Wrexham Women have Champions League ambitions. Owning their own stadium is the first step

“You know, for when we reach the Champions League.”

The words tumble out of Mark Swales’ mouth before Wrexham’s new director of women’s football can retrieve them, left hanging in the November Welsh air outside the gates of The Rock, a picturesque ground in Rhosymedre on the edges of Wrexham that is preparing for its first match as Wrexham Women’s official home.

The natural response would be to scoff, to gently hand the words back to Swales, who joined Wrexham in October after 12 years with the Football Association, with a gentle pat on the back and a wish of luck.

Since the 2009-10 season, only three teams (Cardiff City, Swansea City and Cardiff Met) have won the Welsh top flight, earning passage to the Champions League qualification stages. No Welsh team has progressed to the Champions League proper.

On Sunday afternoon, just an hour-and-a-half before kick-off against six-time league champions Swansea City, the small circle of Wrexham staff assembled around Swales transforms into a kind of congregation.

The vision is simple, albeit grand: in the next four to five years, Wrexham will be consistently winning the Welsh league, opening the door to the Champions League.

“The byproduct of both of them is, how can Wrexham Women help Welsh football grow? The ambition is to consistently perform at our highest level, use the European lure to attract better players, to help the league professionalise and hopefully work with the likes of Cardiff and Swansea who have that professional outfit already to help the other clubs in the league to grow and develop as well,” says Swales.

“But I’d be lying if we didn’t say that, actually, the Champions League and seeing 10,000 people at the Racecourse come to support the girls would be amazing.”

Ambitions like this might be ascribed to delusion if this club weren’t so famous for forging these kinds of dreams into reality.

Sunday represented the first step on that journey: Wrexham Women’s official return to The Rock this season, with the ground’s deed formally in their name, becoming the first women’s team in the Welsh leagues to outright own their own stadium.

It is a move which puts Wrexham, who have finished third and fourth since returning to the top flight and reached two Welsh Cup finals, more in sync with some Women’s Super League (WSL) clubs in England.

At a capacity of 3,000 (just 500 of those seated), The Rock is not a venue for hosting potential Champions League opponents. But Swales sees the purchase more as a cornerstone rather than a standalone site.

Having designated high-performance facilities for the women’s first team and academy has been a discussion point at the club since the club’s takeover in 2021 by Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds and television producer and actor Rob Mac.

Forced to fold in 2016 due to lack of funds, the women’s team won promotion back to the top flight, known as the Adran Premier, in 2023 and announced 10 semi-professional contracts the following year. Wrexham are currently the only club in the Welsh top flight, a mostly amateur and semi-professional division, to have players (two) on full-time contracts.

Appointments have been made off the pitch as well, from the arrival of former Aston Villa assistant manager and Leicester Women’s academy director Jenny Sugarman in the summer as head coach, and Swales, who served as technical director of Chelsea Women’s academy and, most recently, as senior women’s coach development lead at the FA.

But purchasing The Rock in August, which Wrexham trained and played at but was owned by Welsh league side Cefn Druids, is arguably the most tangible act of faith yet.

While the women’s team used the pitch during pre-season, the facilities and pitch did not meet basic Football Association of Wales (FAW) licensing regulations for competitive play, meaning the women’s team began the Adran Premier season playing home matches in Buckley, 11 miles away, while The Rock was knocked into basic shape.

New bulbs were placed into flood lights, goal posts replaced, walls repainted, the floor of the dressing rooms relaid, phone lines put in and dial-up internet replaced with appropriate Wifi. The ground’s electrical wiring needed a full upheaval, while much of the fencing around the ground required fixing. A portion of the pitch also needed re-laying, with an agreement made with the FAW to relay the pitch next summer.

It is why, 90 minutes before kick-off for Wrexham’s Adran Premier match against Swansea, there is a tangible buzz around the place, frissons of months-long exhaustion colliding with the possibilities at play.

Because there is still so much to tackle.

Architect Jonathan Leary, who has also worked with the club on redeveloping the Kop Stand, as well as Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium and Liverpool’s Anfield, spends the hour leading up to kick-off canvassing the area, excitably discussing the potential of what can be done with the ginormous rock face on the ground’s north side once the vines are removed.

“The key thing that we’ve done over these last two months is get it to a level where we can host a game like this,” Swales says.

“We are in the very early stages of development plans. We’ve had site visits, an initial conversation of what is possible and it will come down to, in the end, what Michael (Williamson CEO) and the owners decide is what we want to invest in this facility.”

Swales has a Christmas list. At the top is bespoke gym facilities, as well as a designated area for rehabilitation and the medical team, ensuring that the women’s team no longer has to share and fit around the facilities and full-time environment of the men’s first team.

Also working out of The Rock will be the club’s girls academy set-up. Transforming Wrexham into a hub for women’s football development in the north and not a bypass for aspiring footballers on their way to Manchester, Liverpool or other parts of England’s northwest, has been a long-time ambition.

“It’s been said many times that with the success that the men’s side of the club has had, growth has been quicker than it could ever have imagined,” Swales says.

“But the infrastructure and the people behind that is not where they probably need to be. It’s the same with this project: all of a sudden we’ve now started to grow. Everyone’s finding their feet, finding what’s right and you’ll make some mistakes, but actually we’ve got a blank canvas and we can go, let’s get it right first time.”

Appropriately Wrexham’s return match arrived against Swansea City, the same team Wrexham hosted two years ago on their return to the top flight for the first time since the women’s team was forced to fold in 2016.

That match ended 3-3, a sign of Wrexham’s ability to compete at this level. Sunday’s match ended in a resounding screech that Wrexham can conquer, record-goalscorer Rosie Hughes thumping home Wrexham’s fourth goal in the 95th minute in a 4-2 win and sending Wrexham top of the table.

As the 509 fans in attendance showered Hughes with praise, Williamson shouted: “Cardiff 3-2 down to TNS!” sharing his phone screen bearing a picture of the table. Swales flashes a mirror screen back in Williamson’s direction. “We’re top of the league!”

For now, nothing feels too delusional.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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