As half a dozen League Two fixtures concluded last Tuesday night it dawned on FourFourTwo. Our trip to watch Wrexham play bottom-of-the-table Forest Green (arranged exactly a month ago) could now feasibly coincide with Phil Parkinson’s men securing their second successive promotion, leaving them two leagues away from the Premier League promised land.
Like others, my relationship with the Wrexham story has gone through various stages: initial confusion in 2021: “You what? Him off Deadpool and the other one whose name I recognise but can’t quite picture are buying Wrexham? Sure”.
Confusion soon evolved into curiosity: “Well, I’ve got Disney+ and can never agree with the wife what to watch, so…”
The third stage was emotional gazumping. Nothing prepares you for the real-life storylines and charm that emerge from the first two series of Welcome To Wrexham on Disney+.
Producers find threads and storylines inside and outside the football club that evoke tears, tingles, tension, trauma and triumph. The show goes beyond the pitch, touching on big topics like autism, sexuality, industrial tragedy, poverty, divorce, hooliganism, depression and suicide. I’m really selling it, aren’t I?
Don’t worry, there is plenty of space within the snackable 30-minute episodes for hilarious skits, pranks and quirky explainers told via the magnetic bonhomie of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. These Hollywood actors, who supposedly didn’t know each other before they took over Wrexham in the National League, are genuinely taken aback by the experience of supplanting themselves in a random post-industrial town between the Welsh Mountains and the English border.
“We could easily sell 20,000 tickets each home game”, explains Wrexham’s Director Shaun Harvey to FourFourTwo before the team kick off vs Forest Green. Harvey, former Chief Executive of the EFL, has become a celebrity in his own right, appearing as the straight-man on camera in the documentary spelling out the expensive realities of running a lower league professional football club to English football luddites Rob and Ryan.
Harvey initially joined the club in an advisory capacity only to be swept up in the story and coming onboard full-time. He is with FourFourTwo and a dozen or so others in the Betty Buzz hospitality suite at Wrexham’s commercially rebranded STōK Cae Ras stadium. Betty Buzz is the beverage company owned by Ryan Reynold’s wife, Blake Lively.
Harvey seems relatively relaxed considering the game we are about to watch could see the accumulation of months of hard, expensive work come to fruition. “The irony is we place our entire faith in a group of young lads every Saturday, some of whom you wouldn’t trust to cross the street by themselves through the week!”
Harvey needn’t have worried, by half-time Wrexham are 4-0 up on poor bottom-of-the-league Forest Green, who are on the brink of back-to-back relegations. Meanwhile, Wrexham's League Two automatic promotion rivals MK Dons and Mansfield are drawing with each other. If it stays like this, the Robins will be spraying champagne by five O’Clock.
Sitting next to FourFourTwo are Rob McElhenney’s dad, Bob and his wife who reveals Bob has spent the week buried in spreadsheets trying to get to grips with the promotion permutations of League Two. She shows me the family chat on her phone, Rob McElhenny (watching 5,000 miles away) has messaged: “It’s raining in LA!”.
It’s not always sunny in Wrexham, but today is an exception. Their fairytale fate feels pretty clear as MK Dons toil at home to Mansfield and Wrexham continue scoring. ‘The Town are going up, Ole! Ole! Ole!’ sing the Racecourse as the scoreboard ticks over to 6-0.
It would be the perfect day, were it not for two things missing. Rob and Ryan are across the Atlantic having woke early to watch from home. There are plans for them to be in Wales for the season finale against top-of-the-table Stockport who clinched the title on Tuesday night thanks to a 5-2 win at Notts County.
With Wrexham's final home game of the season being against Stockport, it could've been a dramatic winner-takes-all 90-minute fight for the title. Neither club will mind with promotion now sealed. Wrexham's story has many more chapters remaining.
Season Three of Welcome To Wrexham is coming to Disney+ soon
More Wrexham stories
'The ambition of the club is to get as high up the leagues as quickly as possible - but we're under no illusions': Wrexham star highlights what's next after achieving League Two promotion
Wrexham star Elliot Lee reveals what owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney are REALLY like
Welcome to Wrexham: Everything we know about Season 3
