Rob McElhenney & Ryan Reynolds Honour Coal Mines With New Football Club Stadium

Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds have focused on Wrexham's coal mining industry during the design of a new stadium for the Wrexham football club.

“It was always in the plans when we were working with the local architects and engineers about the design of the new cop (stadium),” McElhenney said. “We wanted to make sure we were honoring the coal mining industry in any way that we could.”

“We wanted to find ways in which we could just be pretty overt with our respect.”

Episode 10 of 'Welcome to Wrexham' season 2 introduced viewers to the 1934 Gresford Colliery Disaster, which had an underground explosion that killed 266 miners.

Located near the Wrexham AFC racecourse is Wrexham’s Miners Rescue Station. It was built in 1982, and is home to the memorial for all the lives lost during the disaster. In the episode, McElhenney brought his father to see it.

One part of the memorial Rob and Ryan are hoping to incorporate into the new stadum is an abandoned colliery wheel.

Earlier in the second season of the show, the two revealed plans to expand the stadium, and said they needed £20 million to complete the new racecourse.

Executive Director of Wrexham AFC, Humphrey Ker said the project is the "biggest and most expensive piece” of owning a football team. 

However, as Rob and Ryab are hoping Wrexham gets promoted to the English Football League, they need “more seats to get a stadium international standard to bring Welsh football back to the racecourse."

This past April, for the first time in 15 years, Wrexham was promoted to the English Football League. Events are expected to be seen during season two of 'Welcome to Wrexham.'

The first two episodes focused on the history of the mining industry, whereas the second followed the Wrexham Women’s Football Club making history.

The women’s team was granted a Tier 1 license in March hoping to be promoted to a semi-professional team.

Wrexham CEO Fleur Robinson said, "I would like to thank and congratulate our Head of Women’s Football, Gemma Owen, and colleagues [for] their hard work in ensuring we were granted a Tier 1 license. We know we still have one very big game to go in our ambition to be a Genero Adran Premier team, and we are all eagerly looking forward to next month’s play-off match against Briton Ferry Llansawel.”

The women’s team beat Briton Ferry Llansawel 1-nil in April, being promoted into the Genero Adran Premier League. They are now considered a semi-professional team.