Welcome to Wrexham — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Background

In September 2020, American actor Rob McElhenney and Canadian-American actor Ryan Reynolds announced their intention to buy Wrexham A.F.C., a Welsh professional association football club based in the Racecourse Ground in Wrexham, North East Wales in the United Kingdom. The company RR McReynolds was set up by November 2020, and the deal was completed in February 2021. As of the purchase, Wrexham A.F.C. played in the National League, the fifth tier of the English football league system, below the Premier League and the three tiers of the English Football League.

At the time, the team was described to be "struggling": Management before 2011 was described to have "mismanaged the club to the point of near collapse", with fans "starting to fall out of love with it". The club was served with a winding-up order in 2011. Following the suspension of the 2019–20 National League in March 2020 after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, Wrexham A.F.C. was said to have furloughed staff and players, and the club was experiencing a "threat to the[ir] continued existence". Prior to the pair's purchase, Wrexham A.F.C. was owned by the Wrexham Supporter's Trust, a fan-operated company, since 2011. The trust approved McElhenney and Reynolds' £2 million takeover by 98.6%. Following the purchase, Wrexham A.F.C.'s Twitter account posted a skit with McElhenney and Reynolds performing a parody advert for Ifor Williams Trailers, then the only sponsor for Wrexham A.F.C. McElhenney and Reynolds attended their first ever game since becoming the club's new owners at Maidenhead, a 3–2 defeat in October 2021.

The series is said to be inspired by Sunderland 'Til I Die, which prompted McElhenney to be interested in buying an association football club, as well as the influence of Humphrey Ker, who was also interested in purchasing a club. Ker was said to have been always watching association football in the writer's room of McElhenney's show Mythic Quest, causing McElhenney to become interested as well, particularly "the idea of promotion and demotion", which McElhenney said was "incredible to me". McElhenney also joked that he only had "TV money" and needed "superhero, movie star money". Ker described himself as "Rob and Ryan's representative" to the club as the pair's inside operations person. The inspiration for the documentary series came from McElhenney's viewing of Chef's Table, Last Chance U and Cheer, and his subsequent realization that all of those were produced by Boardwalk Pictures, who he approached to partner with.

Synopsis

The series is based on the Hollywood pair's attempts to revive the third-oldest professional association football team in the world, founded in 1864, and how the team has performed under the pair's ownership. The pair had no prior experience in managing a sports team. The series also highlights the pair's hopes of improving the team and bringing positive change to the local Wrexham community. The style of the series is irreverent and from time to time it is openly critical of the two Co-Chairmen and their team, presenting them struggling with the Welsh language, and making mistakes.

During and since the takeover, Wrexham rose in the rankings of the National League. In the 2019–20 National League (prior to any talk of a takeover), Wrexham A.F.C. were 20th, and by the 2020–21 season, Wrexham rose to eighth place. In the 2021–22 season, the first full season under the new ownership, and the focus of the first season of the TV show, Wrexham finished in 2nd. However, despite a successful season, they missed out on promotion to the fourth-tier EFL League Two after being knocked out in the semi-finals of the promotion play-off and remained in the fifth-tier National League for the 2022–23 season.

In the second season of the series, the team successfully secures promotion to the EFL League Two during the 2022–23 season and in the third season of the show, filmed during the 2023–24 season, they win a back-to-back promotion to EFL League One. In the fourth season, based on the 2024-25 season, the team wins promotion to the EFL Championship.

In addition to following the highs and lows of the Wrexham men's team, the series follows fans of the club and characters from the City of Wrexham. It includes the people working behind the scenes for the club, and from time to time follows the personal lives of some of the players. Emotive issues such as autism, bereavement, divorce, mental health, football hooliganism, cancer, stillbirth, disability and injuries ending players' careers are featured through following the lives of different individuals involved with the club. The series explains basic football terms and rules for a US audience, along with occasional Welsh words and British phrases. From the second season, the women's team is also featured.

