The popular sports documentary ‘Welcome to Wrexham’, exemplifies the type of stories that individuals and organisations should embrace when setting out to tell their own narratives. Funny, unvarnished yet unabashedly hopeful, this is a show that captures your heartstrings — and leaves you cheering even while tearing up
I remember the first time that I stumbled across Welcome to Wrexham on streaming service Disney+. I was killing time looking for something to fill in the coming hour.
Like many people, I had read about Hollywood great and Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds and some unknown actor — TV comedian Rob McElhenny — buying Wrexham Association Football Club (AFC) in late-2020. Being Welsh myself, I have always known of the club: and given its rich history, I felt the team had long been an enormous underachiever.
As with many of the writers who were covering the story, I couldn’t figure at first why it appealed to these two unlikely investors. After all, Wrexham AFC at that moment wasn’t even in the English Football League (EFL) — the leagues where the best soccer teams from England and Wales play. Formed in 1864, the oldest football club in Wales was instead languishing with the semi-professional class of footballers in the National League, the fifth tier of English football.
Besides, growing up in a family of Cardiff City supporters — my grandfather saw City win the 1927 FA Cup in person — Wrexham is viewed as a rival. So I was somewhat cynical about the acquisition, believing that like many a football club takeover, the venture would end acrimoniously with club supporters, with its inexperienced owners wasting millions of pounds on a failed vanity project.
The show was going to be crap, I was certain. California meets Northern Wales? I shuddered at the idea of chest-beating, testosterone-pumped wannabe sports stars preaching to viewers about their supposed achievements.
It would be made worse by Hollywood actors, who with no knowledge of the game of football — nor any idea as to what they had gotten themselves into culturally and economically — would be lecturing viewers on how to run a successful enterprise.
Cringeworthy, I feared. Yet out of sheer curiosity, I clicked on “Play”. And how wrong I was.
Genuine and relatable
Immediately I was struck by how genuine and relatable this show is — starting with the club’s new owners. Tinged with self-deprecating humour throughout, its early focus was on the feelings we all of us humans experience with any new venture — ranging from hope to anxiety, and jubilation to disappointment. With many more besides.
Welcome to Wrexham is a story about people and communities. It focuses on the role of a football club in bringing people together — and mending some of what has been broken. In doing so, it allows a rich mix of people from all walks of life to share their own unique stories, and their passion for their club, town and community.
Fascinatingly for a business owner and professional storyteller myself, it is also a story about running a successful venture. We explore how to work and interact with people of wildly various class and cultural backgrounds — and often learn how not to do it. We explore the managing (and mismanaging) of problems. Setting goals and creating a shared vision. Putting customers — the community and fans — first. And how various stakeholders and the venture in time intermingle to co-create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Most importantly, Welcome to Wrexham epitomises great storytelling. It’s a blueprint for any person or organisation wanting to share their story.
Don’t forget to sing
One cannot help but be moved by Wrexham’s rich history. Wrexham AFC is the third-oldest professional football club in the UK, and the story tells us of the tragedy of the Gresford Colliery, where in 1934, a gas explosion caused the nearby mine to collapse, killing 266 men who tragically had swapped their shifts in order to watch their beloved Wrexham AFC later that day.
More acutely, the show highlights how like so many towns, cities and nations worldwide, places once prosperous and full of life and energy, Wrexham was by 2020 and mid-pandemic, experiencing severe socioeconomic degradation. Factories, mines and other places of work have long since closed. Empty, unoccupied shops littered the town centre. And unemployment was widespread. The show’s portrayal of our present-day status quo feels both stark and saddening. And it is a sobering reminder of how fast and dramatic our world is changing.
The club and city’s heritage is aptly summarised in the words and music of Welcome to Wrexham’s theme song, “Don’t Forget” by Jon Hume:
“Don’t forget where you came from
Don’t forget what you’re made of
The ones who were there
When no one else would care
Don’t be afraid to cry now
Even when the world comes crashing in
Don’t forget to sing when you win
Don’t forget to sing when you win”
That the show’s producers highlight these issues and values is noteworthy. As humans, we all relate to day-to-day challenges, and we generally don’t like it when our stories and histories are glossed over or dismissed as some inevitable side-effect of ‘progress’.
Aside from the Canadian and American owners, and the club’s managers, coaches and players, the show’s producers also focus cleverly on the individual hopes and aspirations of a varied cast of Wrexham citizens. We meet pub owners. Band members. Fans suffering the challenges of divorce. And in doing so, we learn how for many, an average week can turn good or bad, depending on the relative fortunes of their beloved Wrexham AFC – sentiments that resonate with all manner of fans globally.
Stairway to heaven
Yet as with life, nothing in British football sits still. And it is the potential to climb to the very top of the EFL that fascinates co-owner McElhenny. In America, most professional sports teams are franchises competing in leagues that have no promotion or relegation. As a result, a small-town sports team rising to the upper echelons of say American football or baseball is frankly impossible. But not in the EFL.
First up, McElhenny’s and Reynolds’ big dream was a hit with the clubs previous owners, Wrexham Supporter’s Trust, a non-profit entity owned by the club’s fans. However, some were sceptical of the acquisition, given how past owners had mismanaged the club to the point of bankruptcy.
