Wrexham AFC Women playing at UCLA!
If you’re thinking, “Sports, why?!” just know that I’d normally agree with you. I’ve never been to a football game (American or otherwise), and I wouldn’t have started now except that I’m a fan of the “Welcome to Wrexham” documentary TV series about an underdog football club from Wales. Like most sports documentaries, it’s not a sports story but a people story. And after watching season three I realized the women are the more impressive players, like if I had to pick one I’d prefer to support a women’s game.

The filmmakers interview various male players sitting in their backyard with cutaways to a wife in the kitchen simultaneously wrangling children and making a meal, and the men are saying, “Yeah, she’s such a great mum.” Then the filmmakers interview the female players at their day jobs or in the car taking the kids to daycare and they’re saying, “Yeah, we just got breakfast for everyone and now I have to drop her off before work and then football practice is later.”

Wrexham’s women players have day jobs because their salaries are negligible. The top scorer for the men’s team makes an estimated salary of $300,000 a year, and the top scorer for the women’s team works part-time as a prison officer at the Wrexham jail. Then the filmmakers cut to the club owners who praise the women’s top scorer for making it to 100 goals so much sooner than the men’s top scorer (she averages two goals a game), followed by the owners saying they can’t pay the women because it’s not allowed.
So it was nice to see male fans at the game wearing the “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” tee. Fans lined up early in a Disneyland-length line while bewildered UCLA students trudged up the hill. “What’s this line for?” one asked. We could hear another explaining to his fellow students about the visiting team from “Welsh,” which got a delighted titter from the Wrexham fans.
Once inside the gates games organizers had a collection of goodies for fans to enjoy while waiting for the kickoff. There were coffee samples, pictures of the team, posters, a merch store, photo-op stations, and a chance to win a trip to Wales.
Wrexham AFC owner Rob McElhenney was on site to participate in a pre-kickoff jersey exchange and say a few words of welcome to open the game. The crowd burst into cheers and applause as he walked off the field. Unfortunately for the Wrexham fans (and it sounded like most of the stadium were Wrexham fans), we didn’t get to see any Wrexham goals. They lost 0-9 to the excellent SoCal FC team. Seeing the game in person was impressive. That field is huge! The players are running constantly! And it’s not like jogging but like sprinting combined with explosive changes in direction so they can sprint somewhere else. They made it look easy.

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