By Jim White
If you want a hint as to the change that has taken place at Wrexham since the club were given a Hollywood makeover, it is there in the lunchtime conversation in the bar of the Turf hotel that abuts the Racecourse Ground. In the week leading up to the club’s FA Cup fourth-round tie against Sheffield United (on Monday morning ADST), the talk is all about how hard it is to get a ticket.
Dave, for instance, has been a Wrexham fan since his dad took him along as a 10-year-old to see Mickey Thomas score a wonder goal to beat then reigning league champions Arsenal in the Cup in 1992. And, he says, he has never experienced demand like it.
“Four years ago, I went to Havant and Waterlooville, away. There were 74 of us from Wrexham. No problem getting tickets then. Now? Crazy,” he says. When tickets went on sale to club members for the game, they sold out in 25 minutes.
“I do my best to help people with spares,” says Wayne Jones, the landlord of the Turf. “But basically there aren’t any. Even for league games, it’s always a sell-out.”
Hollywood stars Rob McElhenney, left, and Ryan Reynolds bought Wrexham FC in 2021 to make a Netflix documentary series.Credit:PA
It may be tough to reconcile such a concept with a club who have been in the doldrums for decades, but Wrexham have become fashionable. They have supporters clubs in Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Last month they sold $A623,291 worth of merchandise. A writer from the New York Times came to a game recently, as did one from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“It’s been brilliant for the town, people are coming from all over, spending money here,” Jones says. “You hang around, I guarantee there will be some Americans or Aussies in here this lunchtime.”
The splurge of interest is not because the club are top of the National League. The fascination stems from the identity of the owners. Since Rob McElhenney, the man behind the American hit sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and Ryan Reynolds, the star of the Deadpool movie franchise, bought the club two years ago, things have gone into overdrive.
Fans with novelty masks of the pair at the FA Trophy final.Credit:Getty Images
“Totally, completely mad, ” says Fleur Robinson, who was appointed the club’s chief executive in June 2021. “But all very positive. Yup, it’s been a busy old time.”
It is an intriguing story. Before the pandemic, McElhenney was looking for a new project for RCG, his production company. Humphrey Ker, an English colleague, suggested he look at the Netflix documentary Sunderland ’Til I Die.
McElhenney loved it and proposed doing something similar, charting the turnaround at a woebegone British football club bought by a couple of unlikely owners: him and his mate Reynolds. Ker came up with Wrexham, which may be the third-oldest club in the world but had been so poorly run that their supporters had been obliged twice to rescue them from oblivion. It absolutely fitted the bill.
Wrexham games now have celebrity stars in the stands, like David Beckham and Will Ferrell.Credit:PA
“We want to tell the story of a working-class club and a working-class town,” says McElhenney of the idea. “Wrexham is perfect.”
The club were then owned by the Wrexham Supporters Trust. It required a democratic decision to ratify the takeover bid. In February 2021, 96 per cent of the 3,000 members who voted were in favour of the deal. McElhenney and Reynolds paid $A3.4 million and the cameras rolled. The first series of Welcome to Wrexham was screened on Disney+ in August 2022. And it became an immediate, worldwide success.
People began journeying from across the world to watch games, hoping they might spot the two Hollywood stars in the stands. And they just might. “Oh, they’ve been here all right,” Robinson says. “Four or five times this season they’ve been, together and separately.”
Wrexham’s Paul Mullin celebrates as the team beat Coventry and progressed to the FA Cup fourth round.Credit:Getty
The new owners have made significant investment. Not least in staff. There were just nine working full time when they arrived but now there are three times that number. The change this money has brought is evident everywhere. In the new grow lights glowing across the pitch, for instance. Or in the pile of rubble where the Kop stand used to be; a new stand will emerge for the 2024-25 season.
But for team manager Phil Parkinson, the biggest difference has been in the playing staff. “I said in the short term, if you want to make this place move, we have to compete for real quality players. We need people who can handle the extra exposure. And they’ve backed me in bringing in players who could walk out in front of 10,000 at the Racecourse and not crumble.”
Parkinson, who took Bradford City to the League Cup final before winning the League Two play-off in 2013, was made aware of the necessity of regaining the club’s place in the Football League, which was lost 15 years ago. Not just to make the documentary more exciting, but financially: in League Two, the annual Premier League solidarity payments amount to $A2.1 2 million a year. In the National League they are less than $A173,000.
co owners, US actors Ryan Reynolds, left and Rob McElhenney during their visit to Wrexham Association Football Club’s Racecourse Ground in December.Credit:PA
“Everyone knows the aim is getting League status back,” Parkinson says. “Equally, Rob and Ryan also understood that taking over a club neglected for a long time would need a lot of work on its behind-the-scenes infrastructure. The progression has been so rapid.”
And today’s game, he says, will offer a measure of how far they have come. “This is about us seeing how we fare against a proper side.”
He adds: “There is a huge history of our club in the FA Cup. We want to embrace that.” And he says the owners will be backing him every step of the way.
“I had a dialogue with Rob after the Gateshead win this week. When they come here, they mix with us, have lunch with us. They have embraced the place.” Indeed, from all their public utterances, it appears for the Hollywood superstars this is not just a business project. It is personal.
“My hat will be forever doffed to Wrexham the town and supporters of this club,” said Reynolds recently.
Though in the Turf, where the fans gather, there remains a hint of scepticism.
“Fair play to them, they’ve said all the right things,” Dave says. “But you have to remember this: they are actors.”
The Daily Telegraph
