After 15 years out of professionalism, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s side were promoted to League Two.
The glory and decline of Wrexham AFC follow the fortunes of the city of Wrexham, located in North Wales, and its stadium, the Cae Ras or Racecourse Ground. Built in 1807, it began hosting football matches in 1864, the year of the foundation of what is now the third oldest club in the world. It is therefore, to this day, the oldest international football stadium still in use.
The identification of the inhabitants with these three factors is total and the bond that holds this “trinity” together is essential: the city is the team and the team is the stadium. If one of the three fails, there is no chance of survival for the other two. And so, when at the beginning of the 80s the mining sector, which employed a large part of the population, collapsed, Wrexham became a ghost town and the team began its collapse: from the second division (today’s Championship) to the fourth, stringing together vintages devoted to survival, both from an economic and a sporting point of view.
And the stadium? The Racecourse Ground, from the stage of Wrexham’s European ambitions, protagonist of a couple of memorable rides up to the quarter-finals of the Cup Winners’ Cup, had become like the Bastiani Fortress of the Desert of the Tartarsnovel by Dino Buzzati: decadent, distant, inhospitable.
The step towards tragedy is short and silent. In 2002 Alex Hamilton, a real estate entrepreneur with a certain predilection for profiteering, took over the club. His plan was to evict the team (making it bankrupt) from the stadium and turn it into building land. The plan is only half successful since, having sold the stadium on his own through the president-frontman Mark Guterman, he has to face the fury of the fans, who will take him to court forcing him, in 2006, to resign.
Hamilton leaves office but also a huge amount of debts, which forces the company to enter administration and suffer heavy penalties in the championship which, inevitably, lead to the relegation to the Conference Premier at the end of the 2007/08 season abandoning professionalism after 87 years.
But, in the worst moment of its more than 100-year history, it is the fans who return the favor to the club. When, in 2011, theHer Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (State Tax Collection Department) notifies the club of almost £200,000 in back taxes, fans show they are ready to do anything to save Wrexham from bankruptcy. In just one day they’re mortgaging houses and canceling weddings, raising more than £100,000 to shouts of “Up the Town!”.
Following this, the club is taken over permanently by Wrexham Supporters Trust, finally returning to the hands of the fans after a decade of mismanagement.
“Wrexham is a city that constantly struggles against the odds”. This is one of the phrases you will hear if you decide to watch Welcome to WrexhamTV series produced by FX in 2022 that talks about the famous and much talked about purchase of the club by Hollywood stars, Ryan Reynolds e Rob McElhenney. There is no more apt definition.
The interest of the two actors had initially aroused above all distrust from the members of the Trust, burned by the past with Hamilton. The two, however, manage to win the trust of six fans and, in February 2021, buy Wrexham for 2 million pounds.
Despite having never set foot in Wales, Reynolds and McElhenney immediately showed that they understood which strings to strike: the most important investment to make is not in the team, but in the community.
They descend among the fans, participate in events, hire full-time those who were previously only volunteers. They leverage their celebrity to bring media attention back to Wrexham and put it back on the geographical map even before the football one. They set themselves a goal, which is fundamental for recreating the sacred trinomial stadium-city-team: bring Wrexham back into the pros.
But the tendency to always be on the wrong side of the current is stronger than even Deadpool’s superpowers. Despite massive investments in squad and on the bench, Wrexham lose the National League playoff semi-final 4-5 after extra time in 2021/22 and find themselves battling head-to-head with a 100+ league-point Notts County side in 2022/23 losing, moreover, their starting goalkeeper Rob Lainton (nicknamed The Bolton Buffon), one month after the end of the season, when they had only 3 points ahead of Magpies second.
How can history be beaten, if not thanks to someone who has a score to settle with her? Eighteen years ago, in 2005, Wrexham were faced with a season finale with an important match to play (the final of the LDV Vans Trophy, the league cup for League One and Two teams) by fielding the reserve goalkeeper via of a serious injury to owner legend Andy Dibble.
That second goalkeeper, by name Ben Fosternot only had he kept a clean sheet in the Millennium Stadium match, but he had played so well that Sir Alex Ferguson, present in the stands to see his son Darren (captain of the Red Dragons), had decided to buy him for Manchester United.
Ben Foster had then retired in 2022 and during the current season he had already rejected two Premier League teams that had knocked on his door after an injury to the starting goalkeeper: Newcastle and Tottenham. He had decided that his career was over and that, at nearly 40, he wanted to pursue YouTube and podcasts full-time. But then it was Wrexham who knocked and the call of history was too strong: if 18 years earlier it was Foster who needed the club to start his career at a high level, today has the opportunity to return the favor and allow the team to restart the climb to professionalism.
So Ben comes back, puts on the boxing gloves and takes the field. One month, eight games, including the direct clash with Notts County, played on Easter Monday afternoon in a Cae Ras with 10,500 fans – for an amateur game – and the two contenders tied for first place with 100 points each. Wrexham goes under, comes back, is taken back, takes the lead again. But then the wind turned and, in an instant, he found himself against the tide again, when Eoghan O’Connell, in the 95th minute, commits a hand ball and gives the guests a penalty that could be worth a draw with the taste of bitter defeat.
Cedwyn Scott goes to the penalty spot with the face of someone who is already taking that penalty hundreds of times in his head: he will never score it. It is the face of one resigned to agony. Foster flies as if she were 20 years younger and pushes her awayeffectively giving the Red Dragons the vittoria of the championship, although it will only become official two weeks later, with the 3-1 homely on the Boreham Woodunder a rain that seems to wash away all the sadness of 15 years in the National League and 20 since the last joy of a promotion.
Now that, as the song of the local group Declan Swans goes, It’s always sunny in Wrexham.