THE BIGGER PICTURE
Mullin helped to fire Wrexham back into the Football League last season – with records smashed along the way – but Ker has said of the embarrassing reason why he was unable to enjoy the celebrations that accompanied that achievement: “Relief was a big sentiment last season because we were in such a life or death struggle with Notts County. Every time we won, rather than celebrating it, you were like ‘thank god we didn’t drop points’. There was a huge dose of that. There was a huge dose of elation, of pride, of a sense of belonging. I reference this thing of being a plastic Liverpool fan and I often fall foul of that thing like ‘we won the Champions League’. People are like: ‘We? Were you playing? Were you part of the whole thing?’ I paid my membership, I’m a member of the club, but I always felt like a bit of an imposter being a Liverpool fan. My credentials are as good as anyone else’s, other than I was born in the catchment area of Reading FC, rather than Liverpool FC. That night to feel part of it, to share that with Rob, with Ryan, with Shaun [Harvey], with my wife – who had come over for the game, which was amazing – really was something so, so special.
“My abiding memory of that night, I’m afraid to say, is that I had unbelievably bad BO. It was quite a hot day and quite a cold evening, strangely. I had been running around, stressing and I’d put a load of coats on for the game. Went for the celebrations on the pitch and then all of the players and their families, club staff and everybody went up and crammed into one of the hospitality suites. We got the sound system from the dressing room brought in there. People were dancing on tables and it was all glorious mayhem. I sort of snuck in, took my coat off and was like ‘oh my god, what is that?’ I asked my wife, who is normally the world’s loveliest and most supportive person and would normally say ‘no, you’re alright’ and she was like ‘yeah, I can smell you’. That means we’re talking full on dead body time now if my wife is affirming that she can smell something. We actually left the party quite early, I’m afraid to say. I can’t have this being everyone’s abiding memory of this evening! I put my coat back on, high-fived various people, told them that I loved them and we went home. We stopped at a garage on the way home, bought a bunch of sausages and bread and made sausage sandwiches and sat on the floor and scrolled Twitter.”