How Paul Mullin – via a text from Rob McElhenney – ended his Wrexham drought

Rob McElhenney takes the duty of care he has as co-owner of Wrexham seriously.

With Phil Parkinson still coming to terms with what remains the low point of the club’s return to the EFL after a fifteen-year exile outside the League, the co-owner contacted his manager shortly after the 5-0 defeat in Stockport County in September. via text.

Hollywood actor and writer McElhenney did something similar with Paul Mullin during the latter’s recent run of eight games without a goal – easily the striker’s most barren spell in almost five years.

The down-to-earth Liverpool player’s reaction was no surprise. “I’m feeling pretty good,” he told McElhenney, “it’s just a matter of time.”

The inner faith within Mullin that reassured his American boss is not an act. Talk to anyone close to the player and they will wax lyrical about how adamant he was that the scoring tide would soon turn for him, even as Wrexham lost ground in the League Two promotion race.

No more watching old clips of him scoring for fun, as many footballers do during such goalless runs. Mullin also didn’t worry about the opportunities that had been lost. He simply told anyone who asked, including McElhenney, that the next one was going into the net.

Such steadfast belief explains why Mullin, after ending his 649-minute wait for a goal last Tuesday with an injury-time equalizer from the penalty spot to take a point away against Forest Green Rovers, completed his sixth hat-trick in less than fourth for three seasons. with the North Wales club just four days later.

Ending that unwanted run was not only a lesson in maintaining self-confidence, but also the need for timely reminders of what a player is good at. Mullin spent the day before that 1-1 draw with Forest Green taking part in a one-man shooting drill that seemed no more scientific to spectators than simply being urged to hit the ball as hard as possible.

That he had to make this extra effort while still nursing a back injury early this week that required a pain-relieving injection underlined his determination to end what was an unprecedented – at least in recent memory – drought become.

For example, last season the longest Mullin without finding the net lasted two games (which happened three times). The year before – his first at Wrexham – there had been a five-game gap between goals around Christmas, but the team still won three of those five times, so the focus was largely elsewhere.

This time, the 29-year-old’s goals temporarily coincided with a poor run of results: five of those eight games were lost, with only two wins, and without his dramatic 93rd-minute equalizer, Forest Green would also have beaten Wrexham. .

No wonder it was a priority for the coaching staff in February to get their talisman back to instinctive levels. Not just in terms of scoring goals, but also making runs behind defenses that are so crucial to the way Wrexham play.

These became less and less common, meaning the chances of the ball getting stuck up front, allowing the midfielders and wing-backs to move forward en masse, also took a hit. The result was a team that looked as disjointed as the results suggested, especially away from home.

Follow that individual shooting exercise after training.

It lasted just ten minutes, with assistant manager Steve Parkin on hand the entire time, urging the striker to put his foot through the ball. Some shots flew past the goalkeeper and into the top corner. Others went harmlessly wide of the target. But it didn’t matter. Instead, to those watching from the sidelines, it seemed to simply be a reminder to Mullin just how much power he puts into his boots.

Whether that played a part in the return to scoring ways the following evening we will never know, but there was a brutal ferocity to his penalty – and an earlier shot that narrowly missed the crossbar – that was missing when he faced MK Dons and Gillingham during the previous eight days.

The second goal of Saturday’s hat-trick in the 4-0 home win against Accrington was similar. Mullin shot his shot from 25 meters with such conviction that goalkeeper Radek Vitek had no chance.

All the added extras that make Mullin such an important cog in Wrexham’s attacking machine were also present, including a quick run behind the opposition defense that led to the striker setting up Elliot Lee’s goal, putting the score just ahead rest was completed.

Their main man was back.

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During his visit to Morecambe this weekend, Mullin will find himself in familiar territory.

He spent three years there as a youngster, after being released by Huddersfield Town in 2014 at the age of 19 without making a senior appearance.

