Without Humphrey Ker, there’s no three promotions for Wrexham in as many years.
There’s also no Ben Foster penalty save against Notts County, no repeated shattering of the Welsh club’s transfer record and no new Kop stand being built at The Racecourse Ground.
In fact, without Ker, there’s a debate as to whether there would still be a functioning Wrexham AFC at all.
Not boasts ever likely to emanate from the self-effacing comedy actor and writer, admittedly. This boyhood Liverpool fan is far too modest and far too British to indulge in such talk.
But, Ker really is the man who set the ball rolling on the Wrexham story currently drawing full houses in the Championship. First, by introducing Rob McElhenney (now Mac) to the wonders of British football on the set of Mythic Quest, the Apple TV comedy co-created by the American and Ker’s wife Megan Ganz.
Then, after his lockdown recommendation for the man behind It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to watch the Netflix documentary Sunderland ‘Til I Die had planted the seed of an idea to try and run a club of their own that subsequently lured in Ryan Reynolds, Ker was tasked with finding the perfect vehicle.
Which is how, five years ago this coming Monday, the fortunes of an ailing provincial club from north Wales were changed forever when Mac and Reynolds completed one of the game’s more left-field takeovers.
“We played Altrincham away on the day the takeover was finally done,” recalls Ker, whose exhaustive search for a suitable club involved scouring Scotland and Ireland as well as the National League and lower echelons of the EFL.
“Their pitch was frozen, so the game had to be played at FC United of Manchester’s stadium. To go from that to recently playing Leicester City, the Premier League champions 10 years ago, does feel quite bizarre.”
Indeed it must. Not only are Wrexham chasing an unprecedented fourth straight promotion to go from non-League to the top flight in consecutive seasons, but Welcome to Wrexham, the fly-on-the-wall Disney documentary that has earned the club a global fanbase to go with a lucrative list of blue-chip sponsors, also remains hugely popular, with a fifth series on the way in the spring.
“My initial thought was, ‘This is a hare-brained scheme’,” chuckles Ker about his friend’s suggestion, made just days after Covid had effectively confined the world to home. “Everyone else was learning how to make sourdough bread or speak a new language. And here we were, looking to buy a football club.”
What those initial reservations perhaps hadn’t factored in was the sheer force of nature Mac can be once his mind is set on an idea.
Mac, Ker and a fan at Wrexham’s famous Turf pub (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
“He’s brilliant and he’s frustrating,” adds Ker, installed as Wrexham’s executive director immediately after the 2021 takeover, a role he only relinquished last season to switch to community director.
“He’s inspiring and infuriating. And everything in between. There are days when I want to kiss him and then days when I want to strangle him. He doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
“As one of those entrusted with enacting his enthusiasms, there were times when you thought, ‘Can someone please hide his phone?’ But none of this would have happened without Rob’s drive.
“It was his impetus initially. He also brought Ryan onboard, which was vital and totally changed the direction of travel. Rob was the one who took it from what I’d describe as a ‘pub conversation’ idea’ to the reality of what it is now.”
The two Hollywood stars had never set foot in Wales, never mind Wrexham, before buying the town’s football club for a token £1, plus the promise to invest £2million.
Nevertheless, the duo’s unlikely purchase changed everything at a club who, for the previous decade, had been run by the Supporters Trust.
“In some ways, it was obvious from the start,” explains Ker about a search featuring, among others, Hartlepool United, Carlisle United, Bolton Wanderers, Macclesfield Town and Aldershot Town.
“Because of the 4,000 people coming out to watch Wrexham in the National League. Because of the effort the fans had gone to, to save the club. Because of the geographical position, in terms of not having a host of Premier League clubs on our doorstep.
“I’m proud of always pushing hardest for Wrexham when those conversations were going on. There were other clubs under consideration. We looked at the National League, League Two, Bolton was one we looked at briefly.
“They were available for a cut-price fee. But it soon became apparent even this would have swallowed up all the capital that had been put aside for the whole project.”
Ireland and Scotland also featured on Ker’s initial longlist for a project that always had filming a sports documentary at its heart.
