Actor Jonathan Sayer bought the football club his grandfather played for – and now he wants to leave an impact on the community
Before Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney hit the headlines as superstar Hollywood football club owners – a home-grown actor was quietly toiling away at a non-league outfit in Greater Manchester.
In 2019, Jonathan Sayer, best known as part of the Olivier-winning comedy troupe Mischief, bought out Ashton United with his father, after the club put out an SOS tweet begging for help.
It tugged on Sayer’s heartstrings – not least because his grandfather played for Ashton (which is one of the oldest football grounds in the world) more than 400 times and so, in the office of a flooring shop, papers were signed to make him the co-owner.
In his new book, Nowhere To Run, he gives a comical warts-and-all peek behind the curtain of running a non-league club – seemingly a universe away from what’s going on in the Premier League and beyond.
Ashton United was steeped in some surprise debt, players were being paid by the match from the secretary’s bank account, and only one person had the key to the changing rooms – and he’d gone AWOL.
Sayer goes from hiding in the car park following early losses in his tenure, to screaming on the terraces in a cup final.
Speaking to Sky News from Los Angeles, ahead of opening his company’s production of Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Sayer said owning a club has changed his relationship with football.
“I think it’s fair to say I’ve seen how the sausage is made. It’s made in a terrifying manner – it’s a very expensive sausage.
“I think that there’s a point in the book where I talk about how the first competitive match started, and then 10 minutes later I just kind of realised that I hated it. I was just totally panic-stricken. I was just like, ‘Oh my God, what if we lose? What if we lose next week? What if we lose the weekend? What if we go down and really struggle to get out of the mindset for a while?’
“I think since then, thankfully, I’ve managed to come to terms with those emotions and the fact that football is up and down.”
He added not being able to deliver for his community “terrifies” him, and he wants to be a “custodian” on their behalf.
Pic: Colin Thomas
‘Gaggle’ of volunteers holds the club together
Sayer also talks highly of those volunteering at the club, with Sayer calling them the “lifeblood”.
In scenes unlikely to be seen at Old Trafford or the Emirates, volunteers offered to water the newly relaid pitch earlier this year after the heatwave threatened to dry it up, by sleeping out in tents and taking shifts to walk up and down the new turf watering it.
Sayer added some volunteers have been around for decades working on the turnstiles or even painting lines around the terraces, calling the team a “gaggle”, rather than the cliched army.
“I think that’s super, super special,” Sayer said.
“It connects you with something – like a goal that’s bigger than yourself and a purpose that’s larger than you, and you feel connected to something.”
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‘There’s no winner if you’re not interested in the community’
And while Sayer has a deep family connection to the club and wants to root it in the community, he said some owners might see their clubs as assets – and that’s disappointing.
“There’s no winner, if you will, coming in to invest in a football club, and you’re not really interested in the community and the football club – you can have a bad time,” Sayer said.
“You’re going to just find after a couple of years, this is awful, this is expensive, there’s a lot of emotion knocking around.
“And what do you get out of that? I’m not sure. And the same for the supporters, the players – that’s just a negative situation.”
Sayer is keen to point out that giving back to the community and listening to the stakeholders is what should make people want to come in and invest in football clubs.
The actor said he can relate to what Reynolds and McElhenney are doing in Wrexham: “There’s a bit [in their documentary] where they’re talking about making good on their promise to the community and I think you do you feel that. I think that is totally true.
“You feel ultimately responsible for everyone’s happiness.”
Sayer said being an owner has changed his relationship with football. Pic: Colin Thomas
‘Small things could make a huge difference to us’
Sayer said his club, and those in the Premier League are “chalk and cheese”, but added he would love to have more conversations about how they can support each other.
“It would be great for those worlds to connect, to just have formal connections in different ways. I think that would be really, really beneficial for so many different people,” he said.
He explained being able to link up with clubs higher up the pyramid would be really beneficial, adding he’d like to see the FA support the community side of clubs more, for instance on pitch maintenance – which for small clubs is a big deal.
“To clubs like ours, that would make a huge difference because it would mean that lots of our teams could play on the pitch, we’d have more of a sense of community, you wouldn’t have games postponed at the same rate… It genuinely puts clubs into financial peril,” he said.
He added even just being able to contact bigger local clubs and ask for advice would make a “tremendous difference”.
Sky News has contacted the FA for comment.
Hurst Cross in 2020
Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds at Wrexham
Is Ryan Reynolds the Jonathan Sayer of Wrexham?
And on Reynolds and McElhenny – well, Sayer was there first.
But would he say Reynolds is the Jonathan Sayer of Wrexham?
“I think that if you said that to him, he’d say, ‘Who is Jonathan Sayer? What are you doing in my club? Get out!’
“I certainly don’t honestly think that I’d started a trend. I don’t think we’re the same people at all.”
He points out at one time, the two teams were only a league apart – and a good season for Ashton or a bad season for Wrexham could have seen them meeting up.
