With due apologies to Charles Dickens, it really was the worst and best of times for Wrexham.
Thirteen years ago this week, Wrexham were staring into the abyss. Hit with an ultimatum to find a £250,000 bond in two days or be booted out of the Conference League, the club’s then-owners could rustle up £150,000 but no more.
With just 24 hours left to plug such a sizeable shortfall, the end of professional football in north Wales seemed on the cards. That was the worst of times.
“It was only a few weeks after Rushden & Diamonds had been expelled from the Conference over financial issues,” recalls lifelong fan Rob Clarke. Clarke’s SOS to fellow supporters on social media proved instrumental in helping save the club from extinction. “We knew the league was serious.”
Wrexham’s perilous financial position lay behind the Conference’s demand. They needed not only the cash bond but also for Wrexham to pay all the club’s creditors, produce a signed lease for the Racecourse Ground and submit a business plan.
There was a desire to protect the interests of the fifth tier’s other clubs if Wrexham failed to fulfil their fixtures. This was the explanation for the incredibly tight deadline, the new season being just days away.
Clarke (second right) ahead of a Wrexham game (Rob Clarke)
With three of those four demands quickly met, that left the cash bond. Owners Geoff Moss and Ian Roberts offered £150,000, but the league said no. The full sum had to be paid.
Rob Taylor, who runs the online fans forum Red Passion, tipped Clarke off about the situation. “He was at a friendly but — and this says a lot about internet signals in 2011 — couldn’t post on the site,” adds Clarke, the owner of Mad4Movies and a breakout star from the Welcome to Wrexham documentary.
“So, he asked me to get the word out about the £100,000 and how our club was about to disappear. I put out an appeal for fans to meet at The Turf (pub), to see if anything could be done.
“We got there and the place was packed. We had the meeting around the back. There were a few of us — lads like Rich Ulrich, Steve Matthias, Nick Lloyd-Evans, Jamie Davies, Matt Jones and Rob from Red Passion — all saying, ‘I’m not great in front of a crowd, I don’t really want to be the one who speaks’.
“But I decided to give it a go. I stood up and said, ‘We’re going to lose the club here, what are we going to do?’ A couple suggested we could raise the money. I’m thinking, ‘£100,000 is a lot of money in such a short space of time’.
“The bottom line, though, was if we didn’t do it, we were dead.”
Even allowing for how supporters had fought tirelessly for their club during the reign of controversial owner Alex Hamilton — later banned from being a company director for seven years after a judge found him not to have acted in Wrexham’s best interests when trying to sell the Racecourse for development — the response left even long-serving club staff, including club secretary Geraint Parry, stunned.
This was the best of times, in terms of how supporters rallied around. Money immediately began pouring in, ranging from fans able to make a five-figure pledge to children donating their pocket money. One supporter even offered the deeds to his house, while another risked a very rocky start to his marriage.
“This one lad put his wedding money in,” says Clarke with a smile as he chats to The Athletic in Wrexham’s Hill Street Social. “I don’t know if his wife ever did find out!”
Football is littered with clubs who were saved with hours to spare. However, unlike the vast majority of those who owe their survival to an individual or consortium arriving in the nick of time and settling debts, fan power ultimately rescued Wrexham.
As club staff broke the news to supporters that the £100,000 target had been reached, some waiting in the car park broke down in tears. All monies were eventually returned as, in time, control passed to the Supporters’ Trust, who ran Wrexham for the next decade before selling to Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
Wrexham fans in 2011, the year the club was saved (Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)
“Those few days were one of the worst moments of my life, but also one of the best,” adds Clarke. “It was horrible to be in that position and almost not believing it was happening but then amazing to pull it off.
“Right at the start, I told my girlfriend Carrie — now my wife — I was going to pay in £1,000 by cheque. She doesn’t like football and was saying, ‘Rob, that’s a lot of money’. I think she thought I was nuts.
“But I told her I could live with losing £1,000 but not losing Wrexham Football Club. Later, after we’d hit the target and everyone was hugging each other in celebration, Carrie saw all this and said to me, ‘I understand now’. She’d seen what it meant to the people of the town.”
