Whites cut costs heading into the 2021/22 campaign by reverting to a part-time model and they have been unable to bridge the gap in a predominately full-time division. They were relegated on March 19 after their 27th defeat of the season but manager Andy Hessenthaler wants his team to continue giving their best until the end.

“It was an unbelievable day, I’m a proud manager,” he told Dover’s website. “Even though we lost the game I’ve got to say the players were exceptional and unfortunately it came down to fitness in the end, we ran out of legs.

“It was a phenomenal effort from everybody, it’s just sad that we’re on the end of losing the game. To go away to Wrexham in front of 8,500 fans, score five goals and not get something out of it is a travesty.

“At this stage now, because we’ve gone down, we’re more looking at performances than results. We’ve got to respect this league until the end of the season and I think we showed that on Saturday.

“We had four players in the squad not getting paid because they’re young lads still in education. The goal young Geotge Wilkinson would have graced any Premier League game. Then young Michael scoring a hat-trick and being on the losing team is incredible really. I can’t praise them enough, they gave everything for the shirt.”