On eve of Chelsea Cup clash, Wrexham fans say club's storybook ascent still feels unreal

WREXHAM, Wales, March 6 : The floodlights at Wrexham's Racecourse Ground, bright, towering structures installed in 2023, still catch Geraint Parry off guard sometimes. 

The club's longest‑serving employee and now its official historian, Parry spent more than two decades as secretary at a time when one of the biggest pre‑match concerns was not international broadcast standards, but whether the old lights would switch on at all. 

"I remember when you crossed your fingers that they would even turn on," Parry told Reuters. "Or you wondered how many bulbs had burned out."

For a club placed into administration in 2004, regularly struggling to meet the next wage bill and staff often going months without pay, the arrival of Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2021 felt almost too good to be true. 

"You're thinking, here comes another strange twist," Parry said. "Then you think, well, they haven't got a lot to gain really. Why us?"

Wrexham host Premier League giants Chelsea in the FA Cup fifth round on Saturday in the biggest fixture at the Racecourse Ground since McElhenney, an American, and Canadian Reynolds became owners almost five years ago.

The Welsh side have surged from English football's fifth tier to the second with three successive promotions and are now lying sixth in the Championship, pushing for a place in the Premier League via the playoffs.

Off the pitch, the club's popularity has skyrocketed on both sides of the Atlantic due to the owners and Disney's "Welcome to Wrexham" documentary.

"We couldn't get people to cross the road 10 years ago to watch the football," said Parry. "Now they're coming from all over the world."

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