{"id":502878,"date":"2026-02-25T09:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T09:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/502878\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T09:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T09:57:07","slug":"wrexham-overcome-illness-to-cement-championship-playoff-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/502878\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrexham overcome illness to cement Championship playoff spot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wrexham<\/a> manager Phil Parkinson revealed his side had been hit by a sickness bug in the lead-up to their hard-fought 2-1 win<\/a> over Portsmouth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Red Dragons continued their push for a fourth successive promotion as they held on for a victory at Stok Cae Ras that tightened their grip on the top six in the Championship.<\/p>\n

Sam Smith, who opened the scoring with a fine header, was among the players to have been struggling and was unable to complete the game.<\/p>\n

“The energy levels weren’t quite where we needed to be,” Parkinson said. “We’ve had a bit of illness in the camp over the last few days but we just dug deep as a team.<\/p>\n

“When you’re not quite at your best, and you’re not functioning quite how we like, you have to show another side to your game and I felt we did that.<\/p>\n

Wrexham’s Sam Smith celebrates scoring his side’s first goal against Portsmouth.\u00a0Nick Potts\/PA Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“Sam was really good in that first half. He was one of the lads who had a stomach bug and he was struggling at half-time.<\/p>\n

“I said ‘Come on, Sam, another 15 minutes.’ He’s been brilliant for us, ever since he’s been here.<\/p>\n

“That’s a real old-fashioned striker’s header, a great finish.”<\/p>\n

Max Cleworth doubled Wrexham’s lead from a corner before Pompey rallied in the second period.<\/p>\n

Zak Swanson pulled a goal back with a deflected strike but, despite applying considerable pressure, the visitors could not find an equaliser.<\/p>\n

“I thought we were excellent first half. We really bossed the game,” Parkinson added.<\/p>\n

“Second half we didn’t quite get the control we wanted but sometimes football is about finding a way to win and we’ve done that really well.<\/p>\n

“We dug deep and it’s a great win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson revealed his side had been hit by a sickness bug in the lead-up to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-502878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}