Wrexham takeover can have bigger impact on women's team than men's

Rosie Hughes is arriving for a shift as a guard at the UK’s largest prison, HMP Berwyn. She flicks open her baton, clips on her radio and fills up the holsters on her gun belt. It is not your typical scene from a football documentary, but is she not your typical prison officer. By the end of the series, she will have scored 90 goals in the space of two seasons for Wrexham’s women’s team.

Hughes’ story, and the fast-changing lives of all the Wrexham players, highlight why Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s injection of cash, energy and publicity into the club can have a far greater impact on their previously amateur women’s team than their men’s.

The progress of their men, well-documented, has been rapid, but for a women’s side used to relatively primitive, grassroots football to soon playing in front of nearly 10,000 people, the potential for change is proportionally far more extensive. Until this summer, Wrexham’s women’s players didn’t get paid. Last year, they won all of their league fixtures to win the northern section of the second tier, and won promotion via the subsequent play-offs, and have since started paying player salaries, turning part-time in the Welsh top flight, with ambitions to grow further.

Their development is charted in ‘Welcome to Wrexham, Season 2’, with the final episode of the series having been added to Disney+ this week. Reynolds, speaking to the film crew and trying to emphasise their one-club philosophy, says: “The number-one goalscorer for Wrexham is not Paul Mullin, it’s not Ollie Palmer, it’s not Elliot Lee, it’s not Sam Dalby.” At which point, McElhenney cuts in and says: “It’s Rosie Hughes.”

Hughes is the top scorer in the Adran Premier, Wales’ top women’s league, where Wrexham sit second in the table in their first campaign after promotion. But it is during their title-winning season last term that the changes in their fortunes are followed by the cameras, as a team typically watched by a couple of hundred people leaning against the metal and wooden railings around a grassroots pitch go on to set a new record attendance for a domestic women’s fixture in Wales of 9,511, when they beat Connah’s Quay 2-1 at the Racecourse Ground. The producers of the documentary could scarcely have wished for a more Hollywood-esque script, as Hughes goes on to score the late winner.

“Going around Wrexham at one mile per hour, looking at all these thousands of people, I was on top of the world. Rob and Ryan joined our bus, it was a moment none of us will ever forget,” says Hughes, on the joint open-top-bus tour with the men’s team that followed.

There are also real life but movie-worthy scripts for youngsters such as Lili Jones, a kitchen porter who used to play for Everton’s academy and has played youth international football for Wales. Her dad, a dedicated Wrexham fan, took his life in April 2021. Jones, a season ticket holder for the men’s team, tells Telegraph Sport: “Rob and Ryan, they are how they come across on TV, there is nothing fake about them.

‘Rob and Ryan have backed us, in a way we never thought we’d get’

“They were like two little kids running around [when we won the league]. People tend to think celebrities put a mask on but Rob and Ryan are two of the most genuine, hard-working people you’ll meet.”

Jones jokes the documentary has made her so famous that “a little girl asked me the other week if I’d sign her Gregg’s packet” but adds: “They way Rob and Ryan have backed us as a women’s side, it’s something we never thought we’d get, and they didn’t have to do it, but they genuinely back us from a place of love, in everything they do.

“We have had some pretty tough pitches to play on, even some uphill pitches – you know when you’re going to take a corner and the ball is rolling back at you, that’s quite nuts. But then playing on a carpet like the Racecourse is something all the girls are very grateful for. Rob came to the Llandudno game, saw the conditions and said straight away ‘we’re striving for better’ from there.”

All of the women’s team’s matches are now streamed live online, while they now have commercial deals.

McElhenney said: “I don’t think it’s just an ethical responsibility. I think there is a massive business to be created there.”

The owners’ passion for the women’s team comes across when the cameras are watching, but those at the heart of the setup say it’s certainly not just for show. Gemma Owen, head of women’s football operations at Wrexham, told Telegraph Sport: “From the very beginning I got the feeling they were very genuine. They’ve done exactly what they said they would do.”

Owen, who was born and bred in Wrexham and oversees everything from the youth girls teams to the senior women’s side, says their recent move to part-time status is inspiring other rival teams too.

“We’ve noticed since we’ve done that, three other clubs have made the same step as us after we have made that step. I think it’s only been a positive thing,” she added. “We’ve not just entered this league to make any numbers up, parade around and say ‘here we are, we’re Wrexham, look at us’. We’re very serious about what we’re doing. We are here to compete at the top.”