Wrexham’s Paul Mullin: ‘As soon as we leave the pitch, Ryan’s first to text’
‘The desire to win will be the same as every other game,” Paul Mullin says as he anticipates a Hollywood-style finale for Wrexham on Saturday afternoon while their fans at home and around the world celebrate a second straight promotion. Wrexham’s last game in League Two is against the new champions, Stockport County, and Mullin is determined to end another tumultuous and successful season with a personal milestone.
If Mullin scores against Stockport he will become the first player since Alan Shearer to have racked up at least 25 goals in four consecutive seasons across the top five flights of English football. Mullin has spent the past hour thoughtfully discussing his role in the delirium surrounding Wrexham’s rise under the celebrity ownership of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney and a range of subjects from finding acceptance and even joy in his son’s autism to how this season began with a fleeting acknowledgment of his seemingly imminent death.
The 29-year-old speaks with fresh intensity: “I’m a winner. Every single day in training I want to be on the winning team. So, come Saturday, I’m going out to win the game and then I’ll enjoy some time off. If you win, everything always feels better.”
The third season of Welcome to Wrexham, the wildly popular documentary series which tracks Reynolds’ and McElhenney’s involvement with one of the world’s oldest football clubs, begins next week. There is sure to be more of the same recipe as Hollywood and a gritty old Welsh city continue their sporting romcom – and Mullin smiles when I ask if Reynolds and McElhenney will be in Wrexham on Saturday.
“I think Rob’s intending to be there. But they’re always there in spirit, and online, at every game. As soon as we leave the pitch, Ryan’s the first to text me, even before my missus.”
When they took over in the summer of 2021 it was made plain to Reynolds and McElhenney that to find a way out of non-league football they needed a superior striker. It became McElhenney’s task to woo Mullin away from Cambridge United – whose promotion to League One had been built on his record 32 goals in the preceding campaign.
In his enjoyable book, My Wrexham Story, Mullin stresses that the names of the two American actors meant nothing to him when the club approached him. It’s amusing that Reynolds now describes Mullin’s autobiography as “the best book I’ve ever read” and McElhenney calls his star player “one of the greatest footballers in the world”. Their wryly gushing praise is rooted in an appreciation of the 90 league goals he has scored in three seasons for Wrexham.
Does Mullin still feel the weight of responsibility foisted on him when he moved down two divisions to the National League? “It’s exactly the same,” Mullin replies. “But the thing I’m most proud of is that when the pressure’s really on, I tend to play my best football. Having the expectation and the weight on me to deliver is something I relish – because that pressure comes when you’re successful.”
The latest batch of internet stories about Mullin have stated that he will make history and surpass the likes of Thierry Henry and Harry Kane if he achieves his fourth straight 25-goal haul this season. Yet it seems to have been forgotten that Shearer achieved this feat playing for Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United between 1993 and 1997. Is Mullin aware of the hype? “Yeah, somebody told me the other day. It’s something I’d love to achieve. Personal accolades are brilliant but the real goal was to get promoted, and we’ve achieved that. Anything else is just a bonus.”
The season began worryingly for Mullin. During a pre-season friendly against Manchester United in San Diego, a collision with the opposition goalkeeper, Nathan Bishop, meant that Mullin sustained a collapsed lung and four broken ribs. “The lung got punctured but at first I thought I’m just winded,” Mullin says. “So I lay there, waiting for it to pass. But for almost two minutes I couldn’t take a breath in. It was horrendous. [His teammates] Elliot Lee and Anthony Forde stood over me and the looks on their faces made me even worse. Afterwards they told me my lips turned blue.
“It was only for a few split seconds but I just accepted the fact that I can’t breathe. So I stopped trying because it was causing me pain. But giving up allowed me to breathe and the medical professionals were soon around me, giving me oxygen.”
That momentary brush with his own morality lingered in hospital. “That night they told me I couldn’t fly home for a couple of weeks. I just wanted to see my little boy, Albi, and my partner, Mollie, and I’m actually getting emotional now thinking about it. I started crying in hospital because it was hard to accept. But of course Albi was fine and that’s all that matters.”
The most moving chapter in Mullin’s book, which was written last year, is devoted to Albi and his autism. Mullin often struggled with guilt when away from his son and with anxiety over Albi’s future. But the difference today is marked. “Writing it was really tough but reading the audiobook was even harder, because then the emotion comes out and you hear it in my voice,” Mullin says. “Now, thankfully, I found a way to not feel it so much. I wouldn’t change Albi for a second but I’d researched so many things and I had the chance to go to America to see specialists to try to help him become talkative. But I sat down with Mollie and said: ‘I don’t want to do it. I don’t want anything that changes his personality.’”
