Ryan Reynolds & Rob McElhenney: Hollywood stars 'incredibly serious' about Wrexham

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Archive: When 'Ryan and Rob' visited Wrexham...

Wrexham's Hollywood owners Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds are "incredibly serious" about the club, says executive director Humphrey Ker.

The club's takeover by actors Reynolds and McElhenney is to be the subject of a documentary series called Welcome to Wrexham.

The pair announced the series in a humorous short trailer, but Ker, himself a comedian, insists the owners nor the documentary will be mocking the club.

"We won't make fun of the club, we love it," Ker told BBC Radio Wales Sport.

"Rob, Ryan and I, we come from a comedy background. But in the same way we take our work, which is to make people laugh, very seriously. That's our day job and we take the club incredibly seriously.

"There will be an irreverent quality to the documentary because inevitable we are three people who mess around a lot and that's our stock-in-trade.

"But the running of the football club, the future of the football club - all that is incredibly serious.

"Without giving anything away from the documentary, which I'm actually not that involved with other than appearing in it, this year has been tough.

"It's been a tough year for the people of Wrexham, tough for the people of Wales and tough for the people of the world at large.

"So it's inevitable that any examination of that is serious. We've struggled, people have struggled."

McElhenney and Reynolds are making an access-all-areas documentary about their journey with the north Wales club, which they took over in November 2020.

The trailer to promote the series, for which US-based FX Entertainment has placed a two-season order for the access-all-areas programme, features the Welsh language and pokes fun at the Hollywood duo.

"We've been really, really gratified by the response, " Ker added.

"A huge part of the appeal of Rob and Ryan is their slightly irreverent sense of humour, I think it's fair to say.

"The Welsh language skills are not the strongest as yet, but Rob is learning Welsh. He's very taken with the (Welsh) National Anthem, as I think all of us are."

On the field and Wrexham are pushing for a place in the National League play-offs as they bid for promotion back to the Football League after a 13-year absence.

Wrexham are currently sixth with two games remaining and were they to finish fifth they would be guaranteed a home game in the play-off quarter-finals.

The Welsh Government has confirmed fans would be allowed to attend a play-off as part of their pilot events for the safe return of spectators.

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Wrexham's Racecourse ground is the world's oldest international stadium still in use

"We've been pushing for a test event for a while now and we're delighted that the prospect is now slightly closer, albeit we'll have to get results in our next two games and hope results go our way," Ker said.

"But the prospect of finishing fifth does set up the tantalising prospect of us finally having some fans in. We're excited.

"My experience of the Racecourse thus far has been entirely behind closed doors other than the myriad of videos that I've watched before the takeover went through."

The club have appointed AFL Architects to redevelop The Racecourse Stadium and Ker said: "It's something that was included in our mission statement at the start of the process, that renovating and improving the Racecourse was vital.

"The stewardship of the club is huge, but we are in a particularly interesting situation because we are the tenants and the inhabitants of the oldest, continuously used international stadium in the world.

"With that comes the huge responsibility of trying to preserve it for generations to come.

"We are pressing ahead with renovations, with improvements and sympathetic reconstruction of the stadium to ensure that it lasts for years to come.

"We have longer term ambitions that aren't going to be realised overnight. There's all sorts of planning and planning permissions to be granted and finances to be assembled - all manner of things before any major demolition work or replacement.

"We're obviously talking about the Kop stand, which has long been an ambition for both the WST (Wrexham Supporters' Trust), who were in charge before we came along, and us, to replace that."

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