Focussing On the Wrong People?

This post is not intended to be churlish, although no doubt some will interpret it as so.

On the weekend with much fanfare AFC Wrexham defeated Boreham Wood 3-1 and secured promotion back to the Football League after an absence of 15 years. Congratulations to all concerned.

In English football there can be no greater fear than dropping out of the League, some fans never get to experience such a nerve-jangling time, but for those who have witnessed their team slip into that dangerous zone, will tell you that never have they become more proficient at maths and probability, before they are faced with reality, they stay up or they drop, and if they drop as Wrexham has shown it can take a long time to get back.

What has been disappointing, and this is not necessarily the fault of anyone at the club or the owners but nearly every story published the day after the team secured promotion with a record amount of points, was about their high profile American owners. It was not about the players and the squad who all contributed to that success. It was not about the coach Phil Parkinson and his backroom staff. Almost every story was about the owners.

This is an incredibly sad day for football and an equally sad day for sports journalism.

Since when are the owners more important than the players, the club or the competition?

This day has been coming for a very long time as private owners sought the limelight to boost their own egos and business interests through football.

How many business people are truly invested in football for the game? Why is there still talk of a super League in Europe? It should be obvious. The clubs that are in these discussions are owned by people from outside those countries. They have no connection with the history of the clubs and leagues that they play in, or the rivalries that have grown up over the past century. All they want is their team to be playing the best teams week in week out in what they perceive as the biggest and best competition. Just like in business they only want to deal with the fellow high flyers.

There have of course been many owners who have ploughed their money into a club but remained in the background apart from when they decide it is time to move on a coach. Which ultimately they have every right to do. They pay the bills, they can employ who they like. Some have enough knowledge in these situations to make an informed decision, some don’t, and some listen to people they really shouldn’t.

Just as an owner can sack a coach some believe that they can get involved with the signing of players because they own the club. However, historically this rarely works out well.

To be fair to Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. they did not court this recent attention; although some would argue that their television series which was conceived prior to them buying the club was always going to result in them being in the limelight. As this was happening Rob McElhenney did actually attempt to turn the attention on the players via Twitter. As they say actions speak louder than words, therefore one can’t help feeling that this was a moment for the players and coaches, and it would have been an appropriate time for the owners to fade into the background. However, with a media more interested in the famous duo than the football, that was always going to be hard.

The pair completed their takeover of Wrexham in February 2021. The FX docu-series titled “Welcome to Wrexham,” chronicled their purchase of the club and has followed the club’s transformation since then. So the documentary came prior to the takeover. Publicity for the series and the club has no doubt been helped by the crop of celebrity friends turning up at games throughout the year. Many asking what this had to do with football and even whether these individuals had a clue what it was all about?

Many opposition clubs, were accused of being jealous, because of their pushback against the series cameras intruding on a match day. Some have said that regrettably on a match day those cameras took precedence over everything. No doubt that was why the owners had to be in the limelight, after all this is a Hollywood story even if it has been made in Wrexham.

What will be interesting to watch is how many of Wrexham’s new League Two opponents in 2023/24 allow their television cameras access to all areas. This is a very different league to the one that Wrexham have finally emerged from, as their fans will be well aware. Many will not care, as they are back in the League after 15 years and should their Hollywood heroes ride off into the sunset as their television publicity vehicle stalls, it will be a case of ‘thanks and so long.’

The media attention and hype that we have witnessed since the final whistle has been lazy in terms of opting for an easy story. It has been over the top, and some would say disrespectful to many of the other teams battling to get out of the National League, and earn that one spot in the fourth tier of English professional football.

To say that this has been ‘a fairytale’ for the club is also stretching the truth. Yes, Wrexham as a community was in a difficult place. Yes, the chances of two Hollywood stars buying their non-league football team was unlikely, and yes they have injected new life, pride and belief into the town and the club. They also injected new money and brought in new management and players that the club would not have been able to afford previously. Suddenly they were in a position most of their opposition would have loved to be in. A TV series, two Hollywood stars keeping the club in the news. However, all of the things that they brought to this Welsh town meant that the level expectation increased dramatically.

That is where the manager and the players deserve the credit, because they had to live with that expectation, perform and get results. They delivered, and the fans will hopefully remember their names for many years to come long after Mr Reynolds and Mr McElhenney have moved onto their next project that also helps keep them in the news and relevant. For unlike Hollywood where the stars steal all the glory in sport it will always be the players. Those who make up a team that achieves success are the ones immortalised, whose names fans will recite for years to come.

What a shame that the media lost sight of that.