Cast

Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, as the two Wrexham A.F.C. co-owners & chairmans, as well as the executive producers of the show

Humphrey Ker as Wrexham A.F.C. executive director and executive producer

Rob Lainton, Christian Dibble, Luke Young, Jordan Davies, Paul Mullin, Aaron Hayden, Ollie Palmer, Ben Tozer, Elliot Lee, Mark Howard, Jacob Mendy, Anthony Forde, Ben Foster, James McClean, Steven Fletcher, Arthur Okonkwo, Max Cleworth, Ollie Rathbone, Sam Smith, Danny Ward, Nathan Broadhead, Lewis O'Brien, Josh Windass, and Kieffer Moore, as men's team players

Rob Clarke, Shaun Winter, Annette Gardner, Sam Halton, Julie Birrell, Jacqui Valentine, Arthur Massey, Millie Tipping, Oliver Stephen, and Archie White, as Wrexham A.F.C. supporters

Bob McElhenney as father of Rob McElhenney (seasons 1–2 and 5)

Bryn Law as a football commentator and Wrexham A.F.C. fan (seasons 1–2 and 5)

Shaun Harvey as Wrexham A.F.C. advisor to the board

Wayne Jones as the owner of The Turf pub at the corner of the Racecourse Ground stadium where Wrexham A.F.C. was founded in 1864

Spencer Harris as former Wrexham A.F.C. director (season 1)

Phil Parkinson as Wrexham A.F.C. manager

Steve Parkin as Wrexham A.F.C. assistant manager

Fleur Robinson (seasons 1–2) and Michael Williamson (season 4–present) as Wrexham A.F.C. chief executives

Kerry Evans as Wrexham A.F.C. disability liaison officer (seasons 1–3)

Mark Griffiths as Wrexham A.F.C. match commentator since 1988

Paul Chaloner as Wrexham A.F.C. head groundsman (seasons 1–2 and 5)

Michael Hett and Mark Jones as The Declan Swans band members

Kevin Mulholland as Wrexham A.F.C. head of medical & sports science and head of performance & medicine

Neil Roberts (father of Mia Roberts; seasons 2–3) and Mickey Thomas (seasons 2 and 5) as former men's team players

Aidan Davison as Wrexham A.F.C. goalkeeping coach (seasons 2 and 5)

Macaulay Langstaff as Notts County F.C. player (seasons 2–3)

Rosie Hughes, Lili Jones, Mia Roberts, Del Morgan, Kim Dutton, and Phoebe Davies, as women's team players

Gemma Owen as Wrexham A.F.C. head of women's football operations (season 2–present)

Steve Dale (seasons 2–4) and Jenny Sugarman (season 5) as women's team managers

Chris Johnson as Wrexham A.F.C. head of recruitment (season 3)

Katrina Jones as Wrexham A.F.C. caretaker (season 5)

Season 1

The all-access "fly on the wall" docuseries was first announced by McElhenney and Reynolds on May 18, 2021. Later that month, an announcement trailer for the series was released onto Reynolds' YouTube channel, titled "Welcome to Wrexham". The roughly two-minute parody sketch comedy involves McElhenney and Reynolds announcing the docuseries, as well as former BBC News and S4C journalist Maxine Hughes, who acts as a "pretty disgruntled" Welsh language translator for the pair, but adds some "creative" translations to the pair's words.

In December 2021, FX released a video promo for the series, titled "It's Never Sunny in Wrexham". The short 30-second clip involved lookalikes of the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia cast, including a Danny DeVito lookalike, set inside the Turf Hotel located next to Wrexham A.F.C's Racecourse Ground. In the clip, the lookalike cast looks confusingly at a television screen showing the true cast of the American series starring McElhenney, staring back from their Philadelphia Irish bar. The clip also includes the two owners. The scenes involving the lookalike cast and the two owners were filmed in October 2021 as the two owners visited Wrexham. When the lookalike of Danny DeVito visited Wrexham, he was confused for the real actor. Describing the series, Nick Grad, FX Entertainment's original programming president said "Rob and Ryan will take fans inside the sport as never before, pairing their genuine love for the game with the welcome challenge of building on the heritage of this club".

On July 20, 2022, the official trailer for the program was released. The series' official synopsis read "From Hollywood to Wales, from the pitch to the locker room, the front office to the pub, Welcome to Wrexham will track Rob and Ryan's crash course in football club ownership and the inextricably connected fates of a team and a town counting on two actors to bring some serious hope and change to a community that could use it".

The Walt Disney Company, which owns FX as well as the sports network ESPN, moved three FA Cup matches involving Wrexham to networks ESPN2 and ESPNews to help promote the series.

Welcome to Wrexham

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Welcome to Wrexham

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