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In Welsh, the almost untranslatable word “hiraeth” (pronounced here-ayeth) describes a mixture of nostalgia and longing for a time that can never be recreated.
For Wrexham, a working-class town in north Wales, it was a feeling of post-industrial decline in the 1980s as the last remaining coal mine closed its doors and, later, the furnaces of a nearby steel mill. .
Only the beloved football club, Wrexham AFC, remains: the oldest team in Wales, which is also a perennial but still a source of local pride.
“We’ve passed the city,” said Terry Richards, 56, a lifelong fan of the club as he sat at home wearing the team’s bright red jersey. “These are difficult times.”
Wales has a hero legend returning to save it, but few could have predicted that a couple of Hollywood actors, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, would waltz into town just two years ago and buy the ailing club. This led to a series of events that catapulted the town into the international spotlight, making its residents the main characters in its own Hollywood reality show based on the football club, “Welcome to Wrexham.”
Few could predict that two famous actors will walk to the city in the first place. But Mr McElhenney, an American who starred in a sports documentary during the lockdown, conducted an exhaustive search for a down-and-out football team with growth potential, landed on Wrexham AFC, and persuaded Mr Reynolds to join his pet project. .
After paying about $2.5 million in cash, he moved to the city (Canadian-born Mr. Reynolds even bought a house) and began revamping the team’s operations. They revitalized their training facilities and upgraded their roster, offering relatively large salaries that attracted established players from the top tier of English football.
Last Saturday, the Hollywood story finally got its Hollywood ending – the promotion of the team after a winning season to the English Football League, the next level of the English multilevel football pyramid, after an absence of 15 years. When the referee blew the final whistle, a generation of tearful supporters jumped from the stands onto the rain-soaked pitch in joyous celebration.
In that moment, a city was reborn, and the remaining “hiraeth” were no more.
“The doom and gloom is mounting,” said Mr Richards, still reeling from a day of celebrations. “It’s hard to put into words.”
“It’s the new Wrexham,” he said.
The glamor of the new honorary residents of the city is seen in stark odds with the neighborhood of Mr. Richards Caia Park, a long deprived corner of Wrexham that has come to epitomize the decline of the city’s population. But few in the region find the contrast to be the same. They are more than happy to bask in the Hollywood spotlight, especially when it comes to the fittingly Hollywood finale that rocked the city last Friday.
“He has brought his sparkle with him,” Mr Richards’ partner Donna Jackson, 55, said.
Mr Richards’ son Nathan, 34, who played professionally for Wrexham as a teenager, agreed. “You don’t need to be a football fan to see it.”
It’s a glow that has lit up underserved neighborhoods, including a local boxing gym that tries to keep disadvantaged teenagers out of trouble.
“It’s known as a battle city,” said Gareth Harper, 43, a gym trainer. “But after the match, all the fans and every pub was packed, no one was held back. Everyone was on such a high.”
As his students packed the box next to him, he added: “I think I’m used to it now.”
Not everyone has made adjustments. But Wayne Jones, the sleep-deprived 40-year-old owner of the Turf Hotel, the pub made famous in the FX documentary, isn’t complaining.
Knowing what was coming, they tried to stock up before the big game last Saturday, but the crowds kept coming. And on Sunday, he was back. By the end of the night, the pub had run dry, and they had no choice but to close for the first time in 15 years.
“I didn’t ask for this. It seems to fall into my lap,” he said, looking at the cup of coffee with tired eyes. “But I don’t think I have a vocabulary big enough to describe what they have done for this city,” Said of the new celebrity owners. “If the football team is good , the city will only prosper.”
While American businessmen paying billions for clubs like Manchester United have upset some English football fans, Wrexham’s acceptance of outside ownership has surprised even the new owners.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t suspicions in the beginning.
“Is this the 7th Cavalry coming over the hill? Or just, you know, people who want to make a quick buck,” Geraint Parry, the club’s longest serving member of staff, remembers thinking when the city first got the purchase proposed by the actors.
But Mr Parry, who has been attending matches at the Racecourse Ground, the club’s stadium, since 1974, soon dispelled those doubts – although he still struggled to understand the North American accent he heard around town after the tourists started playing. at.
“I’ve got enough maple syrup to last me a lifetime now,” he joked, pointing to the gifts some tourists had brought back from his country. He added: “You can tell where the world is showing the next series, because all of a sudden you get emails from Brazil, Poland and Thailand.”
At times, the meeting of cultures seems straight out of an outdated sitcom script. At the club’s fan shop this week, a tourist from Pennsylvania looked confused as he asked to use the bathroom. “You want to err … wc?” the shop assistant asked.
The city’s museum is in the process of building a football section to cater to public interest in the team. But amidst the building’s archives, the sad days of the past will never fade away.
“Everything looks bleak,” said Mark Taylor, the museum’s assistant archivist, as he looked at the old newspaper clippings in front of him.
“END OF THE ROAD,” read one headline noting the closure of the city’s brewery.
“I will close this Club,” another front page blasted, a window into the darker days of Wrexham AFC less than 20 years ago.
It all seems foreign to the glory that is now on the global airwaves and the team’s dressing room (which, after the club’s promotion on Saturday, took five hours to clean.)
Back at Caia Park, Ms Jackson remembers Mr Richards’ unmarried partner. As the sun sets through the curtains, they promise to come next year, but on one strict condition – the ceremony must take place at Wrexham’s football ground.
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