(Rekeil Pyke celebrates after scoring Wrexham's third goal in their 2-1 win over Gateshead. Image: Alun Roberts)
Winger Paul Rutherford says his Wrexham side are learning the lessons of last season's failure and reckons the time has finally come to end the club's 10-year Non-League stay.
The Dragons moved to the top of the National League table for the third time this season after Saturday's 3-1 victory over Gateshead.
It was a similar story last season for the north Wales club before a disastrous run in the second half of the campaign saw them slip out of the play-off places and eventually settle for a 10th place finish.
But Rutherford believes this current squad, under rookie boss Sam Ricketts, has what it takes to finally push the Dragons over the line and back into the Football League.
“We need to be in the leading pack, we need to make sure we stay in and around that,” Rutherford told the Daily Post.
“Last year we were in and around it until the beginning of March and then we blew up. This year we need to make sure that doesn't happen and we need to make sure that we maintain a pace, and that we capitalise on opportunities.
“We can be the pace setters now, (we are) one point clear, we need to build gaps constantly and kick on.
“The manager emphasised that he wanted us to go into the break top of the league and (for us) to go and do everything we could to do that.
“We've gone top of the table, we have been there before and now I think the key thing is that we capitalise on it now.
“We got there a couple of times last season and the game following it we didn't back it up. Now we need to do that, we need to really set a pace of our own and hopefully we can start pulling away from a couple of teams, ideally that is what we want to be doing. Everyone of us wants to achieve promotion and to do that we have to kick on now.
“In terms of the hunger and desire, that has been there, that is what we kept as a group from last season. But the characters we recruited over the last couple of seasons are winners and want to kick on and achieve things.”