As the owner of a DVD shop in Wrexham since 2006, there isn’t much Clarke doesn’t know about films.
When the rumours first started to emerge in 2020 that at least one Hollywood star was allegedly interested in buying Wrexham, he was ideally placed to answer dad Ray’s inevitable questions.
“I got this message saying, ‘It’s Ryan Reynolds who is buying the club’,” he says. “I told my dad but he didn’t have a clue who he was.
“I told him, ‘Think Tom Cruise and he’s as famous as him’. Straight away, Dad replies, ‘What does he want to buy us for?’ I must admit I’d asked myself the same question a few weeks earlier, back when the suggestion in town was Russell Crowe wanted to buy Wrexham.”
Such caution was understandable. Hamilton’s ruinous reign in the early 2000s had almost left the club homeless. Clarke believes decisions taken by later owners still hamper Wrexham.
“I get annoyed every time I walk past the student flats,” he says, referring to the three accommodation blocks that tower over the main stand, having been built on club land sold during Moss’ reign. “Any stadium expansion plans in the future could be seriously affected.”
Three and a half years on from the Hollywood takeover, any initial scepticism has long since melted away. Rival fans may still suggest neither Reynolds nor McElhenney are in it for the long haul, but the locals remain firmly onside.
Reynolds and McElhenney visiting Clarke’s DVD shop (Rob Clarke)
Back-to-back promotions have helped. But perhaps even more telling is how the pair have immersed themselves in the community, supporting various good causes and even lending a helping hand to businesses.
Clarke’s DVD shop, currently located on Queen’s Square but due to move back to the refurbished Butchers Market in October, has been among those to benefit from the interest generated by the takeover. Fans of the documentary have flocked to visit places they’ve seen on TV.
His involvement in the show came via local filmmaker Leighton Cox, who worked closely with producer Milos Balac in identifying possible characters and storylines to feature from the very start.
“It’s weird seeing yourself on screen,” says Clarke, who first watched Wrexham in 1984 at the age of seven. “I was a bit apprehensive before it was first screened but also excited.
“I never thought the show would get as big as it has, especially in America. We get fans of the show coming in the shop all the time. It’s great to chat about Wrexham and see how interested they are in the town.”
After being filmed for the documentary in autumn 2020, he subsequently had a visit from Green Lantern star Reynolds and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-creator McElhenney.
“I got a call from Milos saying Rob and Ryan were in town, and wanted to come and see me,” he adds. “I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. Their security arrived first, closely followed by the guys themselves.
“They were great. Rob was asking me about my first game so I told him how we’d lost to Stockport and he said, ‘Funnily enough, we lost our first game, too (at Maidenhead)’.
Reynolds browsing DVDs in the shop (Rob Clarke)
“Ryan then came in and said he’d never seen so many films in one place. He looked around and said, ‘Which one have you never sold?’ I turned to Rob and said, ‘We better not talk about Green Lantern’. They both laughed. Ryan said not even the producers could sell that one!
“They’d brought some DVDs in with them. A couple of ‘Always Sunny’ and a few of Ryan’s films. On Green Lantern, he wrote, ‘To Rob, apologies in advance’. I loved that.”
Reynolds later surprised Clarke by posting him boxes of signed DVDs after having a clear-out in the U.S. office he shares with his wife Blake Lively. After seeking permission from the Canadian, these were then sold for charity by the shop owner, whose son Charlie has a rare blood disorder. Proceeds went to the Immune Thrombocytopenia (ITP) support association.
“Rob and Ryan are nice fellas,” he adds. “They’re shrewd businessmen, too. They wouldn’t have got involved with Wrexham if they were not going to make money. I’m not naive.
“They’ve built the brand up brilliantly but we’re benefiting as a club and a town, too. Just look at the good times we’ve had these past couple of years. We’re riding on the coattails of this and everyone wins.”
(Top photos: Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic and Rob Clarke)
