Man Utd's loss is Wrexham's gain as Keryakoplis follows in family footsteps
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 Keryakoplis.
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?
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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.
This is, after all, the team bankrolled by two TV and movie heavyweights, with their matchday t-shirts sponsored by a major American airline and training tops by Blake Lively's Betty Buzz and frequently tweeted by a tranche of American A-listers eager to get in on the Wrexham act.
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More than 15,000 tuned into YouTube to watch Wrexham Women’s promotion play-off victory last season, while 10,000 packed the Racecourse for their penultimate match of the season.
Wrexham celebrate winning the 2022/23 Genero Adran North & South play-off fixture between Wrexham AFC Women & Briton Ferry Llansawel Ladies FC at Latham Park (Pic by John Smith/FAW)For the nascent Adran Premier, the numbers and attention are unrivalled and, inadvertently, place a target on Wrexham’s back.
“We feel that everyone wants to play Wrexham and beat Wrexham,” Keryakoplis says. “That’s where our heads are at, that’s the vibe. Because we’re Wrexham. We have this thing behind us.”
It’s a fascinating new identity. The once sleeping giant is now both the league’s pantomime villain and the unofficial pacesetter for women’s football in Wales. Already, Wrexham have shifted the landscape, with training sessions four times a week (more than any other club) and a new semi-professional operation that has since seen more than half the Adran Premier follow suit.
Wrexham have more plans to push the boundaries. But already it’s a far cry from the state of women’s football in Wales when Keryakoplis grew up, when pay-to-play models ruled and any ambitions beyond the local park lay across the border.
Keryakoplis, too, is a statement. The former Liverpool and Birmingham City player experienced first hand the origin, growth, and accompanying challenges of women’s top-flight football in England. She played alongside Nikita Parris, Alex Greenwood, Jen Beattie and a slew of the league's other early stars, experienced the elation of promotion, the wrath of derbies and the thrill of last-ditch winners.
Hannah Keryakoplis of Liverpool powers past Alex Greenwood and Lindsay Johnson of Everton during the FA WSL Merseyside Derby in 2012 (Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)After taking a break from football following a move to third-tier Derby County, Keryakoplis received a call this summer from Dale, her former coach at Liverpool, with a homecoming offer that was impossible to reject.
Will Keryakoplis outscore her great-grandfather’s record of four goals in 33 Wrexham appearances? The 59 goals in her last 82 club appearances suggests yes.
Even so, Keryakoplis is amusingly humble about her abilities (“I’m more than happy to feed [striker] Rosie Hughes, all day and all night”), instead underlining the broader responsibility as the oldest head in a young team.
“I look at the girls who are 10-12 years younger than me like I would have looked at myself years ago. The technical side, the mental side. I know there are girls in that team that could go on to play as far as they want to, so for me, it’s experience."
Nikita Parris (L) of Everton in action with Hannah Keryakoplis of Liverpool during the WSL Merseyside derby in 2012 (Photo by Chris Brunskill - The FA/The FA via Getty Images)Keryakoplis has also tasked herself with inculcating the squad with a new edge. Keryakoplis, by her own admission, is loud. She “likes to get the troops going” and has a steely, boisterous spirit determined to do that.
“When I got to Wrexham and we had our first pre-season game, I was very bullish, telling everyone that we’re too nice. I know what it’s like to be promoted into a league where people are three times as big as you. In the nicest way possible, you can be their best friend off the pitch but when it comes to the 90 minutes on the pitch, we need to be more aggressive," she continues.
“Sometimes it’s not a bad thing to have a chip on your shoulder. The men’s team have implemented that, and I’ve tried to bring it with me. If we play with a little bit of heart, we could upset a few teams in this league.”
Swansea City’s Chloe Chivers and Wrexham Women's Hannah Keryakoplis (Pic by John Smith/FAW)Heart doesn’t come at a premium with Keryakoplis. It never has. Having grown up playing for the local boys side in Penyffordd until the age of 12, she knows the value of conviction.
It was when Man Utd scouts visited her Penyffordd teammate and neighbour Tom Lawrence that Keryakoplis’ football journey shifted into the next gear. Without a women’s team, the United scouts called Tranmere Rovers to tell them of the girl who looked an equal amongst Lawrence and the boys.
Here, the what if’ s are inevitable: What if United had invested in a women’s team earlier than 2018? Would Keryakoplis’ career look different? Would she have earned more than 20 caps for Wales? Would this week’s WSL Deadline Day have featured her amid all the United chaos?
Keryakoplis is philosophical. At the garage across from Wrexham’s training ground, she is recognised daily. Pay-to-play models and sightings of lone girls in youth boys’ teams are becoming outdated in Wales. Keryakoplis sees the same seeds being planted as those from England’s burgeoning women’s game, and Wrexham, her hometown team (and now her team), are a leading torchbearer.
“We’re a million times ahead [of where we were], this league can be just as big [as the WSL] and that’s where us players who are in the game now need to keep pushing,” she says.
She pauses, then adds: “If you’d asked me a couple of years ago if I’d be playing for Wrexham at a semi-professional level, my answer would’ve been no. For a lot of clubs, it would’ve been no.
“Where I’ve been in my career, to finish everything in my hometown, it means a lot.”
It also means playing for, and being supported regularly by, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds. Did she have that on her football Bingo card? “Nothing in life is impossible,” Keryakoplis says, “but that. That would probably be the closest thing.”
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