The club had developed a sort of magnetic attraction for me. I was no longer just checking scores and times to see what my journey to and from work would be like. No longer just a casual spectator, I was being pulled in by everything.

I found my awareness of the club being more than just this passive thing, I was seeking it out in my surroundings. I began to notice things I didn’t see before, nothing special but enough that it changed my experience of the environment around me. Being someone who carries a camera nearly everywhere they go, I’d take photos of the things I saw. Moments like seeing Humphrey Ker looking around the gallery at Ty Pawb, club logos around the place, the police presence and their dogs. The world was starting to look and feel like a different place.

I had two moments involving crowds that hit me, they are here on this page. One, I’m in the passenger seat of a car, driving past on the B&Q roundabout. I can see the crowds, and I feel compelled to take the photo… but all the while there is this part of me that wants to be in that crowd, to experience what it’s like, not just as an observer but as someone with a connection to it. The second is from the first day I went out on a match day with my camera.

I didn’t know what I was doing really, I’d photographed the Wrexham art world for years at this point, and was used to going out to events, openings, and gigs and taking pictures. I knew what it was to be part of that community, how it felt to be part of it. I had no idea how to photograph the football world on a match day, but knowing I need to challenge myself I just set out of the house. I told myself I’d walk round the stadium once then go home and watch the match on tv, then walk round the stadium once more after the match was over. I’d seen plenty of street and documentary photographers do this sort of stuff, so I figured I was capable of it too.

The photos from that day aren’t great, but they are a mini photographic journal of my experience. Match day photography wasn’t a thing I ever thought I would do, or be interested in, yet there I was nervously walking amongst the fans trying to understand why this was important to me. That’s what all this work has been about in some sense, I’m constantly trying to figure out in the only way I know how, what it is the club and the town means to me.

Yeah, I guess it’s weird, and some people won’t understand why I did it, and still do it, but I think photographers are an odd bunch as it is. We feel compelled to take photos of things, to preserve them for history, to take an interest and say to the world, “Look. Look at this, isn’t this worth remembering, understanding, and celebrating?” So we go out, often on our own, to cover events either by commission or self-directed because we see something that we want to share with the future.

The world of art gave me that feeling first, and then watching Welcome to Wrexham made me see the football world as being incredibly similar to it. The world of football pulled me in, the same way the world of art did, and I felt the need to share whatever it was I was seeing and feeling with other people.