Paul Mullin explains how travelling by plane helped Wrexham go on 28-game unbeaten run - and it's all thanks to generous Rob McElhenney

The club were placed in a tricky situation when a royal visit to the Racecourse Ground delayed their travel plans for their 2022-23 fixture against Eastleigh in Hampshire. Facing a less-than-ideal five-hour coach journey much closer to kick-off time, McElhenney decided to charter a flight. An outcome that delighted the squad.

"Thank goodness for Rob McElhenney," Mullin wrote in his autobiography, My Wrexham Story. "He came up with the perfect answer: we’d shave hours off the day by flying down to Hampshire. A quick thirty minutes on a plane compared to five hours on a bus would make a massive difference to our preparation, not least because it’s obviously not good for elite sportspeople to be sat in one position all that time. The plan paid dividends when we won 2–0. Afterwards, a couple of people were on at me – ‘Ask Rob if we can fly back as well!’ It wasn’t total laziness: we had another game on the Tuesday and flying back would massively aid our recovery. Rob not only said yes but came up with a deal: keep winning and we could fly to all our away games more than two hours away by road. He might not have counted on us then going on that twenty-eight-game unbeaten streak! When finally we were beaten at Halifax, a game we’d travelled to by road, it was all the proof we needed that coach travel was bad news and air transport was the way forward if we were going to fulfil our potential."

With Wrexham entrenched in an epic battle with Notts County for the one automatic promotion available from the National League, every little advantage was vital. During that unbeaten run, trips to Gateshead, Bromley and Dagenham were reduced from arduous bus trips to short flights and undoubtedly kept players fresher over the relentless 46-game schedule.

With this season's promotion race shaping up to be another nail-biter, it will be intriguing to see if McElhenney gets his players airborne once more. Wrexham are up to second in the League Two standings after 20 games, only five points behind leaders Stockport County.