We’re back on the road this week when we make the long trip north to Lancashire to take on Morecambe. Our trips to Morecambe have been mixed over the years, but for this week’s From the Archive, we are going to take a look at our 1-0 win at the Mazuma Stadium during the legendary great escape season of 2016/17.
It’s fair to say things were not looking too good for us when Michael Flynn took over as caretaker manager in March 2017. However, Flynny hit the ground running, picking up an away win at Crewe in his first game just days after taking on the job. An 89th-minute winner from Joss Labadie gave the manager the perfect start and set a precedent for what was to come.
There was no rest for the team, though, as they were presented with the chance to build on this with a Tuesday night trip to Morecambe. The hosts were sitting in 15th place, with the threat of relegation unlikely with ten games to go, while we were sitting bottom of the league, nine points from safety.
The game itself is not one that produced a lot of quality, but it was another turning point in our season and one that gave us plenty of hope that we could pull off the most unlikely of escapes (spoiler: we did).
A cagey encounter was settled by a second-half penalty from Ryan Bird, with the win lifting us from bottom to 23rd in the table. Physiologically, this was a major shift, and it was one that had Exiles believing that we were staying in the league. The win saw us go within seven points of safety - a huge gap with just ten games, but one that, maybe, just maybe, we could overturn.
Incredibly, we would go on to win five of our final ten games and secure our place in League Two for another season, with this win against Morecambe being a real turning point in our quest for safety.
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