After a Hollywood ending, Wrexham tries the rare feat of an ever better sequel

The small Welsh football club with the famous-actor owners finally won promotion after 13 seasons last year. Now it has a chance to go up a level, again

The funny thing about watching Wrexham AFC play at their home stadium is that the recent history of the once-beleaguered club is told by the electronic advertising hoarding that surrounds the pitch.

There are the ads for famous international brands like Gatorade, United Airlines, and Kellogg’s, which in any normal circumstance would be far too fancy for the signage in a 12,000-seat ground that houses a club in English football’s fourth tier. Then there are the ads for Aviation Gin or Betty Buzz coolers, libations partly owned by Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, the Hollywood couple who are also co-owners of Wrexham AFC — and whose involvement helps explain why the fancy corporate brands are also on board.

And then comes an ad for Ifor Williams Trailers — “Right Behind You Since 1958” —  which sells things on which you can load cows, and which until a couple of seasons ago was about as hoity-toity as sponsorships got for the club in northeast Wales, which had a long history and not much else to brag about other than signature wins from decades ago.

That all changed when the actors arrived.

For the unfamiliar, the short version of the Wrexham story is this:

• Struggling club spends a dozen years in England’s fifth tier, goes bankrupt, mirrors the fading fortunes of its Welsh mining town.

• Mid-pandemic, actor Rob McIlhenney watches the Netflix documentary about English club Sunderland and wonders if he could do something similar — in this case buy a low-level club, try to move up the English football pyramid, and produce a television show about the journey.

• That last bit is key. The team would be bought to be TV content, and the show would help finance the whole thing. He recruits Reynolds, star of the Deadpool films and a serial entrepreneur, as a partner in the project.

• They buy Wrexham AFC, which was barely solvent and held in a supporters’ trust, and quickly start fixing up the fixer-upper. They spend lavishly on new players and staff, the team shoots up the table, but fails to gain promotion in heartbreaking fashion. The show, Welcome to Wrexham, is a hit that makes the small Welsh club and its hard-luck supporters known throughout the world. The actors, unlike countless absentee owners who buy clubs as though they are trying to flip a house, seem to genuinely fall in love with Wrexham and its working-class story. (I used “seem to” there for a reason. They are actors, after all.)

• Last year, the second full season in charge for Deadpool and Mac, Wrexham won the fifth-tier National League and finally moved up to fourth-tier League Two. (I know, the naming conventions are a little counterintuitive). This was huge, as it moved the club from non-league — basically semi-professional — into the EFL, where there was more money and stability. Crucially, it meant the actors didn’t have to contemplate another season where they dramatically overspent at a non-league club for the purposes of a television show. It also meant that Season 2 of Welcome to Wrexham had some Return of the Jedi vibes, the triumphant payoff after previous disasters, except with striker Paul Mullin in the Luke Skywalker role.

I guess that wasn’t a particularly short version of the story. Anyway, it brings us mostly up to speed. Wrexham, though, remains a fascinating case study in football management. Could a couple of outsiders buy a semi-famous old club and take it all the way up the pyramid? The Hollywood money and blue-chip sponsorship was a huge advantage when competing against other non-league clubs, but ascension to the EFL means better opposition and, significantly, closer scrutiny of club financials. Simply put, clubs have to spend an amount that is within shouting distance of their revenues. Wrexham is no longer a problem that Reynolds and McIlhenney can solve by selling an extra shirt sponsorship or filming another whiskey commercial.

But the actors, and those they have brought in to help them do this thing, have yet to see their balloon go pop.

Wrexham hasn’t romped through League Two like they did last year in the National League, but coming into Easter weekend they were in third place, holding on to the last of the spots that would bring automatic promotion to League One. The players that are familiar to viewers of Welcome to Wrexham — Mullin, Elliot Lee, Ollie Palmer — are still there, but have been supplemented by more players with experience at bigger clubs, like Jack Marriott and Steven Fletcher. Fletcher, a heavily inked, man-bun wearing fellow who looks like he could step right into the cast of a Guy Ritchie film, brings to mind the Wrexham pub owner’s description of Ollie Palmer in Welcome of Wrexham as “a big, horrible man.” He meant it as a compliment. The team’s uncertainty in goal, long a subplot of the television series, has been addressed by bringing in Arthur Okonkwo, a 23-year-old loanee from Premier League club Arsenal.

And so, on Good Friday, Wrexham welcomed League Two leaders Mansfield Town to the storied old Racecourse Ground, now known as the Stok Cae Ras thanks to a lucrative sponsorship with Stok Cold Coffee Brew, whatever that is. It’s a bit surreal watching Wrexham play an actual competitive game in real time, like a scripted television show that has come to life. There are the fans singing along to the “It’s Always Sunny in Wrexham” song that is the unofficial anthem of the series, doing the “Wrex-HAM” chant with their hands in the air, and serenading Super Paul Mullin when the star forward breaks the deadlock, sweeping in a low cross.

Mullin would score again, smashing a penalty kick into the top netting, to make it 2-0, followed with his trademark of making an “A” with his fingers for his son, Alfie, who is autistic. It’s like the whole thing is scripted, but it’s not.

The eventual win allows Wrexham to draw level with Mansfield Town, but Stockport County wins later in the day to jump both of them and go to the top of the table. Stockport won again on Easter Monday to go four points clear, with Mansfield Town’s Monday fixture postponed due to a waterlogged pitch. Such is life in League Two. Wrexham travels to Doncaster on Tuesday night to try to close the gap to Stockport — and stretch the one to MK Dons in fourth place, two points back of Wrexham. Again, the top three teams are automatically promoted to League One. (There’s a playoff for a fourth promotion place.)

It promises to be a wild conclusion, with just six games left in Wrexham’s league season, the last of them a Stockport visit to the Racecourse. It could end up being a match for the League Two title. And, no doubt, some pretty good television.