Wrexham players are currently celebrating promotion number three, but many are already looking ahead to life in the Championship.
The League One play-offs have kicked off this weekend, but they couldn’t be further from the minds of Wrexham players.
Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds have funded another promotion party in Las Vegas, with players currently being treated like royalty after another promotion.
We are now more than two weeks removed from Wrexham’s 3-0 win over Charlton Athletic, which sparked more incredible scenes of joy at the STōK Cae Ras.
McElhenney and Reynolds’ Wrexham takeover sparked hopes of a brighter future, but even the most optimistic of supporters surely can’t have expected three straight promotions.
There were bumps in the road along the way in League One, but McElhenney stepped up to try and inspire Phil Parkinson’s squad.
- READ MORE: Rob McElhenney shares the exact moment he knew Wrexham would be promoted to the Championship
Rob McElhenney shares his emotional message to Wrexham players
Wrexham’s 1-1 draw with Bristol Rovers on Good Friday sparked concern.
The Pirates had been in dreadful form and Wrexham really needed to step up with a home victory.
Taking only one point was far from ideal and left Wrexham to rebound in a tricky away game at Blackpool.
Wrexham produced one of the displays of the season to win 2-0 and take a huge step towards promotion.
Parkinson admitted McElhenney spoke to the Wrexham squad before that game, taking some time to rally the group together after a disappointing result.
Speaking on Men In Blazers, McElhenney has now opened up on exactly what he told the Wrexham players before facing Blackpool.
McElhenney told the Wrexham squad that they would win promotion this season, and if that didn’t happen, then it would come next season or the year after that.
McElhenney wanted to ease the pressure on the Wrexham players but also took them through a ‘hardcore’ visualisation exercise.
The Wrexham co-owner wanted his players to recapture the sensation of feeling truly good at football, something which made some Wrexham players ‘emotional’.
“This is true, because people can smell inauthenticity a mile away, but I meant this when I said it: ‘we’ll either win on Saturday and we’ll get automatic promotion, or we’ll win the final game of the season and we’ll get automatic promotion, or we’ll win in the play-offs. And if we don’t win in the play-offs, we’ll win next year. And if we don’t win next year, we’ll win the year after that – and I truly believe that.
“And I thought, in any one of those outcomes, we will have eventually achieved our goal. ‘So just take that off of your shoulders, just don’t sweat it, it’s going to be fine – everything is going to be fine. Just go out there and play like you did when you were nine years old’, and I took them through a visualisation exercise, which was like super Hollywood, but actually, I got it from golf!
“I went through the whole exercise, and I asked them to shut their eyes, and I said ‘remember a time when you realised you were great at football, there was a moment in your life, maybe you were eight, maybe you were nine, maybe you were 10, but you remember that you were great. You were better than everybody else – and you knew it. Maybe it was a pickup game with friends, maybe it was a high school game, maybe it was that time your dad asked you to come out on a Sunday and play with his friends and you scored a hat-trick and you were better than them – I don’t know.
“But there was a moment in which you realised you were great at football, and then, at some point between that point and now, football realised that you were great, and that is none of your business – that is the business of football recognising your greatness, but I want you to dispense with that and just think about when you remembered that you were great, and I can guarantee you, to a person, you were having a blast because you eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 years old and football was just a game and you didn’t worry about what football thought about you. You just knew that you were great at football, and I want you to find a moment during the game – and I said ‘I will challenge you, I will come up after the game, win, lose or draw, and I’m going to ask you ‘when did you have that moment, and I want you to tell me what that moment was, that’s how hardcore I got with it.
“I looked out and I saw them, they all had their eyes closed, even the manager. Some of them were laughing, some of them were smiling, some of them were getting emotional, and I talked to a few of them afterwards about it because they all really did take themselves to that place, wherever that meant for them. Then they went out to Blackpool and it looked like they were having a blast,” he added.
Rob McElhenney has so much belief in Wrexham
McElhenney may have taken the idea from golf, but there were truly moving and incredibly inspiring comments.
Many Wrexham fans loved the performance against Blackpool, believing Parkinson’s players were playing with much more freedom.
We can’t put that solely down to McElhenney’s comments, but perhaps he should be giving more team talks!
McElhenney surely eased the pressure on the Wrexham squad, letting them know that he had full faith in them no matter how this season panned out.
Wrexham players seemed a little edgy against Bristol Rovers, almost playing within themselves rather than embracing the moment.
McElhenney gave his team talk and Wrexham not only clinched promotion but won the final three games without even conceding a goal.
What could have been a testing end to the season ended up becoming a dream, and McElhenney’s belief in this squad certainly played its part.