Welcome to Wrexham Women: A bright future ahead

NEWPORT, Wales — Wrexham A.F.C. are in a cup final. The weather might be dismal, but the rain is certainly not dampening the spirits of the loud Wrexham fans in the club’s signature red shirts and singing at the top of their lungs on the way to Newport Country’s Rodney Parade stadium.

But they’re not cheering on the Wrexham men’s side, which was thrust into the spotlight by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney when they took over the Welsh club in 2021. Wrexham A.F.C. Women are in the spotlight now.

“We fully and wholeheartedly believe that this is a club that can become one of the best women’s teams in the world,” Wrexham co-owner McElhenney said in the new season of “Welcome to Wrexham” (stream episodes on Disney+).

They’re not there yet, but this is a start. A place in the Bute Energy Cup final followed a third-place finish in their debut campaign in Wales’ Adran Premier, the top tier of women’s football in Wales. Wrexham ultimately lost the cup final 2-0 to Adran Premier champions Cardiff City (who completed a trophy treble), but the result doesn’t matter so much. This is about laying the groundwork for something bigger.

With an ambitious summer agenda (including a tour of the U.S.) aimed at fortifying and revitalising the squad, Wrexham’s women are now on the map. This is how they got there.

Early days

Wrexham Ladies were created as an amateur team in 2003 and joined the North Wales Women’s Football League before they reformed as Wrexham F.C. in 2009 and co-founded the Welsh Premier Women’s League, the top tier of women’s football in the country at the time.

Despite winning their division in 2011-12, they faced setbacks in attracting players to devote their unpaid time while juggling full-time jobs elsewhere and they withdrew from the league midway through the 2015-16 season. But from the flames rose a phoenix; the side rebranded again as Wrexham A.F.C Women in 2018 and started anew in the North Wales Women’s Football League, winning the League Cup and earning promotion to Division One that same year.

Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic and amid cancellations of the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, Reynolds and McElhenney (via RR McReynolds Company LLC) acquired Wrexham A.F.C., inclusive of the women’s team, and everything changed. Ahead of the 2021-22 season, the Football Association of Wales (FAW) revamped the structure of women’s football in the country, establishing the Adran Premier as the top tier with the second division divided into Adran North and Adran South with an end-of-season playoff between the two winners to determine who goes up.

But with a Tier 1 license needed to compete in the Adran Premier, the Red Dragons could not jump up to the top flight right away. They had a decent debut season in Adran North and only finished second behind Llandudno after losing a winner-takes-all game on the final day of the season, but their ambition was higher. They didn’t have to wait long. In February 2023, Wrexham applied for their license with a plan to transition to semi-professional status if they won promotion — a scenario that happened after finishing top of Adran North and beating Briton Ferry 1-0 in the playoff at Latham Park on April 16.

The celebrations at full-time were emphatic; it was a landmark victory that would bring about a new era for Wrexham and for Welsh football in general. On June 27, the club announced that 10 players had signed semi-professional contracts, making them the first team in the Adran Premier to feature semi-professional players. And keen to keep pace with the Red Dragons’ development, new league rivals Cardiff City and Swansea followed suit and signed their own players on semi-professional contracts later that summer.

“It was important for us to [pay the players] because it puts value on what the players are doing,” Gemma Owen, Wrexham’s head of women’s football operations, told ESPN. “It highlights that we’re on a step to hopefully professionalising and we’re in the place that we want to be in. Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future we can be even further on. This has come around really quickly, so you never know what’s going to happen in another year or two.”