How did Mullin change his own attitude? “We went on a family holiday and decided we weren’t going to do all the intensive stuff we did every day to try to help him. For two weeks, we just relaxed with Albi. Me and Millie saw the biggest improvement in Albi because he was happy. I understood that nothing else mattered.
“It’s not that we’ve stopped trying to help him – but if he doesn’t want to do it we’re not going to force him. I’ll keep trying different things until he wants to enjoy one. He’s now so cute and happy and if he isn’t smiling he’s probably asleep. He’s talking more and copying us more. Yesterday we had his presents delivered and I’m looking forward to enjoying his fifth birthday with him.”
Mullin is passionate in his support of the Your Space autism charity in Wrexham. He has also worn the Autism Awareness logo on his football boots and he always makes an A for Albi, and autism, after scoring.
But in October 2022 he posted a different logo on his boots: Fuck the Tories. Outrage followed and the club asked him not to wear the boots. “I thought it was brilliant,” he says with a grin. “I didn’t even have to wear them and all the channels, like the BBC, showed the world what the Tories were. Who cares what’s on the side of football boots? The bit that bothered me most is that three words on the side of a football boot offended some people a lot more than starving children do.
“The boots were a lot more meaningful to me when I stuck an autism logo on the side in the FA Cup against Sheffield United. That’s the real cause – acceptance of autism – and something I’ll continue to do because it’s crucial to so many people who need help. Obviously the Tory boots will be surplus to requirements pretty soon. Then hopefully we can make headway giving real help to kids, and to the country as a whole.”
Mullin has a platform because he is recognised constantly in Wrexham and Liverpool, where he still lives, and in America where the documentary has been so popular. “It’s a privilege people stop me for a photo but I still get awkward and embarrassed – because I’m just me. But it was really touching when they did the mural of me in Wrexham. I’m used to seeing them round Anfield so to have my own in Wrexham makes me really grateful.”
How will he feel if a bigger club tries to sign him? “Obviously, I want to play at the highest level possible. I’d love to play for Wales, the country where my nan was born. But in terms of leaving the club it’s never something I think about. I signed a new contract with Wrexham in January because I absolutely adore it. I come home every day and see Albi, which is the main reason I signed in the first place.
‘I’m here for the next two years. The fans love me, I love them and everything about the club. But if another club made an offer and Wrexham accepted it, then I’m in a position where they’re telling me to go. It’s not something I’m looking for or would wish to happen. It’s quite the opposite. I’d love to play in the Premier League for Wrexham. That’s the pipe dream.
“It’s also the owners’ dream to one day become a Premier League club. Who knows whether that takes 10 or 20 years? Fifty years or five years?
Ryan and Rob are really ambitious and phenomenally successful in all they do. In football they don’t want it to be any different. They want to keep going and get us promoted again.”
Is it feasible that Wrexham could reach the Championship at the end of next season? “All I know is we’re going to give it everything to be at the top end of the table and we have a winner’s mentality. It’s going to be tougher but it’s a challenge we’ll relish.”
Mullin was bullied as a young boy by a coach at the Everton academy and released years later from the Liverpool academy by Steve Cooper, who lost his position as Nottingham Forest’s manager this season. Micky Mellon, the manager at Tranmere, also never gave Mullin much chance to establish himself. They all now know about Mullin’s success at Wrexham but he says: “I don’t know if I feel vindicated. I always believed I would do well and somebody else’s opinion was never going to alter my belief whether I was at Morecambe, Swindon or Tranmere. It’s more pleasing for my family but I just look ahead.”
The Wrexham squad will soon fly to Las Vegas as, like last year, Reynolds and McElhenney are helping them celebrate promotion in style. But Mullin is looking much farther ahead and he believes he could “absolutely” play at a higher level for another six years.
“I’m coming into my prime,” Mullin says at the end of this long but triumphant season. “I feel physically better than ever and I’m absolutely loving it. I want to continue as long as possible and could probably do a bit more recovery work when I get home. That’s not so easy having a child like Albi – but I wouldn’t change a thing. His happiness will always be my No 1 priority.”
It’s a privilege people stop me for a photo but I still get awkward and embarrassed – because I’m just me