Reynolds and McElhenney weighed up Celtic and Rangers fight before Wrexham call

26 October 2023 , 18:10

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Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney may have bought a club in Scotland had Wrexham not won them over in 2020 (Image: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have become synonymous with Wrexham since taking over in 2020 but they nearly decided to pit their wits in Scotland instead.

The Hollywood pair's reputation as hands-on owners at the Racecourse Ground is known around the world after a fairytale three years for the duo in North Wales. However, the Red Dragons chairmen were first advised to turn their attention to Scottish Championship outfit Arbroath.

Fated decreed that the globally-renowned comedy actors would decided upon Wrexham but it appears that McElhenney first wanted to buy a team in either Ireland or Scotland. Upon the suggestion of future Dragons executive director Humphrey Ker, they did weigh up the option of Arbroath with keen interest.

Wrexham's executive director, Humphrey Ker appeared on BBC Scotland's Sacked in the Morning podcast, where provided details on Reynolds and McElhenney's previous interest in Arbroath. He explained: "So right at the jump, Rob said, 'well, what about a club in Ireland?'

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"Because his family are from Ireland, or from Northern Ireland, or from Scotland. And I'm afraid to say that I was a bit of a party pooper on that because my feeling was the ceiling in the English game is that much further away."

Ker later explained that the genesis of the idea of potentially investing in Arbroath came from a former university flatmate having supported the Red Lichties. However, the suggestion soon fell flat after Ker recalled the efforts of Hearts to compete with the Old Firm clubs in the past.

Of course, the Jam Tarts had been bought by Russian-Lithuanian multi-millionaire Vladimir Romanov, who set his sights on making them into a force during the mid-2000s. After getting the keys to Tynecastle Park, the Edinburgh club became the last club to split the duopoly of Celtic and Rangers during 2005/06 season, when they finished as SPL runners up.

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney eventually brought success back to Wrexham after taking over (Photo by Matthew Ashton - AMA/Getty Images) (Getty)

However, that campaign would prove to be the apex of the Romanov era, with Hearts never able to repeat the feat before eventually falling into administration in 2013. According to Ker, this example ultimately led to Reynolds and McElhenney coming off the idea.

He explained: "So ultimately, I said, 'if you went to Arbroath and we injected money and built that team and you got into the Premiership pretty quickly, you would then run up against Celtic and Rangers'."

"When I lived in Edinburgh, I used to go to Hearts games. There was that period where all the Lithuanian players came over and it was like it would be a genuine challenger to that big two in Glasgow. But the speed at which you would get from Arbroath now to a sort of mid-table Scottish Premiership team would be quite quick.

Ker added: "And then you would have this problem where you just get hammered all the time by the big boys there. And then what do you do? You go into the Champions League and get battered by a Greek team and then that's sort of the cycle year on year. So, ultimately, we were like, we've got to do England or the English system."

Tom Beattie