COME ON YOU BOYZ ON SCREEN!
Boyband plot TV show to rival Hollywood stars’ Wrexham series after buying English soccer club
BOYZONE are the latest celebrities to buy a football club – and hope to emulate Ryan Reynolds’s success by filming a Wrexham-style TV documentary.
Reynolds and fellow actor Rob McElhenney, who co-own Wrexham FC, star in the Disney+ Welcome To Wrexham docuseries, which tracks their journey at the club.
Now, Boyzone stars Shane Lynch, 47, Ronan Keating, 46, and Keith Duffy, 49, along with former Westlife singer Brian McFadden, are creating their own TV series after buying a club in Lancashire.
Speaking to The Sun, Lynch said: ‘We’ve just bought Chorley Football Club. We start filming a documentary on that next week.
‘It’s about getting the club into a financially successful place, to get
‘We are a humble, hand-to-mouth club’
the players paid well and to get the whole kind of town back in love with one of the oldest football clubs in the world.
‘They [Ryan and Rob] have a big stadium. They have awesome stuff – we are nowhere near that. We are way down in the leagues. We’re a humble, hand-to-mouth club.’
As well as buying the club, which is in the sixth tier of English soccer, Boyzone are reportedly preparing to perform a string of live shows.
The Irish group formed in 1993 – comprised of Keating, Duffy, Lynch, Mikey Graham and Stephen Gately – and officially split in 2000, but have had numerous reunions since. In 2018, Boyzone said they were splitting for good after releasing one final album dedicated to bandmate Gately, who died in 2009 from complications of a congenital heart defect he didn’t know he had. The band vowed they would call it quits after their 25th anniversary tour and album that year. Boyzone were formed by Louis Walsh, who also created Westlife, and managed Keating for a period when he went solo. Walsh, 71, was also part of the original judging line-up of The X Factor with Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne. Boyzone have had six UK No1 singles, also five charttopping albums.
Explaining the latest venture, former Westlife star McFadden, 43, said earlier this month: ‘Shane’s business partner bought the club seven months ago and asked Shane to get involved.
‘Shane’s not really a football man but he knew that me and Keith love football so he got us involved, and Ronan.’
He added: ‘We want to be part of something from the ground up.
‘I’m a Manchester United fan myself, I’ve got season tickets at Old Trafford, but it’s a corporation. You look at something like Chorley Football Club and you see this belongs to the town, it belongs to the people, it belongs to the community. For us to be able to get involved in something at that level and to try and take it to the next level, well there’s a bit of romance to it.’
Comparisons have been made with the Wrexham takeover by Hollywood stars Reynolds and McElhenney, which attracted worldwide attention and has seen the club climb up the football pyramid. McFadden said: ‘What the boys have done at Wrexham is incredible... Wrexham’s always had a huge support, great stadium, great town. All it needed was a bit of extra love and care to help them do what they’re doing.
‘We are hoping we can do the same with Chorley. Look at this, this is non-league football and you’ve got a couple of thousand people out here having a great time, supporting the team.
‘If we can help those supporters reach a higher dream and we can be a part of it, it’d be great.’
He said that ‘we’d love to see Chorley playing in the professional leagues’, adding: ‘If we can get out of National North, there’s the National League and then in a few years, a bit of investment, bit of development, you never know.
‘Maybe they get out of National League and into League Two and then we will see what happens from there.’
‘Try to take it to the next level’