Wrexham 3-3 Sheffield United: Non-League side come agonisingly close to a famous FA Cup shock as stoppage-time equaliser forces a replay – with owner Ryan Reynolds going through the wringer!

It was grainy footage of a murky January night on this turf that helped persuade Ryan Reynolds to buy into Wrexham, nearly two years ago, and he was given a taste on Sunday night of how it felt to be here on that occasion, beating champions Arsenal in 1992.

There was not the same ending, of course. Football has that way of scrambling the narrative. 

But the cameras trained on Reynolds showed a storyteller comprehending the game’s full gamut of emotions: setback, hope, setback, hope, raging controversy, hope and an opposition equaliser at the death. It’s the hope that kills you, Ryan.

At the end it all, he was on the pitch, embracing club captain Luke Young, posing for pictures with the player’s children and bear-hugging striker Ollie Palmer before marching away across the pitch to catch a plane to New York. 

‘Documentary gold’, is what they call days like this around this place and when the team have recovered, they will probably appreciate that they contributed to another Cup tie for the ages.

The match revealed the talent which Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s resources has brought to a club which had been beginning to look terribly frail. 

There was Tom O’Connor, the excellent Irish midfielder who dropped back to defence when the team lost two members of that structure in the first ten minutes. Anthony Forde, at wing back, driving passes and defending the lines.

There was Paul Mullin, the Liverpudlian striker well known to followers of Reynolds and McElhenney’s documentary series ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ who harried, chased and damaged one of the best defences in the Championship. 

There was a composure in possession which deconstructed the popular image of the non-league giant killing team.

But above all else, there was recovery from Wrexham after an opening delivered straight from hell. If it wasn’t bad enough to concede in 65 seconds – Oliver McBurnie’s near post run towards Tommy Doyle’s corner going unchecked and allowing him to navigate in a header – two key components of the team’s defence had limped off with injuries inside ten minutes.

First Jordan Tunnicliffe, with ankle ligament damage which left him in a local hospital on Sunday night. Then Aaron Hayden, pillar of the rearguard, with a calf problem.

For a time, McBurnie and 19-year-old striker Daniel Jebbison provided a pace and strength that the home side’s repurposed defence could not live with. The home goalkeeper Mark Howard was called on to save them. 

As manager Phil Parkinson said in the aftermath, lesser teams would have collapsed to a 4-0 or 5-0 defeat after a sequence like that. But Mullin is a fearsome presence.

It was a bold move to invest so heavily a player who had only really flourished in one of his seven seasons in football but he has a Championship player’s pace, control and pre-calculation. The strategy was uncomplicated – drive balls beyond the United press for him to chase. It worked.

By the interval, the National League side were becoming a threat and two goals in 11 minutes soon after it took them ahead. 

O’Connor got a head on one of Tozer’s missiles, sending it for substitute James Jones who swivelled to drive the ball home from close range. Young’s corner created chaos in the United defence and the ball dropped for O’Connor to drive home.

The most striking part of that extraordinary period was the noise that a fraction fewer than 10,000 people – minus the Yorkshire contingent – were making in a ground open to the elements at one end.

They sang the anthem ‘Yma o Hyd’ (‘Still here’) by the nationalist Dafydd Iwan, which seems so appropriate. They sang about Wales, about Harlech soldiers and (ironically) about their appreciation of sheep. New territory for a Hollywood film star, who knows more about what a little care and attention can do for bring to a l club.

After the visitors lost a man – Jebbison was dismissed for an off-the ball incident with Tozer, who implied the striker had trodden on him – Mullin seemed to have sealed it. Pressing the ball forward to substitute Sam Dalby, racing into the penalty area undetected to take it back and smash the ball home. 

Palmer had hit the bar and Wrexham launched mass appeals for a handball after a Dalby cross to Palmer took a deflection. Yet just when the credits were supposed to role, another twist. A corner looped over to John Egan who bundled in another equaliser.

Reynolds declared this to be ‘one of the most exciting things I’ve EVER seen.’ Mullin, who sank to the floor with his head in hands at the end, didn’t immediately share the sentiment. 

It was Hollywood drama, even if lacked the ending. A scriptwriter and a film star just couldn’t have made it up.