All set for a Football League first in north Wales

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·15 Agustus 2025

All set for a Football League first in north Wales

Wrexham v West Bromwich Albion; Racecourse Ground, Saturday 16th August 2025, 12.30pm

Despite the fact that Albion are Founder Members of the Football League and that Wrexham first played in Division Three (North) in it’s inaugural season in 1921, Saturday will see the first ever league meeting between the sides.

For the media, however, I suspect Albion will be very much the sideshow as the Hollywood-backed phenomenon that is Wrexham AFC play their first home game in the second tier for more than forty years. I do wonder how much of the pre-match chat will be focused on the Baggies – maybe we’ll get a total of ten minutes if you combine both the ITV and Sky coverage!

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Ryan Mason’s side made an encouraging start to the season with a 1-0 victory over Blackburn Rovers. The first half performance was particularly pleasing and there are signs that the new head coach is looking to strike a balance between passing football and a more direct approach which will hopefully give the team the tools to adapt to different situations appropriately.

There was a similar story in that domination didn’t produce enough goals – that didn’t cost the team on Saturday, but did on Tuesday evening when a relatively strong team battered Derby County in the Carabao Cup only to concede an equaliser deep into stoppage time and then exit on penalties. The statistics may have shown how much Albion dominated the game, but the one that mattered saw the Rams through to round two condemning the Baggies to a first round exit for the third season in succession.

Notwithstanding the result against Derby, the football on display has been encouraging in the two matches so far. The performances of new signings Aune Heggebø and George Campbell have impressed while Alex Williams put in a great performance on his senior debut and he could provide some much-needed competition for Darnell Furlong. Although he came in for criticism for giving away the decisive free kick on Tuesday, I did think that Caleb Taylor put in a generally solid performance but perhaps his lack of pace will count against him at Championship level.

Thursday saw the signing of Birmingham City captain, Krystian Bielik, to bolster the back line, weakened by the departure of last season’s player of the season, Torbjørn Heggem, whose transfer to Bologna was confirmed on Friday. While no fan will rejoice at the departure of one of the club’s best players, it is difficult to argue with the financial sense of the deal. The fee for the Norwegian is rumoured to be in the region of around £10m, which eases PSR concerns and will hopefully enable one or two more to come into the club before the end of the transfer window.

Wrexham’s season started with defeat at Southampton, albeit they were 1-0 up when the game went into stoppage time. Like Albion, their League Cup tie went to penalties on Tuesday evening but, unlike Ryan Mason’s team, it was the Red Dragons who scored in stoppage time, twice in fact, to force the shoot-out and went on to beat Hull City 5-3.

It was veteran striker, Ollie Palmer, who scored both of Wrexham’s late goals on Tuesday, but he was probably only involved because of an injury suffered by new signing, Kiefer Moore, in the opening day defeat on the south coast. The Welshman is not the only new forward to have signed for the Dragons this summer – Ryan Hardie, who scored twice against Albion for Plymouth Argyle last season, has made the move from Devon, Josh Windass has arrived on a free transfer from crisis club Sheffield Wednesday while Nathan Broadhead finalised a reported £10m transfer from Ipswich Town on Thursday. With Parkinson favouring a 3-5-2 formation, it will be interesting to see which pair will line up against the Baggies.

Wrexham’s summer business has definitely caught the eye with Conor Coady and Lewis O’Brien also moving to the Racecourse. The former Wolves defender brings some much-needed nous and experience to their back three while O’Brien, who joined from Nottingham Forest, is a very effective midfielder at Championship level. Other new signings include New Zealand left back, Liberato Cacace, who joined from Empoli, goalkeeper Danny Ward from Leicester City and midfielder George Thomason from Bolton Wanderers.

Another face that will be familiar to Baggies fans is club captain, James McClean, who moved to the Welsh club two years ago. Although 36 years old, he was granted a 2-year extension to his contract this summer. He came off the bench with five minutes left at St Mary’s and, not surprisingly, still managed to get booked!

So Ryan Mason’s team will be looking to spoil the party at the Racecourse and secure back-to-back league victories for the first time since September last year, while the last time that Albion won their opening two games of a season was in the Premier League in 2017 when a 1-0 home win over Bournemouth was followed by a 1-0 win at Burnley. They haven’t done it in the second tier since Ray Harford was in charge in 1997!

History

The history of this fixture goes back a long way but there is not a lot to tell. The clubs first met in the FA Cup Third Round in January 1930 at the Racecourse Ground – the hosts won the game thanks to a goal from Billy Mays.

It would be another four decades before the clubs met again. It was also in north Wales but this time it was in the little-remembered Watney Cup, an invitational tournament held on the eve of the regular season that lasted for just four iterations in the early 1970s. Albion were victorious thanks to a double from Tony Brown, one of which was from the spot, with Albert Kinsey pulling one back for Wrexham.

And that’s it. Saturday will be the first ever league meeting between the sides with the Welsh side having spent the vast majority of their history below the second tier of the English Football League. This is the first time that they have played at this level since 1982 which saw a spell of four successive seasons in Division Two come to an end for the Red Dragons. That is the peak of their league history with their highest ever finish coming in 1979 when they finished 15th in the second tier.

The last time that Albion played a league fixture against an opponent for the first time was in September 2007 when they made their first ever trip to Glanford Park to take on Scunthorpe United – for the record, Tony Mowbray’s team won 3-2.