WREXHAM, Wales -- It was like asking the tide to stop rolling in.
"Please stay off the pitch!" the Wrexham stadium announcer pleaded, as hundreds became thousands and the Racecourse Ground playing surface was swamped in seconds by supporters waving scarves and lighting flares. They had waited 15 years for this; of course they were going on the pitch.
Next door at William Aston Hall, which shares a car park with Wrexham's stadium, the sold-out signs were up for "The Magic of Motown," an event billed as the celebration of the sound of a generation with one very special night. However the real celebration was on the football pitch as Wrexham AFC, owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, beat Boreham Wood 3-1 to clinch promotion from the National League to the English Football League (EFL). And it was signed, sealed and delivered by two stunning goals from striker Paul Mullin.
"I would like to say that Paul Mullin is one the greatest footballers in the world," McElhenney said after the game, perhaps somewhat carried away by the occasion.
Mullin's two goals took his tally for the season to 47 in all competitions -- just one fewer than Manchester City's Erling Haaland, but Wrexham have been playing in English football's fifth tier rather than the Premier League and Champions League. Still, as the highest-paid player in the National League and earning a reported £5,000 a week (Haaland earns £500,000 a week at City), Mullin has done what he was signed to do -- secure promotion to the EFL.
"I'm not sure I can process what happened tonight," said "Deadpool" star Reynolds. "I am still a little speechless. People ask 'Why Wrexham?' This is why Wrexham: this happening, right now, is why."
Wrexham's story is an incredible one, especially given that they have been sprinkled with celebrity stardust since Reynolds and McElhenney bought the clubs from a supporters' trust in 2021. Prior to that, the club had tried and failed to reclaim their place in the EFL, which they lost back in 2008. Poignantly, perhaps, promotion was achieved 15 years to the day since a 2-0 EFL League Two defeat to Hereford consigned them to relegation.
Much has changed since the 2007-08 season. Manchester United ended that campaign as Champions League winners, while Manchester City were facing financial meltdown because of their owner at the time, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, having £800 million of his assets frozen. Three months later, City became the richest club in the world following Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan's takeover and they have never looked back.
Wrexham, meanwhile, began their 15-year exile from the EFL with a game against Stevenage. But that exile is now over following Saturday's nerve-shredding win.
When Boreham Wood took the lead after 44 seconds with a goal from Lee Ndlovu, the Racecourse Ground fell silent. Were Phil Parkinson's team going to blow it?
Wrexham are all Hollywood now, though, and every script needs a hero to overcome adversity. Mullin was the superhero in red -- the watching "Ant-Man" star, Paul Rudd, would have been impressed -- by scoring his two second-half goals to win the game following Elliot Lee's first-half equaliser. Once Mullin's second went in, on 71 minutes, the home fans could enjoy the remainder of the game and soak up the feeling of finally getting back to the EFL.
"I think we can hear what it means to the town," McElhenney said. "It's a time of celebration, and to be welcomed into their community and be welcomed to this, it is the honour of my life."
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How far can Wrexham go after being promoted?
On the day of Wrexham's dramatic 3-2 home win against Notts County -- a win secured by goalkeeper Ben Foster's penalty save six minutes into stoppage time -- the front page of the local newspaper, the Wrexham Leader, offered a sobering flip side to the excitement and positivity generated by the football team.
"PEOPLE PULLING OWN TEETH DUE TO NO DENTISTS" was the grim headline, accompanied by a story that detailed how a lack of investment in health care in the area had led to some locals extracting their own teeth because of an inability to register with a dentist. According to the story, only four of 57 dentists contracted to the National Health Service (NHS) in the area were prepared to take on new patients.
When McElhenney bought Wrexham with Reynolds in 2021, the actor had considered a number of different clubs throughout Europe in which to invest, but he chose Wrexham because of what he saw as similarities between the city and his hometown of Philadelphia.
"I grew up in South Philadelphia," McElhenney said in the opening episode of "Welcome to Wrexham." "The Philadelphia that I know and the Philadelphia as it identifies itself are people who work really hard for everything that they have.
"One of the things that was really attractive about Wrexham is, even though I've never been there, the town reminds me of Philadelphia. It's a working-class town. It's a blue-collar town that has had its ups and downs, and they haven't had all the opportunities that a lot of other people have had. I feel like I know these people. I grew up with those people. I am one of those people."
Wrexham is still enduring those tough times as an old mining town -- 38 pits in the North Wales coalfield once employed 18,000 people, with the last one, in the Wrexham County Borough village of Rhostyllen, closing in 1986 -- and striving for a better future. In 2020, a government survey found that 22% of under-16s in Wrexham were living in poverty, and the city is only just emerging from a drug crisis that saw it and surrounding areas dubbed the "spice capital of North Wales" because of the so-called "zombie drug."
In January this year, Wrexham was overlooked by the UK government's Levelling Up Fund -- a 2019 Conservative Party election pledge to help regenerate deprived areas -- and missed out on a share of a £2.1 billion UK-wide fund set aside for regeneration projects, a snub described as "absolutely disgraceful" by local politician Ryan O'Gorman.
Wrexham's struggles underline just why the football club's resurgence means so much, prompting a local band, The Declan Swans, to write "Always Sunny in Wrexham" as a tribute to the Hollywood owners. The song references the city's drug problems as a "zombie apocalypse," but the chorus highlights the debt of gratitude to McElhenney and Reynolds with the lines:
A famous old stadium crumbling down / No-one's invested so much as a penny
Bring on the Deadpool and Rob McElhеnney
