Gary Bennett: Wrexham’s hero long before Ryan Reynolds

The moment says plenty about Reynolds; a bit of history homework showing his buy-in to the League One club is about more than money.

But it probably says more about Bennett, the reject from the rivals who went from factory worker to one of the north Wales club’s greatest goalscorers during the 1990s.

“I used to say I made shirts, but I was too embarrassed to admit I worked on women’s blouses,” says Bennett, sat at home resting up after belated surgery on the knee injury that 26 years ago ended a career which started in unlikely fashion.

The Merseysider was a cutter but was more suited to putting the ball in the back of the net, something he did at an alarming rate in amateur football before turning pro following a trial with Wigan at the age of 22.

He found himself at Wrexham’s cross-border rivals Chester when Joey Jones, the former Liverpool defender and number two to Brian Flynn at the Racecourse, enquired if he would consider joining.

Out of contract, he was asked to tour the Isle of Man in pre-season to see if he would fit in. Not quite the Stateside tours of the current era.

“But they would only pay me £500 to go,” the 61-year-old recalls. “I couldn’t risk getting injured and possibly losing a chance of a move somewhere for that, so I said no.”

Wrexham struggled, a second phone call came, and a love affair was born.

Eventually.

“I didn’t score and got booed for something like the first eight weeks,” he laughs.

“I knew it was sink or swim, but slowly I won them over. Maybe it was the way I’d come into football, that I wasn’t refined, but I just clicked with the fans and there was just something about me and the club. It got to the point I’d go to the ground not hoping I’d score, but knowing I would.”

Some 47 goals in one season in 1994-95 is testament to that, but the affinity was just as much about his all-out attitude that aligned with the working-class community now being beamed into the homes of US documentary watchers.