HECTOR SAM'S penalty miss in the 50th minute was the vital opportunity missed by Wrexham to turn Saturday's match in their favour, according to manager Denis Smith.

Aussie keeper Frank Talia saved the effort and left the Dragons unable to break down a staunch Chairboys rearguard. was disappointed that we didn't win the game but we needed to score a goal," said Smith afterwards.

"We had the opportunity to do that which I felt would have changed the whole shape of the game.

"Hector is a good penalty-taker so it's a question of whether it's a poor penalty or a good save. You have to give the goalkeeper some credit and all penalty-takers miss.

"These things happen, that's the beauty of the game. I would have preferred it to be different because if we had scored it would have been a different game."

Former Arsenal centre-half Tony Adams is attempting to introduce defensive steel into his Wycombe side, and Smith admitted that after Sam's miss his side found it difficult to break them down.

He added: "They were quite happy to sit behind the ball and hoped to catch us on the break and we needed to take that opportunity. But if you miss penalties it costs you.

"You must put your chances away and we didn't look as potent up front today as we have recently.

"Hector has been superb in the past few weeks but today he was back to the player I was not a great fan of.

"I prefer the player I've seen in the past 10 games."

But the Racecourse boss remained philosophica despite the obvious frustration of another desperately poor Racecourse crowd, which only just topped 3,000 despite the Dragons' mid-table position.

"You get games like this and you have to look at the positives," he added.

"It was another clean sheet, the second in three games. All right, perhaps we've gone back to being a bit more defensive and hard to beat.

"Teams are coming here and showing us respect in trying to close us down. It shows we have progressed.

"Instead of coming here hoping to win, teams are coming here for a draw.

"They had 11 professionals out there and they would expect to cause problems for us, but they didn't create too many."

Defending Jim Whitley for a missed gilt-edged chance in the second half, the Racecourse boss said: "It's not his strength.

"Players can do certain things and others can't. Jim, unfortunately, is not one that when he gets in there will bulge the back of the net. But that's a fact of life.

"Overall, we've done quite well and we've had the chances to win the game.

"But it was never going to be a classic, because you need two teams going for it for that to happen.

"That's no criticism of them because they've come here to do a job.

"But if you want open, attractive football, you aren't going to get it when one team doesn't want to attack.

"If we had scored it would have changed the game but the longer we went without a goal the more satisfied they were."