Why Wrexham were never going to play ‘survival football’ in front of Ryan Reynolds – with ‘different challenge’ embraced after being reduced to 10 men

The Red Dragons faced Colchester United in their latest League Two fixture, with Hollywood superstar Reynolds back in North Wales to take up a seat at SToK Racecourse. He saw Wrexham take in the lead inside four minutes through Elliot Lee, but they were reduced to 10 men midway through the first-half when George Evans was shown a straight red card.

Wrexham went on to win the game 2-1, with Parkinson explaining why he did not look to sit deep and grind out a result after seeing Evans sent off: “We said to the lads at half-time that we don't want to play survival football and just sit back and wait for them to score. We are good enough to make passes in the game and I felt we did that really well in the second period. We pushed our wing-backs on to their full-backs and we defended as we would normally defend, obviously just without one striker, but we also showed some good quality in possession as well and we needed to because if we kept giving the ball back to them all the time and coming under pressure, then the likelihood is they would have got back in the game. It was a really good days work for us, it was a great atmosphere in the stadium again and a good win sets us up for the Christmas period.”

Parkinson was pleased to see his side, who have grown accustomed to winning in recent times, face a different kind of challenge against Colchester – with it important to know how to play 10 against 11. He added: “That's a colossus effort from the lads and I am very proud of the performance. You are going to get so many different types of games and challenges throughout the season. Today was a different problem for us to solve and I thought we did it really well. Sometimes it is about rolling your sleeves up and right across the team we did that.”

Wrexham have slipped a place to third in the League Two table, despite claiming another win, and have three more games to take in – starting with a derby date against Newport County on December 23 that will see a temporary stand opened for the first time – before the end of the calendar year.