The club’s Hollywood co-owners have brought a spotlight to north Wales but have made a difference to everyday lives
Wrexham fans celebrate after their side scored two late goals to beat Salford 3-2. Photographs by Tom Jenkins for The Guardian.n hour before kick-off outside the iconic Turf pub, adjacent to the iconic Racecourse Ground, just down the road from the iconic Shell garage shop, fevered and ultimately baseless rumours have begun to circulate that AFC Wrexham’s co-owner Ryan Reynolds will in fact be present for the home game against Salford City.
Happily, the only Highly Emotive Language to be heard in the Wrexham Lager Upper this afternoon will come from a man in the middle tier who keeps shouting “WHAT are we DOING?” as the home team struggle to make an impression on organised and powerful opponents. It is the kind of process that sits right at the heart of football’s ongoing clash of established community models, the human face that has sustained this thing, with its own rapacious new commercial models. Is this another heist of human emotions? Another way of wringing out value from that thing you love? Or can it just be a good thing in a bad world, creative commodification of the best kind?
The personal journey schtick is covered early on. McElhenny is a working-class lad from Philly who loves the Eagles . We meet his dad. On Wrexham he says: “I know those people. I grew up with those people. I am those people.” Hey. It’s a TV shortcut. Reynolds is less into sport but brings genuine A-list presence, vital to that fairytale double-take aspect. They walk through this world like celebrity guests at a wedding, always talking about warmth and dignity and how great everything is.
There are episodes where the best bits are Phil Parkinson shouting “Foook” repeatedly on the touchline, or a barefoot Charlotte Church singing Men Of Harlech, which sounds stagey and posed but is in fact beautiful and moving because it just is.
“We were a bit, I won’t say on our arses, but we’d lost a bit with the coalmines, steel, the markets, breweries. We’ve never had tourists before. When the cruises dock at Liverpool they go to castles and the Beatles tour, but now they’re coming to the world-famous Turf pub. I’ve seen 50 Americans going in there.”
Wrexham memorabilia is scattered among the mining artefacts now. A memorial and an evolving miner’s museum have been added, helped by supporter donations and overseen by its owners, George and Sharon Powell, who have created some beautiful exhibits, including a kids’ art centre and a scale replica training tunnel for mine rescue workers. The place is still in desperate need of funds after a previous owner attempted, unforgivably, to bulldoze the building.
Is it though? “I’m not going to lose too much sleep over people saying, oh, it’s an American’s plaything,” says the Wrexhamchief executive, Humphrey Ker, actor, writer friend of the owners and founding spirit of the new Wrexham. The tour was also slightly controversial, a marketing trip as opposed to the more traditional local match practice. “From our perspective it was a huge success. Again it’s the short term versus the long term. Football is massively on the rise in the US and one of the things Rob in particular has been very strong on is he wants to make Wrexham America’s team. If you follow a team in the US or you don’t have strong affiliations, it’s Real Madrid or Barcelona.
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