County’s dramatic climax

WREXHaM’s Hollywood owners bought the club because they wanted to tell the story of a side with a dormant fan base reviving a town struggling with post-industrial decline. It’s worked, with another sellout 10,000 crowd for tomorrow’s clash with stockport County, the other financial powerhouse of the National League. But the narrative of County, who will secure automatic promotion if they win, has seemed beyond the bounds of fiction at times during an 11-year exile from the Football League. the club fell perilously far — second bottom of National League North — before local businessman Mark stott arrived, in January 2020, to provide investment and intelligence. the strategy has been bold. Operating ‘like a Championship club’, by moving into Manchester City’s former training base, which Bury vacated, and buying League One players — Paddy Madden arrived from Fleetwood and antoni sarcevic joined from Bolton. Long-serving manager Jim Gannon, a stockport legend, left as stott sought a more progressive boss. It didn’t work out with simon Rusk, hired from the Brighton U23 set-up, but it has with dave Challinor, tempted from Hartlepool, whom he had just taken up from the National League. securing 52 points from a possible 54 took the team from 10th to first, where they sit three points ahead of Wrexham with a game in hand. It leaves stockport anticipating a different kind of Hollywood ending.

Wrexham v Stockport, tomorrow 12.30pm, Bt Sport 1