This post contains spoilers for the third season of Welcome to Wrexham , which is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu. Last week, I found myself wildly cheering a play in a game that happened a year and a half ago, in a sport I had never much cared about previously, on a show that I’d ignored for nearly all of its three seasons before impulsively deciding to binge the whole thing. Such is the power of FX’s Welcome to Wrexham , a docuseries chronicling Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds ‘ purchase of a Welsh football club, and how their money and celebrity have helped reverse the fortunes of both the team and the town in which it plays.
The play in question was a goal scored by Wrexham midfielder Anthony Forde, which gave his team the lead in a November 2023 match against Yeovil. Wrexham desperately needed the win that day to maintain their hopes of being promoted out of the fifth-place National League and into League Two, the next level of competition in UK football. Forde, meanwhile, needed the goal even more, as this was his first game back with the team after going on compassionate leave after his brother was diagnosed with leukemia and his wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
The episode about the Yeovil match explained that Reynolds had used his celebrity connections to put Forde’s wife in touch with a top doctor, and that her prognosis was now much better. That in and of itself would have been a fairy-tale moment; for Forde to rescue the team in his first game.