Ryan Reynolds opens up on 'confounding' Wrexham problems in emotional message to Rob Mac on five-year ownership anniversary

A stunning takeover at the Racecourse Ground was completed in 2021. Ambitious plans were drawn up at that stage, for a then National League club, with documentary cameras being invited along for the ride.

Success has been enjoyed on and off the field, with a record-breaking run of three successive promotions lifting Phil Parkinson’s side into the Championship. Meanwhile, ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ has become an Emmy Award-winning production that opened up a window to the world.

Reynolds and Mac have spent big while chasing the dream, generating extra revenue through big-money commercial deals, and are rightly proud of all that has been achieved over the course of five memorable, and action-packed, years.

Reynolds has said in a social media post, with Mac inviting him on a special journey: “Five years with this guy. We've had our own roller coasters of grief and joy no chemical on earth can reproduce. We've had confounding problems to solve with no previous experience handling.

“But we always stuck together and always felt comfortable saying 'I don't know' - which is the best three words in the English language and the best three words leaders can say. We care about this place so much. Even if I took a minute to truly see it. We didn't save a town or a football club... we shined a light on a sleeping red beast. It's awake. And so are we. Wide awake. Up the Town forever.”

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Reynolds is now fully invested, emotionally and financially, in Wrexham. He has told The Athletic of allowing a surprising sporting venture to take over his life: “I know I’m a football fan and a Wrexham lifer because I’m inconsolable when we lose. 

“I’ve never been as invested in winning and losing before. I have to fly across the Atlantic when still awake and sober (after a match) and try to process that whole loss. That’s a flight, seven hours long, and for some reason it takes 29 hours.

“My kids get frustrated about it. If we are walking down the street, I’ll get asked about Deadpool (by someone) and it’s usually (just) a two or three-second conversation, basically saying, ‘Hi’. If someone talks about Wrexham, I just turn right round and park it against a street pole. My kids are like, ‘Oh no!’”

Mac and Reynolds have sought support throughout their reign at Wrexham, with it important for them to do a job that means so much to so many people as professionally as they can.

Reynolds added: “No one survives in the entertainment business for as long as Rob has — or, certainly as long as I have — if you’re a d*ck to people. We’re aligned because we both came from working-class families who didn’t have much. I had three older brothers, my dad was a cop (in Vancouver), and, as you saw in the first season of Welcome To Wrexham, you really saw where Rob came from. That can sometimes give you a drive, but it can also align your values to a certain extent.

“We both have values that didn’t even need to be identical. Just, at its root, it needed to at least have some sort of understanding that you occasionally get what you need but never what you want, growing up. That seemed to be the norm in Wrexham when we got there for almost everyone. I think everyone felt looked-over in that post-Thatcherism, post-industry (time). I wouldn’t ever call it a dystopia, because there’s always a fire in the belly there. But there was definitely sadness, too.

“Identity is the biggest thing. When you lose your identity, or you feel like you don’t have an identity, it feels like a death in a way. I think the club is symbolic of that. There’s a Wrexham in every state in America. And in every province in Canada. Certainly all over the European Union. There are Wrexhams everywhere.

“You can hate me, you can hate Rob. But you can’t hate that town. I don’t know how you would do that. How can you hate the town of Wrexham? It’s the most beautiful town on earth.”

Wrexham sit sixth in the Championship table at present, which would be good enough to secure a play-off spot and tickets to the Premier League promotion lottery, but a congested second tier table means that they are only five points clear of 15th-placed Swansea with 15 games left to take in.