Humphrey Ker has a great turn of phrase.
Considering the Wrexham chief executive was a successful comedy writer long before his life changed after giving his good friend Rob McElhenney the idea to buy a Welsh football club, this should come as no surprise.
Even so, his claim that three years or so with McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds in charge of Wrexham seemed “building a rocket, while flying it out of the atmosphere” seems prescient.
Two promotions in as many years means the landscape has changed dramatically. For starters, next season will bring moves to a string of former Premier League clubs, including Birmingham City. Progress off the field has been just as rapid, with annual turnover almost tenfold to over £20 million and 55,000 replica jerseys ordered this season.
The increase has forced parts of the club to play catch-up with the team on the pitch, particularly when it comes to infrastructure, as a new training ground is required, as well as the start of work on the delayed new Kop Stand.
Ker, who divides his year between Wrexham and Los Angeles, is aware of this, hence the analogy with piloting a rocket still under construction.
“I’ve been very clear with Rob and Ryan, as much as possible, about the need to say we need the infrastructure to catch up with the first team,” he said.
“As a National League club, they were both very big fish in a small pond. They were still big fish in a small to medium sized pond in League Two. We are about to enter a league with clubs that can mix with us. They are both aware of it.
“We need to sort out the training ground,” the Kop began. Our sales operation has done a sensational job, as have all departments, but they need support. They need more bodies, more office space. We need to expand our scouting network. We need to become more sophisticated in almost every area.
Away from Wrexham, Reynolds and McElhenney have been playing their own game of catch-up thanks to the Hollywood actors’ strike, which has crippled that industry. A five-month standoff resulted in the suspension of various projects, including Reynolds’ Deadpool 3 film.
One of the consequences of the strike settlement last November was a reduction in owners’ visits to The Racecourse Ground on match days, as filming of these shelved shows and films had to take priority, along with other commitments programmed, such as overseeing the third series of Welcome To Wrexham. as executive producers.
This has led to the duo following manager Phil Parkinson’s side mainly on television in recent months, meaning the group has discussed sharing co-chairmen with Ker and fellow board member Shaun Harvey, took over during the promotion.
“Shaun is very good at keeping a cool head,” says Ker, when asked for insight into the dynamics of these in-game discussions. “He tries to gauge everything from where we are. I’m closer to him on this scale. Then you have Ryan, who is quite emotional. Rob bounces off walls and is a man of action. I don’t know how he handles the sport – he wants to kick and head every ball.
Like the club, Welcome To Wrexham must evolve while remaining true to its roots.
The big change for series three came in the release schedule, moving from an autumn release to spring to give the series a more immediate feel. That, however, hasn’t changed the winning formula that earned the first series five Emmy Awards, ensuring we hear as much from the local community as the two Hollywood stars. What is notable, however, is the increased emphasis on locker room footage.
“I love the stories of local people,” says Ker, who joined Reynolds and McElhenney as an executive producer on the series after serving as a consulting producer.
“Very touching and moving. And there are once again wonderful stories, like that of Arthur Massey, one of our oldest living fans, who celebrated his 100th birthday. Some of the things around (midfielder) James Jones and Chloe and his wife and their son are very emotional. But I can’t deny that I love seeing our players rip the boards off (in the locker room) and then come back and produce extraordinary turnovers.
“Take the footage of Swindon (shown in episode two), when we are 4-1 down at half-time. We see that everyone is furious. The juxtaposition between that and the elation of the draw when we got back to 5-5 was magical.
“Especially because everyone who is on screen is people for whom I have deep affection. I love them. Seeing them happy is good for the soul.
Ker’s enthusiasm for Wrexham remains intact. He is hugely popular with staff and supporters in his role as executive director and is effectively the public face of the club when the owners are otherwise engaged.
However, that doesn’t stop him from missing his family and friends in Los Angeles. His career as a comedy writer and actor had to take a back seat. That can’t be easy, even considering how the Eton-educated Ker continues to write for the Apple TV show Mythic Quest, co-created by his wife Megan Ganz and McElhenney.
There was this title change on Welcome To Wrexham to reflect his increased role behind the camera, particularly when liaising with producer Patrick ‘Paddy’ McGarvey and his team in Wales.
“The crew is there all the time,” Ker says. “But, of course, we cover different areas. This allows me to say, “You may want to head to the club parking lot at 12:30 p.m., as Steven Fletcher, the Tartan Samurai, will appear.”
“Or it could steer the team towards the Wrexham minors project. Or some of the work done by the community trust. Basically finding stories by being there.
“I’m going to see a rough cut of the episodes, to check that they’ve put the right badge on the right club and so on. If someone says to me, “Wrexham makes the 340-mile round trip to Crewe,” I’ll jump in and say, “No, you found another Crewe on the internet.” (Wrexham and Crewe are less than 30 miles apart.)
As for the show’s big challenge of dealing with the absence of both co-owners at matches for much of this season, he adds: “There’s a feeling of, ‘How do we fit Rob and Ryan into this?’ .They’re very important, both very engaged, even when they’re not present. But it’s not that fun to show phone calls and Zoom calls on a documentary.
“Where we were lucky in the two and a half years covered by series one and two was that so much happened. He fell into our laps. I think of the Notts County match and Ben Foster who saved the penalty.
“I vividly remember turning around as I was screaming my heart out and catching the attention of Paddy, the main man on the ground organizing our cover. We looked at each other as if to say, “Oh, my God! Even we can’t spoil this episode, such is the drama we just saw.
“This season they had to box a little smarter. They had to work hard to get this story out this time.
“Capturing things like the period when we were in poor form and how that manifested itself in the dressing room. I’m really looking forward to people seeing that sort of thing. Plus the celebrations after Forest Green.
Mention of the afternoon Wrexham clinched promotion to League One brings us back to preparations for next season and the need for all areas of the club to continue to evolve.
“We’ve had three seasons of unprecedented success,” says Ker. “Everyone got used to it. But the reality is – and maybe I’ll be wrong this coming season – you can’t maintain that year after year. Manchester City can’t even do it.
“There will be difficult moments along the way, not just on the pitch. Take this summer, when we say goodbye to some pillars (of the team). Men who gave an extraordinary part of their lives to this club and crossed the barrier of pain. Sometimes they take a sideline position that they’re just not used to doing, but they still give it their all to help the boys cross the finish line. We say goodbye to these guys and it hurts.
“The heartbreaking thing is that as we move forward, more and more of these numbers are going to disappear.
“But that’s the nature of the club: it has to constantly evolve or it’s in trouble.”
Episodes one through three are available to stream via Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK. New episodes air every Thursday via FX in the US and the following day in the UK.
(Top photo: Ker flanked by McElhenney, left, and Reynolds; Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)