Man Utd’s loss is Wrexham’s gain as Hannah Keryakoplis follows in record-breaking footsteps
Wrexham Women embark on their first season of top-fight football since the team’s forced fold in 2016, a redemption journey fuelled by the support and dedication of the team’s new co-ownership
Look no further than the smirk.
The identical crossed arms, the same phlegmatic wide-legged stance, the light hair, the Personal Life section of Hannah Keryakoplis’ Wikipedia page stating clearly the blood relation – this is all tangential evidence to the cool, left-hitched smirk worn by the new Wrexham Women signing in her official club portrait, a near photocopy of the one festooning the monochromatic face of Tommy Gardner, the former England and Liverpool midfielder turned Wrexham’s record transfer in 1945, the great-grandfather of Keryakopli
Roots run deep at Wrexham. History is less a currency so much as a pulse. “It’s in my blood,” is Keryakoplis’ take. It’s difficult to argue with the Penyffordd-born footballer as she sits in a resplendent red Wrexham strip, the smirk twinkling on cue.
It’s all a bit perfect. Maybe even too perfect. Though it’s doubtful whether anything can be classified as too perfect within the (soon-to-be) four stands of the Racecourse Ground these days, a place where even the shapeless limits of Hollywood narrative have been routinely obliterated and reconfigured.
Besides, even in Hollywood, you can’t discount fate. Certainly not as a Wrexham fan. What’s an unexpected fourth-generation football bloodline when you have Deadpool in the Directors Box?
Fate or not, it has been a circuitous journey that sees Keryakoplis standing in the middle of the Racecourse, from being spotted by Manchester United scouts when the club had no women’s team to breaking through at Liverpool and experiencing the Women’s Super League’s first steps.
That the 29-year-old’s journey might include the ground the striker took in as a child from the stony terraces was, previously, implausible. The place she experienced the weekend religion that was watching Dennis Lawrence, Andy Morrell, Levi Mack…
“Lee Trundle was there too.” Keryakoplis is more than capable of listing every player to walk across the grassy expanse, but she refrains.
Instead she nods affably along with the simple description that she’s a “Wrexham OG”, a point of pride in a fanbase constantly swelling to the -nth degree.
Hannah Keryakoplis (L) is the great-granddaughter of Tommy Gardner (R), a former Liverpool and England midfielder who was Wrexham’s then-record signing in 1945 (
Wrexham AFC)
Indeed, after an historic double-promotion season, the aura around Wrexham is one of febrile contagion. Where Phil Parkinson’s side have endured a wobbly baptism back to EFL life, Wrexham Women host Swansea City on Sunday to mark their return to top-flight football since the team’s forced fold in 2016.
The expectations are high. Wrexham not only secured promotion to the Adran Premier (Wales’ top-flight) last season; they did so by taking a battering ram to the second division: 71 goals scored, six conceded, zero losses.
It is a ludicrous list of statistics, chronicled entirely by Welcome to Wrexham season two. Already, Keryakoplis says, the cameras are rolling for season three.
The likelihood of a similar rampaging gazump this season, however, is low. The Adran Premier, while evolving, is a different competitive beast with established behemoths (Swansea are one of them) and plucky disruptors eager to make even survival a challenge.
Manager Steve Dale has ingrained this message into his team. “We need to bring that extra” is a common instruction, though these efforts have done little to quell the outside noise surrounding Wrexham’s arrival.