Members of the team behind Welcome to Wrexham, including Mac and Ker, at the 2024 Emmys (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
“If you went into the League of Ireland and deployed the sort of energy and resources we’ve had here at Wrexham,” he adds, “you very quickly become the Manchester City of Ireland. That’s not to disrespect Manchester City. But, you become dominant and that’s not so interesting as a narrative.”
Famously, Wrexham’s sliding-doors moment came at the expense of Hartlepool after the final decision had been whittled down to just two candidates. The two clubs passing each other in the summer of 2023, as Wrexham returned to the EFL after 15 years, was an irony lost on no one in north Wales.
The success has continued via two more promotions under Phil Parkinson to go with the off-field growth that recently saw US-based investment firm Apollo Sports Capital buy a minority shareholding, believed to be a little under 10 per cent, in a deal that valued the now Championship club at £350million ($475m).
Such a rapid rise in value underlines the importance of the documentary. While the club has not received a penny directly from Welcome to Wrexham, it has long since been considered by the hierarchy as their biggest commercial asset with sponsors such as United Airlines, Meta, HP and SToK Coffee Brew paying handsomely for the spotlight the show shines on their respective company.
With the celebrity of Reynolds and Mac central to this appeal, the past five years seem to be a textbook example of how to grow a sports club. We ask Ker if this was the plan all along.
“It would be perhaps over grandiose to say there was a plan,” he replies. “It was (more) a case of saying, ‘Let’s do this and see how we do’. What I can say is I don’t think the guys foresaw where it has gone. And what their tie to it has become emotionally.
“I was privy to discussions at the start, where the question was, ‘Can we get this football club back on its feet and then give it back to the fans?’ At the time, Shaun (Harvey, now a director but initially an advisor to the board) and I probably exchanged looks, as if to say, ‘Well, I don’t know how feasible that is’.
“By that, I mean getting a team back into League Two and then saying, ‘Right fans, here you go, have it back’.”
Ker adds: “Things change. There was also the mission statement (promises made by Reynolds and Mac to fans when buying the club). We said we’d build a new stand and a new training ground.
“There was maybe a mentality of, ‘Well, once we’ve done that, increased ticket sales and the club is back in the EFL then it will generate revenue for itself’. Maybe there was a feasible way of relinquishing control.
“The reality, though, is we’ve not built a training ground yet. We’ve not built a stand yet. That’s not the reason why they are still here. But so many things change. The bottom line is any potential thought of ‘Well, this is a fun thing to do for a few years…’ just didn’t withstand contact with the magic of the last few years.”
“It would be perhaps over grandiose to say there was a plan” says Ker (Tom Jenkins/Getty Images)
With the owners’ celebrity so intertwined with Wrexham’s growth, the recent investment by Apollo — and, before that, the Allyn family, who own around 15 per cent — suggests Reynolds and Mac intend to stick around.
“I hear all the ‘Disney FC’ taunts from opposition fans and how ‘They’ll soon get bored’,” adds Ker. “But, lads, I’m not sure they will. A phrase we’ve used over and over again concerns building a sustainable football club.
“The club has still some way to go. Such as in terms of generating revenue through player sales. Or the academy (currently Category Three). That will take time. But what those valuations (of £350million) and the bringing on board of investors has allowed us to do is put all those building blocks in place.
“Well, all bar the training ground. But discussions around that are ongoing, with a renewed sense of the Kop work being under way now and that means more energy can be put into finding a training ground.”
Ker has previously likened Wrexham’s off-field operations trying to keep pace with the team’s incredible rise as like “building a rocket ship, while also piloting it out of the atmosphere”.
However, with the foundations for the new Kop well under way and Wrexham reaching the fifth round of the FA Youth Cup for the first time in their history suggesting things are stirring in the academy, this challenge is one the club hierarchy is clearly up for.
With that in mind, we ask the man intrinsically linked with the Hollywood takeover of Wrexham how best to sum up the last five years in just one word.
“Glorious,” he replies straight away before taking a moment. “There’s also ‘surreal’. I never, ever thought I’d find myself in this situation. When we started out, there was this excitement over just wearing the badge when walking into the stadium.
“Knowing you were part of Wrexham was incredible on its own. But now, we’ve been promoted three times, knocked Coventry and Nottingham Forest out of the FA Cup, we’ve been to America twice on tour and Australia.
“What a ride we’ve all been on.”