The Turf Is For Sale. But Is Wrexham’s Culture?

The Turf Is For Sale. But Is Wrexham’s Culture?

Wrexham Column

Turf Sale Raises Questions in Wrexham

It’s everyone’s favourite time of year: the first international break of the season. It feels like it’s going to be a long haul to reach the 10th of October, when Wrexham next play away to Derby.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing a whole host of things, going back to uni, working my day job and, most importantly, staying up until 2 am most nights doing a Wrexham career mode on FC27. And just so you all know, I’ll be sticking a career mode update at the end of every column I write.

But shifting away from what’s going on in my life and back to what’s been happening at Wrexham, the biggest bit of news coming out of the Cae Ras is Rob and Ryan’s acquisition of a Wrexham landmark, with the duo buying the Turf from Admiral Taverns.

Is this a good thing? I’m not fully convinced. But let’s talk through the good and bad points, and hopefully, over the next 900-1,000 words, I’ll come to a conclusion.

Positives

So let’s start with the positives, because most of my other articles have been rather negative about what goes on at the club.

Firstly, The Turf has been tied to the club since its beginnings in 1864, when the members of the Cricket Club wanted something to do during the winter months. A lot of the early meetings about the club were also held at the Turf.

This weirdly makes me feel proud. Not necessarily because of the club’s history, but because people over 150 years ago were doing the same thing as me: getting bladdered in a pub, making plans and chatting bollocks with your mates.

Moving away from my thoughts about the similarities between Victorian men and myself and back to the Turf, the club buying it means it can protect an important part of Wrexham’s heritage. It removes the risk of someone in the future selling the pub or developing the site in a way that creates a barrier between the club and the Turf.

You also have the aspect of the club having greater control over what is a very important area around the Cae Ras, with the club now able to further invest in the fan zone that has been established over the past few seasons.

This could also encourage more people to spend time around the Cae Ras on matchday, even if they don’t have tickets to get into the game. It’s similar to ‘tailgating’ at NASCAR and American football, which is arguably my favourite thing about American sports, and probably the thing that makes the most sense about them.

Why would you not want to be around the stadium on matchday even without a ticket, getting tanked up on ale and eating full-on BBQ meats? And if tailgating is anything to go by, the person behind the grill will make it their whole personality and somehow become one of the best chefs around.

But, as I said, having a fan zone run by an entity connected to the club, like The Turf, means the club can potentially reap more of the financial rewards. Especially when you consider just how much the people of Wrexham can drink. Nine or 10 pints over the full 90 minutes, done by at least 30 or 40 people, will soon be enough to pay for itself.

And I have to add this to the positives: Rob Mac’s character Ronald McDonald from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has years of experience around bars, having worked in Paddy’s Pub since at least 2005.

I hope that, after all those years pretending to run a fake bar, Rob picked up a couple of actual tips to help keep the Turf going from strength to strength.

Negatives

The negatives for me get kind of nitpicky and can be seen as just complaining for the sake of complaining, and if I haven't made that clear enough now, I love doing that. Hell, I wrote a whole article on the club putting a white dragon on a jacket. I WILL COMPLAIN.

But I feel this is a bit more of a valid critique than jacket-gate.

The purchase of The Turf could be argued to be another example of Wrexham becoming a huge commercial operation, where businesses and pieces of the town's history are slowly being brought under the same ownership. It showcases capitalism in a very local way, one that has arguably never been seen at this scale in North Wales.

The Office for National Statistics describes vertical integration as a situation where a company owns multiple stages of its production or supply chain, rather than relying on external businesses. While a football club and a pub aren't necessarily a traditional example of a production supply chain, you can see how Wrexham's wider operation has developed into its own ecosystem:

Club → Stadium → Pub → Fan Zone → Tourism → Merchandise → Media → Sponsorship → Hospitality

Now, none of this is automatically a bad thing. Capitalism is the economic system the UK operates within, and Wrexham's commercial growth has played a huge part in getting the club to where it is today.

But I have a few reasons why it worries me. A local institution has now become a corporate asset. That doesn't mean I think Rob and Ryan will abuse their ownership of The Turf. Far from it. In fact, there is a strong argument that their ownership protects the pub from being sold off or developed by someone who has no connection to the club.

My concern is what happens when the people at the top change.

I'm no fool. I know that at some point, maybe in 10, 20 or 30 years, Rob and Ryan will probably sell the club. When that happens, what happens to The Turf?

A new owner could take over, and the pub could become less of a community institution and more of a selling point for Wrexham AFC. Decisions about the pub could then be made based on the wider commercial strategy of whoever owns the club, rather than what is necessarily best for the people who have used it as their local for decades.

And that's where my concern comes from. It's not necessarily about what Rob and Ryan are doing with The Turf now. It's about what happens when the ownership changes and the commercial interests of the people running the club change with it.

My final issue isn't really about commercial interests at all. It's about the person who lives five minutes away, has supported The Turf for the last 30 years and simply sees it as their local pub.

The culture around Wrexham AFC wasn't created by Hollywood. It wasn't created by Welcome to Wrexham. It wasn't created by global tourism. It was created by generations of local people who went to the Racecourse, drank in The Turf, supported the club and built a community around it.

But that culture has now been thrust into the global entertainment industry in a way that nobody could have predicted.

The danger, at least in my eyes, is that something created by the community becomes something the community has to consume.

The local fan who helped create the culture now has to spend money to experience it. The pub that was once simply their local is now a destination. The football club that was once a huge part of the town is now an international entertainment brand.

And perhaps that's just the price of success.

But I think it's still worth asking whether a town can become so successful at selling its culture that the people who created that culture eventually find themselves having to buy it back.

So, in my opinion, the buying of the Turf is a net positive, purely for the protection of Wrexham’s identity. I think, especially in the short term, the acquisition will be a good thing for Wrexham going forward.

But, as I said, the future could be worrying. Hopefully, enough protections will be put in place to protect the Turf in the long term. Because, again, my biggest fear can be boiled down to one question: at what point does Wrexham culture get erased for corporate greed?

FC27 Round-Up

I’m coming to the end of my first season with Wrexham, and I’ve finished in 3rd place to secure a play-off spot. My best signing of the season has been Jackson Irvine, with the Aussie midfielder consistently putting in 7.5-rated performances and becoming my MVP.

O’Hare has been the league leader in assists with 11 across the season, while Moore has been my star striker, bagging 15 goals in the Championship.

Now, let’s take on the play-offs and try to gain promotion to the Prem.

Jac Jones
Jac Jones Wrexham Correspondent

Jac Jones is an NUJ-qualified journalist specialising in football and sports culture. Over the past two years, he has developed a focus on covering topics ranging from club identity and supporter culture to the wider social impact of the game.

Jac’s first memory of football came at the age of five, when he went to the Racecourse Ground with his father on a cold Tuesday night to watch Wrexham play. His lifelong support of the club has given him a deeper insight into Wrexham, providing him with a unique understanding of the team’s journey both before and after the takeover, something that heavily influences and features throughout his writing.

View all articles by Jac Jones →

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