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Life is full of promises rarely kept, of best intentions that do not stand the test of time.

And yet one little pledge, one tiny, almost throwaway, comment of commitment, has endured.

When Edward Manners remarked he was going to buy a football to give the cricketers of Denbighshire a winter cause he cannot have known he was about to give a proud town 150 years of sporting memories.

When he stated he expected to see “a good many” down the field that very month, he cannot have known the hundreds of thousands of lives that would be touched over the next century and a half. Nor perhaps the ups and downs they would go through.

Life has not always been an easy one for football club and fan. Indeed, there is something fitting about the opponents of that first match. The fixture that made Wrexham Wales’ oldest club – and the world’s third oldest professional outfit – saw opposition provided by the Prince of Wales’ Fire Brigade. There have been plenty of fires to put out over the decades that have followed.

But then, before the complexities of administration and ownership wrangles (although there was an early argument over the rent of the Racecourse, an 1881 rise to £10 deemed too steep), even the simple stuff hadn’t had time to be arranged. There was no competition to play in, there wasn’t even full agreement on what the rules of the game should be.

But, in the Turf Hotel, Manners’ words had sparked something, something that would burn on through football’s formative years and well beyond.

Not because the club was regularly successful.

But because, as would be proven more than a century later, there was a will for it to survive. By doing so, as the club embraced the growing professionalism and eventually the Football League, heroes could emerge. Names such as 1930’s icon Tommy Bamford, whose 201 goals remain a record.

Or Arfon Griffiths, the Racecourse’s Prince of Wales whose time as both player and manager inspired a generation. So much so that Bill Shankley, who watched Wrexham regularly in 1978, described the team as the best third division side he’d ever seen.

Pictures: Wrexham's managers through the years

There were cup runs at that time, too – the last eight in the FA and European Cup Winners Cup were of the era of Joey Jones, Mickey Thomas, Dixie McNeil and Dai Davies – but not ones that would become as synonymous with the club as their red shirts.

It is something of a infuriating mystery why the win over European giants Porto 30 years ago is not given greater credit; surely there can be no doubting the fact a Fourth Division team taking on the previous season’s European Cup Winners’ Cup beaten finalists is the stuff of legend.

Not least the way it happened, taking a 1-0 first-leg lead to Portugal, going three goals down before half-time only to triumph on away goals. Everton fans may think Barry Horne’s goal to keep the Toffees in the top-flight was his most significant but you wonder if his 88th minute strike at the Estadio das Antas is what he sees when he closes his eyes.

Certainly, Mickey Thomas cares not that none of the other 77 goals he scored in his career are recalled like his 1991 free-kick that flew past Arsenal’s David Seaman. It was actually Steve Watkin’s effort four minutes later that saw the Racecourse rock to the shock of champions Arsenal being knocked out of the FA Cup but football has always been more about romanticism than facts.

Such as many ignoring the one that ensured manager Brian Flynn knew there would be no relegation from the Football League the previous season. It suited the narrative of the Arsenal upset to call Wrexham the worst team in the land when Flynn had used the opportunity to blood youngsters that would help make the Robins Wales’ best club for the best part of the next decade.

Success under Flynn, with homegrown players strengthening that bond between fan and team, never quite brought a return to the second-tier.

But the cup runs – playing ten top-flight teams in the following years, winning four and drawing four – helped fend off financial worries, even helped the club build their impressive training ground.

And although concerns on and off the pitch were never too far away, perhaps some of the secret as to why it was Wrexham and not other early clubs who thrived was hinted at when they arrived at that new facility in Gresford. Built on the site of the mine where a 1934 disaster claimed the lives of 266 local men and boys, many of whom were Wrexham fans, the naming of it as Colliers Park was a reminder to all of the connection of the club with its community.

It is the awareness of those links that Liverpool legend Joey Jones remains more attached to the Kop at the Racecourse’ ‘Town End’ some 40 years on than the Spion Kop at Anfield. And that Mickey Thomas’ heart is at Wrexham more than Manchester United or Chelsea, the ‘big’ clubs he graced.

It was that connection that saw fans drive out those who were ready to extinguish the flame that had burned since that game against the Fire Brigade, that saw some prepared to put their savings and security on the line to ensure the worries of 2011 did not end the Red Dragons’ days.

While a thirst to return to the Football League lingers, it will always be the fact the club lives on that is of greater significance after the struggles of the recent past which eventually saw supporters take over the club after a string of ownership issues.

Watch: Lineker backs Wrexham's 15th anniversary

And because of that, Wrexham FC’s history lives on in its present, Bamford’s name remembered and toasted as the name of the stadium’s main hospitality suite, the Turf Hotel still in the same position as it was when Manners outlined his intentions.

“There is one thing gentlemen, I wish to name – the great want of amusement in this town in winter time. It is my intention to purchase a football in the course of this week, and I shall expect a good many down to the field next Saturday.”

They came and they still come.

Wrexham AFC: formed in 1864 by the people of the town; celebrated and owned by the people of the town 150 years on.