- Wrexham beat Charlton 3-0 on Saturday to seal second place in League One
- The Welsh side, who compete in England, have earned three straight promotions
- LISTEN NOW: It’s All Kicking Off! Why Bruno Fernandes is the Premier League Player of the Season
It’s three and a half years since Ryan Reynolds fielded media questions in a stand at Wrexham’s ground, including the seemingly preposterous notion that the club might play in the Premier League on his watch.
‘We’d be lying if the dream wasn’t the Premier League,’ he replied. ‘We want to set up a structure… unless there is a meteor and then we are f****d.’ The club had just lost 3-2 at Maidenhead at the time and drew with Torquay the following day.
That prospect moved a significant step closer to extraordinary reality yesterday as the club became the first in football history to win promotion from the non-league to the second tier in three consecutive seasons.
There was no little pressure against Charlton Athletic, whose 4-0 victory at Wycombe last week had opened this door for Wrexham, with the visiting side’s manager Nathan Jones providing a little documentary gold by declaring that Wrexham were ‘a circus.’ The ironic home chants of ‘football in a circus’ were immediate and within 20 minutes, the dream of football at Leicester, Southampton and Norwich a genuine prospect, with two Wrexham goals inside three minutes.
The priceless second paid Wrexham a dividend for their £592,000 mid-winter record investment in striker Sam Smith, on a salary of £12,000 a week. Smith has not set the club alight but his swivel to meet and volley Matty James’ dinked ball was more than enough. It doubled the lead established by Ollie Rathbone, the previous record buy, at £375,000 from Rotherham last summer, who’d seized Matty James’ ball after a short corner and scored from the edge of the box.
Smith confirmed his value – and promotion – ten minutes from time, meeting home-grown Max Cleworth’s cross to head home the third.
Ryan Reynolds pictured kissing wife Blake Lively during Wrexham’s victory over Charlton
The Hollywood couple had flown to the UK to celebrate Wrexham’s third straight promotion
Rob McElhenney (left), who became a Wrexham co-owner in 2021, was at Saturday’s game too
Briefly, as Wrexham held their lead in the second half, there was a reprise of the Paul Mullin chant which was the soundtrack to his two superb seasons as they fought for and won promotion from the National League. Mullin, who hasn’t featured in a squad since January 4, cut a solitary figure, gazing around the ground from the non-playing staff seats, 15 minutes before kick-off. He’s rapidly become history amid a climb surpassing Swansea and Wimbledon’s three promotions in four seasons. The post-match pitch invasion put paid to a send-off for him.
Reynolds and Rob McElhenney hugged each other manically when the goals flew in. So much has been contingent on this promotion: more big-ticket US sponsors to fund the squad overhaul and infrastructure improvements, and possibly the fifth series of the Hollywood documentary series, of which there has been as yet no confirmation.
The owners were advised well when recruiting Phil Parkinson as their manager. For him, this is a sixth promotion over two decades with four different clubs. Charlton’s Jones, meanwhile, is left to navigate the play-offs.
The sense of a historic day in the making built up in Wrexham city centre during the afternoon, as those packed into the pubs showing Wycombe’s lunchtime game witnessed the latest instalment in the rival team’s collapse. The Hill St Social bar erupted to the sounds of ‘back-to-back-to-back’ – shorthand for the three successive promotions – at a little before 2.15, when Orient scored, meaning a win would send Wrexham up. The symmetries were unmistakable for those with longer memories. It was on the equivalent weekend of the 1977/78 season that a 7-1 win at home to Rotherham United last sealed promotion to the second tier.
The theoretical possibility of a fourth promotion will make the club a big Championship story, though merely surviving at that level looks some challenge. A wholesale rebuild of an ageing squad will be needed. All for another day. As Wrexham climbed again, Welsh rivals Cardiff City dropped to League One. All barely believable for a club which bumped along the lower reaches for so long.
Former Manchester United youth player Sam Smith scored two goals for Wrexham on Saturday
Striker Smith’s first goal of Saturday’s game came courtesy of a flying volley in the 18th minute
