At first glance, former NFL quarterback Joey Harrington’s career doesn’t have many similarities to Wrexham or football, the sport he stopped playing at around age 10.
But the third overall pick in the 2002 NFL draft insisted the Welsh club’s rise had matched his own. Harrington and his family regularly wake up early on Saturdays from their home in Portland, Oregon, on the west coast, to watch Phil Parkinson’s team play live from 7,750 miles away.
“If you had told me 10 years ago I would have bought a subscription to the Vanarama National League,” he says of the competition that is the fifth tier of the English football pyramid. Wrexham won the title in 2022-23. They would have laughed at you.
“But now I wake up at 6.30am every Saturday to watch the 7am game (3pm UK time). Just a few years ago, doing something like that would have been unthinkable. But as a family we are completely absorbed in the club and their journey.”
Harrington’s sporting journey comes with a pedigree. His father, John, played quarterback at the University of Oregon in the late 1960s, and his grandfather, Bernie, played quarterback at the University of Oregon about 25 years ago. If he hadn’t served in World War II, Bernie might have played in the NFL after receiving significant interest from several teams, including George Halas’ Chicago Bears.
Joey’s three years as Oregon’s quarterback, following in his father’s footsteps, proved to be a transformation for the team, taking them from an underdog to second place in the national college game. Harrington was a key player and 2001 Heisman Trophy finalist before the Detroit Lions drafted him the following year. Only fellow quarterback David Carr (Houston Texans) and future Hall of Famer Julius Peppers (Carolina Panthers) got off the board quicker.
After four seasons in Detroit, he played for the Miami Dolphins, Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints. It’s an impressive resume by any standard, but one that shows no signs of retiring when it comes to a small club playing an entirely different sport on the other side of the Atlantic.
Join us for series one of Welcome To Wrexham, a documentary following Hollywood celebrities Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ takeover of the club and the family’s subsequent visit to north Wales.
“Our sons Jack and Emmet are getting to the age where we want to start traveling abroad,” says Harrington. “To give them perspective on the world and what’s in it.
“We planned our trip by getting tickets for the Manchester City vs. Liverpool game through Nike (a major sponsor of the University of Oregon sports teams). Even though everyone thought my kids would play football, the boys, both goalkeepers, were very excited to gravitate towards it.
“The plan was to spend some time in London and then drive to Manchester to visit friends in Bristol. Then Jack, the eldest child, says, ‘Can we stop in Wrexham on the way?’ By now we’ve all seen Documentary Series 1 and loved it.”
Wrexham were locked in a two-way scrap over the National League title with Notts County at the time, but when the Harrington family visited the site they received a warm welcome, including an impromptu tour of the ground by club secretary and Wrexham’s longest-serving manager Geraint Parry. – Serving staff.
“The first person we ran into in the tunnel was (Wrexham’s then goalkeeper and former England international) Ben Foster,” Harrington remembers. “He walked straight to the boys. Without exaggeration, I started talking to them as if they were family, asking them all kinds of questions.
Ben Foster (Joey Harrington) and Harrington’s sons
“As soon as he discovered their favorite position, he said, ‘I’m a goalkeeper too. ‘My name is Ben,’ he says. You could see Jack clicking as he realized, ‘Oh my God, this is England goalkeeper Ben Foster.’
“Three steps further down the tunnel and (Wrexham manager) Phil Parkinson appears. He said ‘hello’ to the boys and then had a conversation with my wife, Emily, who still talks about it to this day. It’s probably a conversation you’ve had thousands of times, but it’s probably one you don’t even remember. But he took some time to talk to his family and the boys with Emily spoke to me a lot.”
The Harringtons’ whistle stop tour also included meeting the club’s store staff and head groundsman Paul Chaloner before calling into The Turf, the pub next to their Wrexham home made famous in the documentary.
“Wayne (Jones, landlord) was great with the boys,” he adds. “They made them feel so welcome that Jack, who was 13 at the time and it was his first time in a bar, said to me, ‘Dad, can we play pool?’ There are plenty of coins on the table for us to use.’
“I’m like, ‘No, no, no, that’s not how it works.’ But the person who received the money said, ‘Don’t worry. I said, ‘You can have my place.’ When the world started flocking to this small town in Wales, they treated our family like we were visiting for the first time.
