Wrexham AFC of actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have been promoted again and will play in English League One

He Wrexham AFCthe welsh football club achieved its second consecutive promotion under the ownership of lHollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenneyand had access to League One, equivalent to the Third Division in England. The party broke out after a defeat 6 to 0 against Forest Green. Goals were scored by Elliot Lee, Paul Mullin, Ryan Inniss, Ryan Barnett and Jack Marriott. With this victory, Wrexham secured a place in a higher tier of English football for the first time since the 2004/2005 season.

The modest Welsh club, the third oldest professional club on the planet, is owned by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Recommended by the former English footballer David Beckhamthe Canadian Reynolds, protagonist of the films of the saga Dead Pooland the American McElhenney, creator of the sitcom It’s always sunny in Philadelphiathey started the process of buying the club in November 2020, they paid £2 million ($2.5 million) and took the helm in February 2021.

This process was reconstructed in the documentary series Welcome to Wrexham, whose first season was added to the Star+ platform in January.

More than 15 decades of history preceded the arrival of the actors. In a town located in north-east Wales, 40 kilometers south of Liverpool, and whose productive engines were the brewing, tanning and coal industries, the institution was founded in October 1864 by a group of members coming from Wrexham Cricket Club. This very distant genesis keeps it as the third oldest professional club on the planet, surpassed only by Notts County (1862) and Stoke City (1863).

The founding came just a year after the Football Association (FA) was created and the first rules of the game were drawn up, and 12 years before the Football Association of Wales (FAW) was born. That’s why it is one of the Welsh clubs that plays in the English league.

His stadium, Hippodrome (capacity 10,500 spectators), is also part of the history books. Built in 1807 and initially used for cricket matches and horse racing, it hosted the first match that the Welsh national team played on its territory: on 5 March 1877 they lost 2 to 0 against Scotland in a friendly duel. This makes it the oldest stadium on the planet among those that have hosted at least one match of the international national team.

Although Wrexham’s history is long, it is not full of successes. His most notable period was during the 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1977/78 season he was champion of the third division, which allowed him to be promoted for the only time to the second, where he remained for four years. Furthermore, he reached the quarter-finals of the FA Cup in 1974 and 1978, and the same stage of the Cup Winners’ Cup (in which he participated as Welsh Cup champions) in the 1975/76 season.

At the same time as the closure of the coal mines and the destruction of the industrial fabric of the city during the Thatcherite storm, the club began to take a downward slope that took it to the fifth division of English football and a deep economic crisis that put it on the brink of bankruptcy. . Faced with the defection of private investors, in September 2011 a group of supporters raised the £100,000 needed to prevent its demise and took control of the institution.

It was club members who overwhelmingly approved (over 98% supported) the sale to Reynolds and McElhenney in February 2021.