There are few managers who have stacked up figures for a club like Phil Parkinson has with us.

He has the best win percentage, best loss percentage, and loads more as his remarkable stewardship of the club continues to break records.

Yet there’s something just as important which underpins his superb results. He is particularly well-suited to leading a project like this, and managing a club like ours.

The thing is, Parkinson gets us. He understands what matters to us, and wants to deliver.

The first time I met him, he was interested to know more about my background and what the club meant to me.

He asked about my connection to the club, and the four generations of support which run through my family. He’s a football man, and he gets what it means to us.

That’s why I was fascinated when Parkinson revealed he had spent time with the team before the Shrewsbury game, talking through the reasons why the game was so big.

The defeat 16 years ago which felt like it condemned us to relegation to the National League. The FA Cup traditions of the club. The cross-border spice.

The players certainly played like they absorbed his message. When Shrewsbury started aggressively, we dug deep to stay in the game, defending the final third defiantly.

Throughout the game, we contested every inch of the pitch fiercely, and played with the same heart which was surging from the away end to sustain them.

Those players knew how important it was to play for those fans, because Parkinson had prioritised it. They also knew because Parkinson recruited them carefully, looking at their character as well as their ability.

He has assembled a group which mirrors the concept that underpins the ownership of Rob and Ryan. They play for the greater good, not themselves.

Look at Elliot Lee and Paul Mullin signing long-term contracts with us. They could surely take their pick of any number of higher division offers if they were on the market, and they know it.

But they’re the sort of people who want to commit to something that means more than just another stop on the gravy train.

Lee, for example, dropped at least three divisions lower than he ought to be playing when he signed for us.

He was a star signing, but we couldn’t accommodate him in his favoured, natural role as a number 10 without compromising the balance of the side.

When Parkinson suggested a change of role, into a box-to-box midfielder, a different sort of person would have played the diva card. Instead of throwing a strop, though, he knuckled down to the new task and has been a phenomenal success.

He still scores goals, but he also rolls his sleeves up and covers a terrific amount of ground in the name of the team.

Parkinson has got to know the club and the fans, and has put together a team which, while extravagantly talented, is also willing to roll its sleeves up and put in a proper shift.

The working class characteristics which Rob McElhenney speaks of so eloquently are recognised by the manager too, as he insists on the importance of hard graft in rewarding the fans who, after a week of toil, want a team to be proud of.

They delivered in spades on Sunday, and nobody should be surprised at that.

AFC Wimbledon have visited the STōK Cae Ras twice, both times in the National League.

Their first match in North Wales came in January 2010, with Wimbledon flying high whereas Dean Saunders’ side was struggling to score goals and languished in the bottom half of the table.

The match was Andy Mangan’s debut as Saunders sought a solution in the penalty area, and was decided by a highly controversial goal.

Gareth Taylor lobbed the ball towards goal and Seb Brown appeared to have it under control, but under Lamine Sakho’s pressure he carried it dangerously close to his own goal.

Although the visitors protested that their keeper had been fouled, and that the ball hadn’t crossed the line, the officials allowed the goal to stand.

Wimbledon gained ample revenge a year later, though. Again, they were pushing for promotion, but Mangan would strike from a Neil Ashton cross to give the Red Dragons the lead.

Taylor wasted a couple of chances to add a second, and would be punished when Christian Jolley equalised two minutes after the break. Worse was to come, as Rashid Yussuff nipped in with six minutes left to convert a Danny Kedwell assist.