West Brom built what looked like a winning position across a dominant first half at The Hawthorns, then watched it slip through their fingers in the space of fifteen second-half minutes as Wrexham produced the kind of comeback that has become this club’s calling card in the Championship. The final score on Good Friday was 2-2 — George Dobson netting an own goal and then an actual goal in the same afternoon, Josh Maja converting West Brom’s first penalty in thirteen months, and Josh Windass finding the bottom right corner with a strike of real quality two minutes after the restart. For Wrexham, a point that moves them into sixth place and the play-off positions. For West Brom under interim manager James Morrison, a draw that extends their unbeaten run to five games but leaves a bitter taste about what might have been.
The context matters on both sides of this result. West Brom, who have spent much of this Championship season in the kind of uncomfortable proximity to the relegation zone that a club of their stature should never be experiencing, have slowly clawed their way back to something resembling stability under Morrison. Back-to-back wins over Hull City and Bristol City, a run of unbeaten form that has given the Hawthorns something to feel tentatively positive about — that is the platform from which they approached this fixture. Four points above the drop zone, not safe, not comfortable, but breathing with something approaching regularity. Against play-off chasing Wrexham on a busy Good Friday afternoon with 25,927 inside the ground, West Brom needed the performance and the result. They got one of them.
Wrexham arrived without Kieffer Moore, their top scorer with eleven goals and the kind of physical presence that changes matches through sheer force of will. Phil Parkinson had managed without him before this season and found ways through it, but losing Moore for a fixture of this significance is a blow that cannot be entirely absorbed by tactical adjustment. What you do not have in quality, you have to make up for in organisation and collective determination — and the first half showed little of either from the Welsh side. Wrexham did not manage a single shot on target before the break. West Brom’s defensive shape and the tempo James Morrison’s side imposed on the game kept the visitors passive and struggling to find any of the pressing and transition football that has made them such a dangerous proposition in the second tier.
West Brom took the lead in the 26th minute through a combination of good delivery and unfortunate luck for Wrexham. Isaac Price fizzed a free kick from the angle — the sort of flat, driven ball that demands defenders make a decision quickly — and George Dobson, stretching to intercept or clear, stuck out a foot and diverted the ball past Arthur Okonkwo at his near post. The Wrexham keeper had no chance once the deflection altered the trajectory, and Dobson’s expression as the ball crossed the line told you everything about how he felt about the role he’d played in it.
The penalty that followed in the 38th minute was a more straightforward piece of punishment. Issa Kaboré, who had already been penalised for a foul on Callum Styles earlier in the half, then made the mistake of holding Jayson Molumby to the ground at a corner — referee Robert Madley watching clearly, seeing enough, pointing to the spot without hesitation. Josh Maja stepped up and dispatched it with conviction, his right-footed drive going into the corner as Okonkwo guessed the right way but could not get his hand to it. It was West Brom’s first penalty of the season — the first, astoundingly, in thirteen months — and Maja celebrated with characteristic theatre, reaching over the advertising boards to collect what appeared to be a wooden cross from a photographer behind the hoardings, wheeling away toward the Smethwick End in a moment that had been clearly planned and executed with a striker’s eye for theatre.
Two goals up at half-time. Wrexham not having managed a shot on target. Everything pointing toward a fourth win in five games for James Morrison’s improving side. But football, and the Championship in particular, has a habit of punishing the assumption.
For all live Championship results, promotion and relegation battle coverage, and real-time match updates across the EFL, follow every score as it happens at fawanews.org.uk — your home for live football coverage.
Wrexham were a different team in the second half and it started before a minute had been played of the second period. Josh Windass collected the ball about twenty yards from goal, took one touch to set himself, and struck it with the laces of his right boot into the bottom corner past Josh Griffiths who had barely had a touch all afternoon. It was the kind of goal that changes a match’s emotional temperature instantly — not a scrappy equaliser scrambled in from a corner, but a clean, confident strike from a player who had decided the game was not over and chosen the perfect moment to say so. The Wrexham fans behind the goal exhaled and came alive, and suddenly The Hawthorns was a very different place.
Fifteen minutes later, Wrexham were level. Callum Doyle swung a cross into the West Brom penalty area from the left — a delivery that was causing chaos in the box — and Lewis O’Brien got to the ball before Dobson could clear it. Whether O’Brien got the final touch or whether Dobson knocked it in while trying to deal with the situation is something that both players were, according to the post-match reporting, happy to debate. The official record credits Dobson — his name appearing twice on the scoresheet in the same match, for opposite teams, which is the kind of afternoon that follows a footballer around for a while. Either way, the ball was in the net and the scoreboard read 2-2.
From there the match could have gone either way and the defining moment — the moment that perhaps said most about what the remaining six games hold for both these clubs — came in the final minutes when Arthur Okonkwo produced an incredible late save from West Brom substitute Daryl Dike. Dike, brought on to provide an attacking outlet in the closing stages, connected with something that looked certain to go in, and Okonkwo threw himself across his goal to deny what would have been a winner. Phil Parkinson said afterwards he planned to lodge a complaint with the Championship’s head of referees Kevin Friend over decisions he felt had gone against his side during the afternoon — a referee decision over the penalty being one — which suggested the draw felt like it carried grievances as well as relief for Wrexham.
For West Brom, the inability to see out a two-goal lead will hurt, but Morrison’s programme notes captured the mood before the game and retain their relevance after it. He wrote about keeping feet on the ground after the Bristol City win, about the mini-season ahead, about maintaining the momentum of a run that has quietly transformed the mood around the club. West Brom remain four points above the relegation zone with six games remaining, and given where they were earlier in the campaign — the ten consecutive away defeats, the coaching changes, the anxiety seeping through the stands — a five-game unbeaten run represents genuine progress. They need more of the same, and quickly.
Wrexham’s afternoon delivers the point that moves them above Southampton and into sixth, into the play-off places, with the reminder that Phil Parkinson’s side still have something to chase and believe in. The sides meet again on Tuesday in North Wales, the reverse fixture coming almost immediately and offering both teams the chance for a rapid response. For Wrexham, a win at the Racecourse Ground would feel like a statement. For West Brom, a win away from home would confirm that this revival has genuine substance.
The Championship at this stage of the season is the best domestic league in the world for tension and consequence, and Good Friday delivered exactly what it was expected to. Two goals up with forty-five minutes to play, West Brom still couldn’t win. Wrexham without their top scorer, passive for an entire first half, came back to earn a share of the spoils. The promotion race, the survival battle, the play-off chase — all of it shifts slightly with every result and this draw shifted it just enough to matter.
Final score: West Brom 2-2 Wrexham. George Dobson OG 26′, Josh Maja 38′ pen, Josh Windass 47′, George Dobson 62′. The Hawthorns. Attendance: 25,927. Referee: Robert Madley. Good Friday, 3 April 2026, EFL Championship Matchday 40. West Brom move to 44 points (20th), Wrexham to 64 points (6th).