With the aim of achieving promotion in year one, the club gave hope to its local community and fans. And by investing in new players and management, results start to go the club’s way. By the end of Season 1, the club was within a whisker of promotion to the EFL, only to fall short. The club also reached the FA Trophy Final, a tournament contested between national league teams like Wrexham, only to lose to rivals Bromley FC.
Despite Wrexham’s successes, results were patchy, causing discontent among fans. Many questioned whether the new owners and new signings were worthwhile. Day to day, McElhenny and Reynolds also became concerned over the financial viability of their investment, given that they remained in non-league football.
These concerns are voiced in wonderfully open and honest ways, outlining how such challenges are an integral part of our own journeys. Yet still, in the show’s spirit, we can still laugh through the hardest times.
Remarkably, the team and management do persevere, never losing sight of their promotion ambitions — and eventually winning promotion to the EFL League Two as a stirring finale to the show’s second season. Then in its third season, the team gains promotion to EFL League One. Wrexham also advanced to the FA Cup’s fourth round in year-two, forcing a replay against Sheffield United (a club that went on to gain promotion to the Premier League later that year) only to fall short in the replay.
As events get told first-hand by McElhenny, Reynolds, management, players and fans, each outlines their own part in this rollercoaster ride of emotions — which we too experience along the ride. As the episodes unroll the story, the one-on-one interviews and unique access into characters’ homes and personal fortunes and tragedies, help to make viewers feel part of the conversation and the club journey.
Building a winning team
By their own admission, prior to buying the club, McElhenny and Reynolds knew next to nothing about football. They openly acknowledge that in order to build a winning club, they need experts across a wide range of roles. They appoint McElhenny’s writing colleague and football fanatic Humphrey Ker as executive director; former EFL chief executive Shaun Harvey as advisor to the board; and Fleur Robinson as Wrexham AFC chief executive. The show cleverly outlines their backgrounds, and why each chose to accept their role.
Somewhat movingly, the owners make lifelong Wrexham supporter Kerry Evans disability liaison officer, a role she previously performed for free. Wrexham deep dives into the lives and motivations of players, including Paul Mullin, Ollie Palmer and Jordan Davies. We see the good, bad and ugly of team manager Phil ‘Parky’ Parkinson, whose colourful language and pitch-side tantrums fittingly portray the intense pressure of managing a professional football team. Amusingly, seasons 1 and 2 even feature Parky’s personal ‘curse-word count’: which typically rises to epic proportions.
The show also explores complex and often unexpected relationships some have with their parents. Player Eliot Lee compares his career with that of his father, former Newcastle United and England International Robert Lee. Palmer and McElhenny both movingly tell of their parents’ experience coming out as gay.
Star striker Paul Mullin movingly shares the struggles he and his wife have, upon learning of their young son’s autism. Then later, in season 3, Mullin himself plays a star role in a pre-season game in the US against Premier League icons Manchester United — only to suffer a life-and-death moment, thanks to a punctured lung.
Each anecdote makes us feel yet closer to the club. As does coverage of the highly successful women’s team, who in Season 2 are also promoted. This coverage brings to light the importance yet relative obscurity of women’s teams in the community, and the role models they play for, and go on to inspire.
Sadly, not all people associated with the club are well-meaning. The show outlines the social problems that hooliganism and ultras can create on matchdays. Wrexham fan and police officer Saskia Barkley shares how her relationship with boyfriend Jonny Taylor, a Wrexham fan who is currently banned from the club’s stadium for such acts, has cost her a career.
Good for business
As with all good stories, fortunes do change in this real-life setting too. By the close of the Season 3, the club’s positive impact — and growing global football — have had a notable benefit for the community. The show features business owners who’ve benefitted from the city’s resurgent economy, and are staking new claims in further success.
Zimbabwean resident Valerie Creusailor is excited about her thriving condiment business; why former Wrexham AFC footballer Neil Roberts is busy renovating his new wine bar wIth the help of The Turf pub owner Wayne Jones. Current squad member Ollie Palmer launches his own clothing range under the business tutelage of McElhenny — who vows to prepare current squad members for beyond football.
Of course, not everyone is a fan. Critics of the show say that the turnaround in Wrexham’s fortunes has only been made possible through McElhenny’s and Reynolds’ money. And there is of course, some truth to this. Yet they didn’t just buy a club: they bought a piece of a local community, which needed hope in an increasingly dark socioeconomic backdrop. And as we learn, the fortunes of the investors is far from plain sailing at the beginning.
Pleasingly, the kinship between residents and the club feels entirely mutual. The community thrives off the success of the local football team; while the team thrives of its rapidly growing support — whether in Wrexham or as far afield as Argentina, as showcased in Series 3, where a group of die-hard Wrexham supporters from a Welsh-speaking town in Patagonia are flown to the North Wales city to meet their heroes and take part in local festivities. As a Welshman living far away in Singapore myself, this episode was truly moving.
And as I’ve discovered, whether you’re a football fan or not, this show works on its followers from a number of levels at once. But universally, it reminds us that deep down, we are all the same in wanting to see good people beat some of life’s challenges. And even when they don’t, they benefit from the togetherness gained in the process. In the 2020s, a small story about the audacity of hope, feels like something we’ve all needed.
Ultimately, the Welcome to Wrexham story teaches us all how to sing when we are winning — as well as losing. And in doing so, on so many levels at once, it is fair to say it is a storytelling (and award-winning) masterpiece.
