In the eyes of Wrexham supporters and players, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney can do no wrong. But, the Hollywood duo have got themselves in the bad books with one official organisation outside of football.
Since they took over the club, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have pumped massive sums of money into Wrexham, helping the Red Dragons escape the National League and make it all the way to League One.
Now, the pair are on the brink of witnessing their club achieve a third successive promotion, with Phil Parkinson’s side sitting in second place, three points clear of Wycombe Wanderers, who have a game in hand.
It’s incredibly tight at the top. So much so, that a supercomputer couldn’t separate Wrexham and Wycombe.
But, that hasn’t stopped Rob and Ryan trying to give their team the advantage in any way possible, even if it has incurred the wrath of an environmentalist group.
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Wrexham are flying to away games and environmentalists are unhappy
Turns out, Wrexham have been chartering private flights to get to away games that are more than two hours’ drive away.
This has become a regular occurrence, it seems. In a BBC report, it is stated that the Red Dragons took 16 domestic flights in 2023, averaging just 43 minutes in the air per flight. That was during the National League title-winning campaign, and it’s thought this habit has not slowed down since.
But, the activity has attracted criticism from Peter Crisp of the Fossil Free Football initiative, who said: “Football at all levels is threatened by increased rainfall and flooding directly linked to the burning of fossil fuels.
“There just can’t be room in the sport for short haul, ultra polluting and totally avoidable flights.
“If fans can travel a few hours to a match by coach or train, then so can teams like Wrexham, especially when they are also talking about positive impact and sustainability at the United Nations.”
Rob and Ryan recently organised a flight to Wycombe for the promotion six-pointer, a game Wrexham won 1-0. The 37-minute flight took place just four days before the Wrexham owners attended a United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals meeting and committed to ensuring the club would do its best to limit environmental impact.
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What Paul Mullin said about the away day flights
It seems the private flights all started as a result of the royal visit to the Racecourse Ground in the 2022/23 campaign, which delayed the team travelling to Eastleigh.
Rob McElhenney then had the idea to pay for a flight instead of rushing the team over there and limiting their preparation time.
In his autobiography, My Wrexham Story, star striker Paul Mullin said: “Thank goodness for Rob McElhenney. He came up with the perfect answer: we’d shave hours off the day by flying down to Hampshire.
“A quick thirty minutes on a plane compared to five hours on a bus would make a massive difference to our preparation, not least because it’s obviously not good for elite sportspeople to be sat in one position all that time.
“The plan paid dividends when we won 2–0. Afterwards, a couple of people were on at me – ‘Ask Rob if we can fly back as well!’ It wasn’t total laziness: we had another game on the Tuesday and flying back would massively aid our recovery. Rob not only said yes but came up with a deal: keep winning and we could fly to all our away games more than two hours away by road.”
Wrexham then went on a 28-game unbeaten streak, which led to that high frequency of flights in that campaign. The irony is, Wrexham lost on the road in their first game adjusting back to road travel, meaning the club saw clear proof they should fly instead.
While Wrexham AFC nor its owners are yet to respond to the criticisms from Fossil Free Football, we would imagine both Rob and Ryan are going to be far more careful about the flights they book for the team from here on out.
With a costly campaign in the Championship to prepare for, that might be the best solution for the pair’s bank accounts, anyway, as well as protecting the planet.