Wrexham gears up for Hollywood-style promotion party
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[April 22, 2023]
By Lori Ewing
WREXHAM, Wales (Reuters) - Actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney
may have brought Hollywood star power to long-struggling Welsh
soccer club Wrexham AFC, but the players are writing their own
script worthy of a blockbuster movie.
Wrexham are on the verge of winning promotion to the English
Football League having amassed a record 107 points to sit top of the
National League table with two games to go.
Victory over Boreham Wood on Saturday would guarantee promotion to
Football League Two, the fourth tier of English soccer, and people
in the northern Welsh city are gearing up for a memorable evening.
"You won't be able to get in here tomorrow . . . no chance," Mark
Jones said from the Turf Hotel, the pub on the corner of the team's
Racecourse Ground. "Every pub in town will be the same. It'll be
emotional, very emotional."
Jones plays guitar for the Declan Swans, a band of middle-agers who
have achieved rock-star status through the FX documentary "Welcome
to Wrexham" that chronicles the team's progress under Reynolds and
McElhenney, and their song "Always Sunny in Wrexham". The title is a
play on McElhenney's show "Always Sunny in Philadelphia".
"Ryan actually knows us by our names now," Jones, who delivers the
post by day, said with a laugh. "How does Ryan Reynolds know my
name? It's quite bizarre."
The documentary has propelled a little-known club into the global
spotlight. Games draw huge viewing audiences, even in North America
and the success story has left virtually no-one in Wrexham
untouched.
Wayne Jones, who has owned The Turf for 15 years, said his life had
become a lot busier. FX spent five hours in his pub on Friday
morning shooting the trailer for Season Two. Jones was bidding
farewell to the couple of dozen crew members when one told him:
"You're my mom's favourite character".
CRAZY BUSY
"We always worked hard but we work a lot harder now," Jones said.
"We'll get 30, 40, 50 tourists in some days. Every day we get
tourists, but some days it's crazy busy. Lot of Americans and
Canadians and Australians and South Africans, you name it."
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Soccer Football - National League -
Wrexham on the verge of promotion to the English Football League -
Wrexham, Britain - April 21, 2023 An illustration of Wrexham club
owners Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds is seen ahead of their
National League match against Boreham Wood REUTERS/Carl Recine
Inside The Turf, pictures of Reynolds, McElhenney
and Deadpool battle for space on the red walls with Wrexham logos
and longtime supporters' names.
Jones, whose face has become so familiar he often gets mistaken for
a player in the supermarket, laments the longtime Wrexham supporters
who did not live to see the team's success.
"There's been some really dark days where the club has been on the
verge of extinction and we've had some really shady owners," the
40-year-old said. "I've also sat in (Racecourse Ground) when there's
only been two thousand fans on cold Tuesday nights."
Johnny Boycott, a lifelong Wrexham fan, remembers the dark days.
"I've been to rubbish games," he said, wearing a Wrexham Red Dragons
jersey and green club jacket. He said he has every jersey the team
shop sells.
Boycott, the transport manager for Wrexham & Prestige Taxis, joked
that it can be tough to find drivers to work on game day.
"We've had so many fans in the taxis, Canada, America, all different
parts of the world, which you never heard of that before," he said.
"But now the town, the pubs, after the match you can't get in the
pubs sometimes they're so busy.
"But everyone's happy, smiling. Everyone's got a Wrexham shirt on,
even the young kids. It's simply brilliant. Crazy."
(Reporting by Lori Ewing, editing by Ed Osmond)
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