IT was a brilliantly hot Sunday in Wrexham, and I chose to make the most of it by driving three hours south, into the permanent drizzle of Newport.

A drizzle interrupted only by bursts of driving rain. Over six hours in my car, travelling to watch Wrexham lose the Welsh Cup final to Cardiff. And you know what? It was up there as my best day of an astonishing season.

Why? Well, I’ve been banging on all season about how Steve Dale’s side have been narrowing the gap between them and The Bluebirds, who represent the pinnacle of the domestic game, having completed a clean sweep of trophies on Sunday, and a hat-trick of Welsh Cups to boot.

I’ve also had to acknowledge that the scorelines haven’t reflected our progress. Dale has constantly come up with new set-ups to trouble Cardiff, and they work until City work out how to counter our approach.

Then, their quality and ability to capitalise fully on defensive errors means they tend to run away with games in the second half.

Last Sunday was still a 2-0 defeat, but it was gloriously different and filled me with excitement for next season. It’s a shame I’ll have to wait four months for it to start!

The difference is this: we were clearly better than they were. Not just for a period of the game, but for its entirety.

There were many contributory factors. Firstly, and obviously, the performance level of the players was superb.

I was lucky enough to have Mia Roberts, a star of last season’s promotion season, commentating with me, and at half time, she said each player was a 9 or 10 out of 10. She was totally correct.

The entire team unit functioned superbly, apart from the one early lapse which left our left flank exposed and allowed Rhianne Oakley to put Cardiff ahead.

Apart from that, we harried and hassled City off their rhythm until they were utterly unrecognisable from the side that has marched confidently through the season.

When they got their second, a thunderbolt from outside the box in the third minute of added time at the end of the game, the explosion of noise from the Cardiff fans shocked me. They had been becalmed throughout the match to the extent that I’d forgotten they were there in force!

It was the perfect illustration of how well we played: The Bluebirds’ fans had come to witness another imperial performance, but instead watched in silent horror as we dominated them.

Dale deserves a lot of credit for what happened on Sunday. He has set his side up superbly for these Cardiff games, and appeared to pull off a remarkable manoeuvre to hinder City’s ability to work out a solution to the problems we were posing.

We started off with a surprising set-up, as Liv Fuller (pictured right) stepped up into midfield for the first time in a Wrexham shirt. Yet after a few minutes she shifted to another new spot, on the right side of our defence, where her experience and quality allowed her to dominate the dangerous Michayla Cook, while producing a series of accurate, progressive passes.

City seemed to be knocked off balance by these surprising changes, and the sight of their entire bench huddled round a laptop on the pitch at half time, trying to work out what to do, said it all.

Their frantic problem-solving was futile, though, because at the start of the second half we’d switched back to our original set-up, and they were caught out again. When they looked like they might finally settle down, the cunning Dale then switched Fuller back to the right again, and City didn’t know if they were coming or going!

Of course, we weren’t able to capitalise on our superb performances, and couldn’t force the ball into their net. For now, I’ll take us dominating Cardiff though: at this rate, the results will come.

It’s Rob and Ryan’s stated intention to make Wrexham a dominant force in Welsh women’s football. I fully believe that’s a realistic goal, and we’ve made huge strides towards achieving that already this season.

However, before Sunday I would have acknowledged that there’s still a gulf between us and Cardiff, albeit a narrowing one. I didn’t foresee us going toe-to-toe with them and controlling the game yet!

That’s what we did, though, and that’s why I’m so excited. We’re further ahead in our development than I realised, and so close to taking the next step: being consistently on a par with Cardiff City.

That’s why Sunday was one of the best days of the season: it told me that, with a couple of judicious additions, Wrexham are ready to aim for the league title next season.