The sound of a JCB tearing up the concrete steps of Wrexham’s old Kop terrace forms the backdrop to manager Phil Parkinson sitting in the stadium’s community classroom to discuss his hopes of a giant-killing this weekend.
The bold architecture of the new stand, which will rise on the demolition site, is an emblem of the National League club’s evolution in the two years since Hollywood stars Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds took over. It’s not been smooth in every sense.
The town’s hopes of Government levelling-up funding for a major development project, of which the stadium plans were a part, were dashed two weeks ago, despite then-Efficiency Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg being chauffeur-driven up to inspect the proposals last summer at a cost of more than £1,300. But that won’t stop it being built.
It is a busy week with Wrexham preparing to face second tier Sheffield United in the FA Cup
Co-chairmen Ryan Reynolds (left) and Rob McElhenney (right) have transformed the club
Days like this certainly help. McElhenney and Reynolds’ star quality, and their hugely-acclaimed documentary series ‘Welcome to Wrexham‘, has brought a raft of blue chip sponsors, including TikTok and Expedia, and help ed fund the ambitious signings from League One to drive a promotion push. But the £105,000 for reaching the FA Cup fourth round is significant, given that the National League pays out only £90,000 to the teams who compete in the division.
It’s also a moment for Parkinson to step back briefly from the white heat of that division, in which Wrexham — who went top with a 3-0 win at Gateshead last Tuesday — are hot favourites for promotion and arrive to full houses wherever they go. If the solitary automatic promotion spot were not enough to contend with, episode 11 of the documentary series — entitled Sack the Gaffer — sees McElhenney and Reynolds debating his future with their executives.
Parkinson was philosophical about that film-making during an off-camera discussion in a corner of the media room on Friday, preferring to reflect on what, from his perspective, real pressure is. ‘Pressure is when you’re at Bolton Wanderers and haven’t been paid for five months and you are trying to motivate the team to play in the Championship,’ he says of his three-year spell there.
Wrexham kit man Iwan Pugh-Jones spends hours making certain all the team kits are clean
The stadium’s plans were part of the town’s hopes government levelling-up funding – which were dashed two weeks ago
It will be 10 years next month since he managed Bradford City to the League Cup final and eight since he saw them to a 4-2 FA Cup fourth round win at Chelsea, which had Jose Mourinho going into the Bradford dressing-room offering congratulations at the end.
‘Management is about taking the experiences with you, good and bad — and there are certainly some very good ones — and replicating it,’ said Parkinson.
The squad he has built means there is a contest ahead, something more akin to Championship v League One, judging by Wrexham’s third round win at Coventry, where they led 4-1 before the home side pulled two goals back.
The bold architecture of the Racecourse’s new stand is a sign of the ambition of the owners
Americans Tanner and Paulina Weeks (pictured) visited to buy some Wrexham merchandise
McElhenney and Reynolds installed Shaun Harvey, the former Football League and Leeds United chief executive, to help them understand the challenges and evade the pitfalls of ownership. He has encouraged them to be bold in the transfer market because of the far greater financial struggle that non-League life entails. In football terms, Sunday’s televised match is perhaps the most public test of what the ownership has brought in the past two years.
In a broader sense, huge audiences already know. It’s impossible to overstate the global profile — particularly in the US — that the documentary series has brought. The US papers needed to establish a few basic points. ‘It’s pronounced “Rek-sm” with a silent W’ the LA Times informed its readers in one of the hundreds of reviews of the series. And the media requests to see the club and speak to Parkinson include the Philadelphia Inquirer, here for the Boxing Day match against Solihull, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, currently planning their own trip.
Hundreds of American, Canadian and Australian fans are making this a tourist spot — visiting The Turf pub, which is a key setting in the documentary and asking if they can see other locations filmed in the stadium. Popular spots include the dressing-room where Parkinson delivered several expletive half-time team talks. It’s now the away dressing-room but fans of the show don’t seem to mind. Plus the little kitchen where groundsman Paul Chaloner taught his apprentice Harry Jones how to fry eggs.
It’s not clear whether McElhenney and Reynolds will be at Wrexham on Sunday, though there will certainly be engagement from them. In an interview on Friday with ESPN, who have broadcast the team’s Cup run, Reynolds said his fifth-tier side winning a third-round tie had affected the way people approach him in New York.
‘They’re not stopping me to talk about Deadpool or any other [movie] project,’ he said. ‘They’re stopping me on the street to talk about Wrexham. I got so many people fist-bumping me saying, “Congrats on the Coventry game.” That was wild to see.’
Phil Parkinson’s Wrexham are hot favourites to win promotion from the National League