SPECIAL: The Hollywood Fairytale of Wrexham Football Club
The Game
The Times
3.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2023
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When two actors decided to buy non-league football club Wrexham AFC, they brought the cameras with them to document every moment. With the Hollywood lights came a large injection of cash and mass media interest, but what has it meant for the club, the community - and for football more widely?
Guest: Gregor Robertson, former professional footballer and columnist, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Clips: Welcome to Wrexham/FX, Sky News, Wrexham AFC, Beanyman Sports2, The Emirates FA Cup, BBC Sport, Times Radio, Deadpool/20th Century Fox/Marvel Entertainment, CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, ABC Good Morning America, talkSPORT, ESPN.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I don't really follow football, but even I remember the moment the news broke. |
| 0:06.2 | Back in the autumn of 2020, it spread like wildfire across social media, and it was so |
| 0:14.5 | unlikely that everyone seemed to be talking about it. Two huge screen stars were buying a small |
| 0:23.4 | town football club in Wales. This was either an acute form of lockdown madness or the start of a |
| 0:33.9 | Hollywood film. I've got with me Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny, the new owners of Rexham AFC. |
| 0:44.6 | What was the connection between you and Rexham football club? We had no direct connection. |
| 0:49.0 | It was just a feeling. What made my dad thought was because Rexham's red and Deadpool's red. |
| 0:55.3 | That's the real reason, sorry. |
| 1:03.2 | In the two years that have followed, the new owners have begun to turn around the fortunes of their |
| 1:09.6 | football team, but also of the rest of Rexham. Who would have thought Ryan Reynolds would be wanting |
| 1:16.4 | to come to Little Old Rexham? It makes people proud to be from Rexham again and it puts us back on |
| 1:21.0 | the map. It's not just the locals who flock to matches now to see a sprinkling of stardust in the |
| 1:28.9 | stands. Suddenly America is tuning in thanks to a rousing docuseries. Our new show on FX is called |
| 1:38.4 | Welcome to Rexham, a docuseries centered in Rexham, a working class town in North Wales in the |
| 1:43.6 | United Kingdom. And tonight will be no different as the cameras turn to the action on the pitch |
| 1:53.6 | to see if Rexham can pull off a major upset in the FA Cup. We're not going into the game to |
| 2:00.7 | sit back and soak up pressure, you know, we're going to have a real go at them and that's what |
| 2:05.8 | Cup football is all about. We're looking to give Chef United as many problems as we can. |
| 2:16.4 | Can they pull it off? What's happened in the two years since Tinseltown rolled into a Welsh |
| 2:23.0 | football club and will Rexham ever be the same again? You're listening to stories of our times |
| 2:31.2 | from the Times and the Sunday Times. I'm Manvin Rana. Today the Hollywood fairy tale of Rexham |
| 2:38.4 | Football Club. |
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