Sayer added: “I’m desperate to get a copy of the book in their hand because I think both of them would do a really good job at playing me in a movie, you know?
“Quite often people are saying, ‘oh, you know, Jonathan, that guy from Deadpool, you’ve got similar physiques’. So, you know – he could do the stunts.”
Nowhere To Run is out now.
Angelina Jolie says although she appreciates being an artist, she would prefer for her legacy to be “a good mother” and to be known for her “belief in equality and human rights”.
The Oscar-winning actress stars as Maria Callas in the new Pablo Larrain film about the opera singer’s life.
Pic: StudioCanal
She has called Maria “the hardest” and “most challenging” role she has had in her career and put months of preparation into immersing herself into the world of opera.
Jolie, who recently reached a divorce settlement with actor Brad Pitt, told Sky News: “To be very candid, it was the therapy I didn’t realise I needed. I had no idea how much I was holding in and not letting out.
“So, the challenge wasn’t the technical [side of opera], it was an emotional experience to find my voice, to be in my body, to express. You have to give every single part of yourself.”
The biopic combines the voice of the Maleficent actress with recordings of Maria Callas.
Jolie believes it “would be a crime to not have [Callas’] voice through this because, in many ways, she is very present in this film”.
Who was Maria Callas?
Born in New York in 1923, Maria Callas was the daughter of Greek immigrants who moved back to Athens at the age of 13 with her mother and sister.
After enrolling at the Athens Conservatory, she made her professional debut at 17 and went on to become one of the most famous faces of opera, travelling around the world and performing at Covent Garden in London, The Met in New York and La Scala in Milan.
Callas’s final operatic performance took place at Covent Garden in 1965 when she was 41 but she continued to work conducting master classes at Juilliard School, doing concert tours and starring in the 1969 film Medea.
Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, Maria focuses on the artist’s final years in the 1970s when she moved to Paris and disappeared from public view.
She died on 16 September 1977 at the age of 53.
Pic: StudioCanal
Jolie on changing motivations as an actor
Maria follows the life of an artist fully consumed by the art she creates and even remarks that “happiness never developed a beautiful melody”.
Reflecting on her own life in the spotlight, Jolie said she noticed her own career motivations change over the years.
“There’s this kind of study of being human that we do when we create, and we communicate with an audience because our work is not in isolation – it’s a connection.
“I think when I was younger, I had different questions about being human and different feelings and now as I’ve gotten older, I understand some things and now I have different questions.
“It’s a matter of life, right? And so maybe that’s interesting that this now is a character really contemplating death and really contemplating the toll of certain things in life that I, of course, couldn’t have understood in my 20s”.
Jolie at the New York Film Festival in September with three of her children (L-R) Pax, Zahara and Maddox. Pic: AP
A family affair
Two of Jolie’s children, Maddox and Pax, took on production assistant roles during the filming of Maria and witnessed their mother perform opera for the first time in public.
She says the film allowed them to create new experiences together and for her children to see her approach to playing a difficult role.
“Everyone in my home, we all give each other space to be who we are and we’re all different.
“I’m the mom, but I’m also an artist and a person and so my family has been very kind and gives me their understanding. They make fun of me, and they support me and just as you’d hope it would be.”
She adds: “When you play somebody who is dealing with so much pain, it’s very important to come home to some kindness.”
Maria is in cinemas now.
Tom Holland’s dad has confirmed his son’s engagement to Zendaya – revealing how the 28-year-old meticulously planned the proposal.
Zendaya, also 28, sparked engagement rumours when she attended last Sunday’s Golden Globes wearing a sparkling diamond on her ring finger.
Neither star has publicly addressed the rumours but Tom’s comedian father, Dominic Holland, has now confirmed the pair are set to wed.
He wrote in a post on his Patreon account: “Tom, as you know by now was very incredibly well prepared. He had purchased a ring.
“He had spoken with her father and gained permission to propose to his daughter.”
“Tom had everything planned out… When, where, how, what to say, what to wear,” he added.
Zendaya arrived at the Golden Globes with a noticeable piece of new jewellery. Pic: Invision/AP
Dominic also noted that while most men worry about being able to afford an engagement ring, he suspects his actor son was “more concerned with the stone, its size and clarity, its housing, which jeweller”.
Tom and Zendaya met on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2016, when they played the titular hero and his love interest MJ, respectively. Their romance was confirmed in 2021.
In his post, Tom’s father admitted fears over whether being in the spotlight could put a strain on the couple’s relationship.
He wrote: “I do fret that their combined stardom will amplify their spotlight and the commensurate demands on them and yet they continually confound me by handling everything with aplomb.”
“And even though show business is a messy place for relationships and particularly so for famous couples as they crash and burn in public and are too numerous to mention […] yet somehow right at the same time, I am completely confident they will make a successful union.”
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Zendaya rose to fame after landing a role in Disney sitcom Shake It Up, and became a household name after starring in Euphoria.
Holland – who has starred in three Spider-Man films opposite his now-fiancée – made his stage debut in Billy Elliot the Musical in 2008.
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