Welcome to Wrexham: Gresford

October 26, 2023 9:16 PM - Season 2, Episode 10

The darkest day in Wrexham history looms over the team and town as they try to shift to a winning mentality.
posted by kitten kaboodle (4 comments total)

This episode was so incredibly emotional. I knew a lot about Aberfan, but did not know much at all about Gresford, and the way they tied it in to Wrexham‘s relationship to the football team was so well done. Man, this show just continues to surprise and move me.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 10:42 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not crying, you're crying. My great-grandfather was a "fire man" (safety officer) in the Brynkinallt colliery in nearby Chirk, and part of a rescue team that went underground at Gresford in the hours after the explosion. Another great-grandfather was killed in one of the hundreds of "minor" accidents, a roof-fall in the Green Colliery, Ruabon. His widow received enough money to pay for his gravestone, but no further compensation. Every family from the area probably has similar stories.

Good to hear "Yma o Hyd" at the end, but it's a shame they didn't start the subtitles until after the lines "Er gwaetha pob Dic Siôn Dafydd, Er gwaetha'r hen Fagi a'i chriw...Ry'n ni yma o hyd" (Despite every Anglicised lickspittle, despite old Maggie [Thatcher] and her crew...we're still here.) The Welsh FA didn't shy away from the the significance of those lines, in their pre-World Cup video of the song.
posted by ceiriog at 11:59 AM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

Like I'm not going to cry when that historian/tour guide found that they were incorporating the sister wheel into the new stand?

And I absolutely can believe it, but I can't believe they didn't pay the men in the mine a full shift.
posted by gladly at 2:46 PM on October 28, 2023

Thank you so much, ceiriog, for sharing that here.

I’ve learned a few words of Welsh but definitely nothing that would have helped me without the subtitles, so I would not have minded them kicking in earlier myself. Thanks too for the video link.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 6:47 PM on October 28, 2023