Wrexham’s former CEO – from covering club costs on his credit card to flying fans to their U.S. tour

Don Bircham, the one-time Wrexham chief executive whose travel agency business will start flying supporters to the club’s U.S. tour next week, remembers well his first brush with a pre-season trip.

“Denis Smith was Wrexham manager,” he says. “He invited me along and I thought, ‘Why not?’ This was long before I joined the board or anything like that, though I was a sponsor at the time. We played Glentoran (in Belfast) and one or two other teams, a great trip.

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“But then when we were checking out of the hotel, Denis, who is a lovely guy, comes up to me and says, ‘Have you got your credit card on you, Don? You wouldn’t mind settling this, would you? It’s just the club has no money at the moment’. I realised then why I’d been invited!”

Not the most auspicious introduction to a Wrexham pre-season. But not enough to put him off joining the board for the best part of five years after the Supporters Trust saved the club.

He stepped down from the unpaid role of chief executive in October 2016 to concentrate on his own business interests, which today include several pubs and restaurants across Wrexham plus running Hays Travel’s north west operations — one of many businesses impacted by the club’s giant strides under American owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

“Who would have thought we would be organising pre-season trips to the United States for Wrexham supporters and they’d be playing Manchester United?” he says. “Not so long ago, pre-season was Aberystwyth and places like that. Or maybe at a push Northern Ireland, as in the year Denis invited me.

“Nothing like this. What these guys have achieved over the last couple of years is fantastic. They have taken Wrexham to a level that is beyond anyone’s expectations.”

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