Blake Lively can’t have been the only person whose jaw dropped when the news broke that her Hollywood A-lister husband Ryan Reynolds and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia star Rob McElhenney announced they were going to buy struggling football club Wrexham AFC back in 2020. Among the questions asked among the general public in North America back then were “Who?”, “Why?”, “How?”, and, most commonly, “Where on Earth is Wrexham?”
Fast forward to 2023, and it’s safe to say that a good chunk of the TV-watching public know exactly where Wrexham is, what life’s like there, and how Elliot Lee is getting on for goals this season. Reynolds and McElhenney’s docuseries Welcome to Wrexham was a surprise hit on its debut on FX/Hulu in 2022, drawing big audiences and glowing reviews for its endearing depiction of the down-to-earth goings-on at the Racecourse Ground. Here’s why the second season, which drops on Sept. 12, will show Reynolds and McElhenney at their very best.
They wanted a team with history – they got one!
When the Hollywood pairing made known their interest in buying a football club, they also made it clear they wanted a team with history; and with Wales’s Wrexham AFC, they certainly got it. When the gentlemen cricketers of the mining town decided to establish a football team to have something to do in the wet winter months back in 1864, Abraham Lincoln was president of the United States, wars were still fought with cavalry and cannons, and the world knew nothing of lightbulbs, telephones, or airplanes. Moreover, in the world of sport, big footballing names such as Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, and Liverpool were not yet spoken of – for Wrexham is not only the oldest football club in Wales, but the third oldest in the world.
Although the team never made to the dizzying heights of the Premier League, being one of the few Welsh clubs big enough to compete in the English football system brought more money to Wrexham over the years. But the club’s status as a team from Wales also added another, highly unusual chapter to its history. Unlike any English club of the same size, for 20 years and more Wrexham AFC competed in European competition, against the very best clubs from the continent’s top leagues.
As frequent winners of the Welsh Cup, Wrexham gained entry to the European Cup Winners’ Cup representing Wales, and in the 1970s and 1980s many a memorable night was had at the Racecourse, with Wrexham recording famous results against the likes of Anderlecht and Porto. In domestic competition, too, they often punched far above their weight, earning a reputation as “giant-killers” for unceremoniously dumping big-name teams like Arsenal out of the FA Cup.
It gets better. Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground has been staging sporting events of all kinds for almost 300 years. The ground is even in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest international soccer stadium in the world – in fact, the site is so old that when a new stand was built in the late 1990s, the architects had to design it around a historic 200-year old pub overlooking the pitch for conservation reasons. When Reynolds and McElhenney arrived, they not only paid a visit to the pub for a quick drink, but also had a close look at the cavernous Kop – a huge standing terrace behind one of the goals – which was overgrown with weeds and unused, having failed a safety inspection a few years previously. This year, the bulldozers came in and demolished it, and work is now in progress on a new, modern stand courtesy of Deadpool and Mac.
Fresh blood for a struggling team
Although history is all very well, it’s the performance on the pitch that matters – and it’s not just the stadium that has been spruced up by the new owners. Reynolds and McElhenney found a club languishing in the National League – the slick-sounding but decidedly unimpressive fifth tier of the English football pyramid, where they often found themselves playing in front of tiny crowds against semi-professional teams and other, down-on-their-luck clubs whose glory years had been and gone. It was all a far cry from the club’s halcyon days in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Racecourse bulged with crowds of 20,000 and more, and Wrexham was pushing for promotion to the top flight. McElhenney said it all after a game in 2021 in which the players had to resort to clearing the pitch of rainwater with brooms during an away match: “We need to get out of this f****** league.”
Fortunately for Wrexham’s long-suffering fans, Hollywood put its money where its mouth was. With manager Phil Parkinson given a decent budget to expand the playing squad, some astute signings combined with good, old-fashioned hard work on the training ground formed the nucleus of Welcome to Wrexham’s first season. Before long the team were playing home games to sold-out crowds, and with the Dragons’ vocal supporters behind them, the club got to the playoffs. There was to be no fairytale ending to the season, however, as the club lost their clutch match 5-4. Reynolds and McElhenney were unperturbed, and one can hardly blame them: the team have acquired a global fanbase of a size and enthusiasm that other clubs of their ilk can only dream of, and it was not long before Hollywood A-listers like Hugh Jackman found their way to home games.
Reynolds and McElhenney – in it for the long haul
The really great thing about Welcome to Wrexham, however, is that Reynolds and McElhenney are so obviously affected by it all. Everyone knows how fanatical football fans can be about their clubs, but from the first, it’s clear that Wrexham AFC is not merely important, but absolutely central to the life of a town which has seen plenty of rough times since the closure of the coal mines that formed its lifeblood half a century ago. Not only that, but Wrexham fans are proprietorial about both club and ground to an extent that franchise teams can only dream of – back in 2011, when the club was facing extinction due to unpaid tax bills, fans raised over £100,000 overnight to ensure it stayed in business. One pair of fans even donated their wedding funds to keep the club afloat.
That sort of all-consuming community dedication was not lost on Reynolds and McElhenney, who have won much respect in Wrexham for their support of local causes. It’s also gone down well in north Wales that Reynolds in particular has expressed support for the Welsh language, which remains widely spoken in much of the country and by many Wrexham supporters, and is a source of great pride for Welsh people. In fact, Reynolds’ film Red Notice, which was released on Netflix in 2021, even features Welsh subtitles.
But the big question on everybody’s lips is: are the Hollywood stars for real, or just in it for the lolz? Much debate has been generated in the UK about the possibility of two celebrities with no experience running football clubs positioning themselves to take advantage of the publicity and making a pile out of the TV series, only to sell up if things go wrong in the future. Professional football is, after all, big business, and more than a few British football clubs have gone the way of the dodo due to big-name owners indulging in rash overinvestments without long-term plans for stability, and then bailing when the going gets tough.
But during the filming of Welcome to Wrexham’s second season, both men have made pronouncements to the effect that they are committed to the club for the long haul, no matter what the cost. During the official trailer, Reynolds opines: “The burden isn’t just winning and getting out of this league – it’s never letting down this community.” If the club’s rollercoaster 2022-23 season is any indication, it’s fair to say that the pair’s enthusiasm for Wrexham – never far from the surface during the show’s first season – will get turned up a notch during season 2: their reaction during Wrexham matches, and during one crunch game in particular, will take some beating. There is also the sudden appearance of hordes of brand-new Wrexham fans from all corners of the world at home games; the up-and-coming ladies’ team, who like their male counterparts spent most of this year gunning for promotion; and the small matter of a flying visit to the Racecourse by none other than King Charles III.
How will it all end for Wales’s most famous underdogs? Having already made it back to the promised land of the English Football League, will the venerable Welsh club be able to climb up the tiers to the Championship – or even go one better, and mix it with the world’s biggest teams in the Premier League? It’s a tall order – the sort of ending Hollywood screenwriters would shy away from writing for sheer unbelievability. But as Welcome to Wrexham has already proved, sometimes the improbable has a way of coming true.