“I’ve seen professional sports at the highest level, including 10 years in the NFL. I saw what that world was like. So, as a father, I literally want to see how everyone is doing, from the club shop staff to the guy who runs the pub to the Premier League goalkeeper who saved a PK (penalty kick) against Notts County just a few weeks later. “If I had treated my children and my family, Wrexham could have lost every game forever and I would still support this club.”
Autzen Stadium; Eugene, Oregon. October 12, 2024.
Actress Kaitlin Olson returned to her former university for a huge college football game between nationally ranked No. 3 Oregon State and No. 2 Ohio State. She was joined in the Oregon record crowd of 60,129 by her husband Rob. Like Rob McElhenney, his It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia co-star and co-owner of Wrexham.
2 years ago @Wrexham_AFC Welcomed our family. On Saturday my OR&Wrexham worlds collided. ExDir @thehumphreyker I’m running 26.2. @WrexhamMiners. To help, we will match every $2 donated, up to $2,620. It’s a small world and full of kindness https://t.co/DyzB8WQ2JD pic.twitter.com/1tYU2SpfFx
— Joey Harrington (@joey3harrington) October 19, 2024
Also in attendance was Harrington, who got it all started as a college quarterback in the 1990s. They all spend the afternoon talking and posing for a postgame photo that sees the three perform the ‘O’ hand signal that later became synonymous with Harrington’s final Oregon game before turning pro.
“This was my first time meeting Rob and Kaitlin,” he says. “They were great, no pretense at all. You’d never know they were Hollywood stars. They were just part of the family and were very welcoming to me and my friends.
“We spoke to Wrexham and showed them pictures of Ben Foster with the boys. The sight of those two was not surprising at all. That’s how we’ve been treated at Wrexham, where the town, the team and the organization follow the example of leadership.”
Harrington and his family have yet to visit Wrexham for a match, but he hopes to put that right next year. They attended a pre-season friendly against Manchester United in San Diego, California last year. Paul Mullin suffered four broken ribs and a collapsed lung. This July, a crowd of 10,379 attended the match between Wrexham Women and Portland Thorns. Records of Welsh clubs.
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The latter comes shortly after Harrington was confirmed as an investor in National Women’s Soccer League club Thorns, along with two-time Olympic decathlon winner Ashton Eaton and Olympic heptathlon bronze medalist Brianne Theisen-Eaton.
For a man who readily admits he stopped playing for several years over what he thought was a play delay in men’s soccer, this is quite a transition.
“I would get the stretcher out to take the players away when they got down on the pitch,” says Harrington, 46, who has pledged $2,620 to executive director Humphrey Ker’s fundraising attempt for Wrexham Miners’ Rescue. I’m running the Manchester Marathon next year.
“Then he goes to the sideline and the magic spray comes out and he’s going to be okay. I had no respect for it. So, despite playing through my senior year, my experience with soccer was not very positive.”
My mind began to change when I watched Canada’s Christine Sinclair, the sport’s all-time leading international goalscorer with 190 goals in 331 games, play for the University of Portland in the early 2000s.
“Christine was knocked off the ball,” he recalls. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh, now there’s a play.’ But no. She immediately got back up and elbowed the girl on the way up. Not only was she my immediate favorite player, but I thought, ‘I’m only going to watch women’s soccer.’”
Harrington playing for the Miami Dolphins in 2006 (Al Bello/Getty Images)
Welcome To Wrexham helped to change that stance, especially after he began to see parallels between his own career and how the Welsh club’s fortunes changed under Reynolds and McElhenney.
“What really resonates with me is the similarity between what happened at Wrexham and my time with the Oregon football program,” he says. “When I showed up in ’97, we were considered irrelevant to the rest of us. We thought about it later. So our group sat down and decided to change things. We were going to win a national championship, among other things.
“A lot of people laughed at us. But we stuck with it and things started to change. Okay, we didn’t win the national championship my senior year and we finished second in the country. But it was incredibly special to have the program in a place where we remain part of the national conversation.
“I got into the NFL later and it was kind of a business. ‘What can you do for me? How do I get mine?’ and stabbing people in the back to get another year (according to the contract). I hear this when you’re running a multi-billion dollar business.
“But my point is, I have personal experience of what can happen when a group of people come together who genuinely care about each other as well as a goal that stands out from the rest of the unrelated goals. We see the same thing at Wrexham.
“There’s more to it than just putting your butt on the seat, there’s more to it than scraping and clawing your way to the top. How you do it, who you bring in, and why you do it are also important. Wrexham knows.”
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(Top photo: Mr. and Mrs. Harrington/Joey Harrington visiting the racetrack)
