As a lifelong fan who has practised law for the past 25 years, Andrew Foley Jones did his bit during the decade when Wrexham were run by supporters.

He was also part of the legal team when Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought the club in 2021, even taking part in the midnight call that confirmed the deal was finally done.

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Now, those years on the terraces and his stint on the ‘inside’ at The Racecourse Ground have become the inspiration behind a new novel called It’s Always Sunny in Wrexham, which the author describes as a “blend of fact and fiction”.

The plot centres on a fanatical Wrexham follower waking up from a decade-long coma in 2030 to learn that two Hollywood A-listers have taken over his beloved club.

“At the side of my bed is a psychiatrist — Sophia Paskin,” explains Andrew. “She’s the granddaughter of legendary Wrexham player John Paskin. Rob and Ryan are there as well. Over a couple of weeks, they explain how I came to be in a coma and what had happened in the intervening decade.

“Pandemics, wars, social change, the demise of the Tories in the mid-2020s, many things. I won’t spoil the ending but it culminates in a play-off final.”

More of that later. Let’s talk first about how this fan who attended his first game with dad, Peter Jones, in August 1978 — “Norwich beat us 3-1, I should have realised then it would be a rocky ride!” — got involved in an official capacity.

“I was introduced to Spencer Harris,” he says about a key figure in keeping the club going during the ten years when the Wrexham Supporters Trust were at the helm. “This was around 2016 and a time when anyone with a particular skill set was being asked to help out.

“I specialise in business sales and purchases. Spencer asked me to help with a few things on a free basis, which I was delighted to do. The work was quite random and I got to know Spencer well.

“He took stick off some but I’ll always speak very highly of what he did for this club. The hours he put in alongside having a big job and a family. I always defend Spencer if anyone is critical.”

Fast forward to 2020 and a phone call from Harris that would change Wrexham forever. “Spencer called me to say, ‘You’re not going to believe what will happen in a few minutes’,” adds Andrew, a season ticket holder. “It was the announcement about the takeover.

“I was like a kid at Christmas. This is my club, the club I first watched with my dad all those years ago when we’d travel on the coach from Prestatyn. Now, I’m suddenly doing documents concerning Wrexham AFC’s future.

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“It was during the pandemic. You couldn’t meet anyone. It was all telephone calls and Zoom, which had just started. I’m at home in my office and having meetings with lawyers from all over the place.

“Remember, I can’t tell any of my mates this. That was the weirdest thing. Same when I first got involved with the Trust. I’d be going to games and it was a whole new experience. Part of being a fan is the conjecture and the gossip.

“Suddenly, I knew what was happening behind the scenes but I couldn’t say anything. A mate would say, ‘Oh, I’ve heard we will be buying so-and-so’. But I had to keep quiet. In a way, it diminished my enjoyment as a fan.”

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Getting involved on the legal side may have dented Andrew’s matchday experience. But it did have one big upside.

“I was already writing this book about a guy who had been in a coma for ten years and then woken up in 2030,” he adds. “But after getting involved with the takeover, I suddenly thought, ‘Football fits my story idea’.”

Andrew has lived in Chester for the past 18 years. The home of Wrexham’s bitter rivals is just a few miles from where we meet — the Jaunty Goat coffee shop. He is firmly entrenched behind enemy lines. This can be a good and bad thing.

“I made sure I wore my running shoes every time we played in Chester,” he says about a rivalry that, in the past, has been known to turn violent. “After the game, the police would escort the Wrexham fans back into the centre and we’d get as far as the (High) Cross over there, which is literally 100 yards from my house.

“I’d tell the police but they wouldn’t let me go, meaning I’d be marched all the way to the station and only then allowed to walk off on my own as everyone else got on the train to Wrexham. That meant I had to run the gauntlet of all the Chester lads who had followed the Wrexham fans, looking for trouble.

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“The flipside to living in a rival’s city is you can have a bit of fun. We had a launch event for the book in here and I left a few books out. The Chester manager (Calum McIntyre) used to come in here quite a lot for his morning drink. Apparently, he wasn’t too happy to see all this Wrexham stuff.

“Next time I went in, the girls were telling me, ‘Oh, you lost us a customer there’. I don’t think he’s been back since!”

Andrew loves living in Chester with partner Sarah. But he’s also a proud Welshman and made sure both their kids, Ianto and Iolo, were born over the border. “Ryan and Rob have done more than any Welsh Tourism Board could do to publicise this county and our unique identity,” he adds. “I love that.”

The Welsh identity and football are themes that run through the book. The sport has been such an integral part of Andrew’s life — his first date with Sarah was an away game at Port Vale in the FA Cup.

Things clearly went better that afternoon than a trip to the match with a previous girlfriend. “We played Everton and there was loads of trouble in the crowd,” he says with a grimace. “A bit of a nightmare, as this girl I’d taken along was determined to get involved. We didn’t see each other again after that.”

That anecdote doesn’t make the book but plenty of others do from 45 years of following Wrexham. “There’s some random stuff that actually happened,” he adds. “Such as the day my dad’s mate was linesman when we played Bristol Rovers.

“He gave a free kick due to believing (goalkeeper) Dai Davies had kicked the ball outside the penalty area. The sort of thing that never used to get given. But he gave the free kick and Bristol Rovers scored from it.

“We’d come to the game with this mate of my dad’s, which meant he was giving us a lift home, too. People were pelting stones at the side of the car as we drove off. I found it thrilling, going down the Mold Road with all these kids chasing after the car!

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“That’s part of the factual bits of the book. The fictional stuff is how I see the 2020s unfolding. Hopefully culminating in the world becoming a fairer and more equal place.”

All manner of weird and wonderful things happen as the 2020s unfold, including Joe Wicks becoming Prime Minister and Hugh Jackman buying Chester FC. The book, the first in a planned trilogy, culminates in Jackman’s new club taking on Wrexham at Wembley in 2030 with the prize for the victor being a place in the Premier League.

Even that, though, isn’t the only potential Hollywood ending to this tale, with Andrew currently in talks over a possible film or TV series. “A couple of screenwriters approached me,” he adds. “We’re talking to production companies and have done a treatment, to see how it looks on the screen.

“As if this wasn’t crazy enough already. I’m told Joe Wicks has a copy of the book. So has Dr Chris (van Tulleken, another with a cameo role) from the BBC. He got in touch via Twitter and sent me a video to say how much he enjoyed it.”

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(Photo: Richard Sutcliffe)

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