Mullin was never going to get rich in Morecambe. His first contract was worth just £200 a week. But those three seasons provided a valuable foundation. He also scored 25 goals in 122 league appearances, more than half of which came from the bench. Mullin felt he was worthy of a starting role.

At the time, as one of several members of the Morecambe squad – managed by Jim Bentley – living along Liverpool’s Lancashire coast, Mullin regularly drove the car during training. Groups of four would take turns driving.

For those who were part of those 150-mile tours, it is a lasting memory of how the young striker tried to channel that disappointment at not being positively selected. While some may have blamed the manager – to this day Mullin says Bentley was a good influence on his career – he did everything he could to force his way into the team.

He did runs on the city beach on his own time, as well as heavy lifting on the weights to bulk up. He wanted to better fit the physically imposing role of a lone man demanded by Bentley’s system.

In time, Mullin realized his mistake. His game had always been about using skill and speed, but now, with the extra muscle he had built up, he felt heavy. He learned a lesson about the need to stick to your own beliefs.

This will no doubt have helped him navigate not only the recent barren run in front of goal, but also Wrexham’s signing of fellow striker Jack Marriott on deadline day early last month.

The arrival of Marriott, who played in the second-tier Championship two years ago and has made more than a hundred appearances in that division in his career, was heralded as a way to boost an attack that, even as a result of that Mullin reached double figures. before the season in mid-January, has largely struggled for goals since the club’s return to the EFL. But as has now become clear with one replacing the other off the bench in six of Marriott’s eight appearances, the newcomer is in fact a direct competitor for Mullin.

Mullin had recently taken charge. He started just once on the bench in more than 100 league appearances for Wrexham – and even then this came as he returned from the collapsed lung and four broken ribs he suffered during last summer’s US tour. Of course this was going to go wrong.

But it also created a well-developed trait of wanting to prove people wrong. This has been burned into him since he was released by his beloved Liverpool at the age of 16. This desire perhaps explains why Mullin was always present at training, despite the discomfort of that back problem. This problem led to the medical team taking advantage of a rare empty Tuesday this week to administer that pain-relieving injection.

Those who know Mullin well will all say the same thing: what you see is what you get from someone who still lives just around the corner from his family home in Litherland, a northern part of Liverpool. Life with partner Mollie and son Albi is arranged in such a way that even serious interest from the second division of Saudi Arabia could not tempt him last summer. Family and friends long ago realized the futility of contacting Mullin after 9 p.m., knowing that by then he will either be asleep, resting for the next day’s practice or match, or not far away.

Even McElhenney, who once claimed that only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi were more famous footballers in the US than his number 10 thanks to the Emmy Award-winning documentary series Welcome To Wrexham, admits: “Every now and then I like to be told how great he is. But it’s always the same (from Mullin): ‘I just worked a shift, I do my job and I go back to my family.’ Weekly!”

However, this down-to-earth attitude once again explains how Mullin got through that recent dry spell in front of goal.

It was his longest since going 16 league and cup games without scoring for Tranmere Rovers – three months each as an unused substitute or out of the matchday squad – at the end of the 2018/19 League Two season and the start of the following campaign. campaign in League One.

He also has the sense of perspective that four-year-old Albi’s autism diagnosis brings. That said, there are those in and around the dressing room who insist the striker “looked two inches taller” after that penalty against Forest Green, suggesting there was a great sense of relief when the ball found the net.

So what now? Firstly, he will be eager to continue a remarkable scoring record against Morecambe, having scored eight times against them in the past three meetings with Cambridge United and now Wrexham.

Then, if all goes well after this week’s jab in the back, there are the twin objectives of a second successive promotion and joining an exclusive club of Wrexham strikers to reach 100 goals. Mullin is joint eighth on their all-time top scorers list, five shy of three figures from 129 appearances.

Should he go on and reach that milestone this season, it is likely that Wrexham will celebrate back-to-back promotions and a return to the third tier for the first time since 2004-05.

It would be a fitting end to an eventful year for their on-field talisman.

(Top photo: Getty Images)