Welcome to the Premier League? Wrexham dream is within reach, says coach
But that enthusiasm extends beyond rev-ups littered with F-bombs. Parkinson is backing his Welsh soccer team to reach the Premier League – the top level of English soccer and one of the most prestigious competitions in the world.
Wrexham has rocketed up to the second-tier Championship with a record-breaking three consecutive promotions, and will use a series of friendlies against Melbourne Victory at Marvel Stadium on July 11, Sydney FC at Allianz Stadium on July 15 and Wellington Phoenix at Sky Stadium in New Zealand on July 19 to prepare to go even further.
Parkinson's reputation as a potty-mouth has been solidified on the Emmy award-winning docuseries, which has chronicled the club's rise through the tiers of English soccer since being bought by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia 's Rob Mac, formerly McElhenney, in 2021.
But in an interview with this masthead ahead of the Hollywood-backed club's first pre-season tour outside the US, there was none of that famous foul language.
There was, however, confidence that Wrexham can one day make the Premier League fairytale a reality.
'You've got to aim high ... and why not?' said the coach.
Parkinson said the club was doing all the necessary behind-the-scenes work and dismissed critics who said the Red Dragons were getting carried away with themselves.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Perth Now
an hour ago
- Perth Now
Perth kid's unbelievable collection of celebrity encounters
Some kids collect sports cards and others video games, but eight-year-old Noah Gianotti from Yokine has committed his young life to the pursuit of meeting his celebrity heroes and snapping photos with them. And he's been very successful. With Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, WWE superstar The Undertaker, and English soccer player Harry Kane just some of his famous encounters, Noah's parents manage the youngster's Instagram account @noahgmeets where his enviable collection is on full display. Growing up around rap and hip hop music, the youngster cares less about seeing his icon's live in their respective arenas, and more about engaging in a personal interaction with them. 'I just like having the memories of waiting for them and just seeing if they'll come and say hi, and sign an autograph,' he told PerthNow. Noah Gianotti and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. Credit: @noahgmeets Noah Gianotti and WWE superstar The Undertaker. Credit: @noahgmeets Noah Gianotti and English soccer star Harry Kane. Credit: @noahgmeets His most recent brush with fame was at Perth Airport in early July, with UK rapper Central Cee stopping to sign an album cover and posing for a photo as he touched down ahead of his RAC Arena show. The diminutive fan even recited some of his favourite verses in his company, claiming the Brit is his most cherished encounter yet. 'I actually started crying after, because I'm a big fan of him,' he said. Noah's father said his son's adoration towards music stars progressed from simply playing their songs at home a couple of years ago, to a desire to meet them face-to-face. Noah Gianotti and UK rapper Central Cee at Perth Airport. Credit: @noahgmeets Tracking down globally renowned artist Post Malone early last year in Perth, the eight-year-old arrived equipped with a toy guitar that he asked the star to smash for him — mirroring the performer's on-stage antics. A viral clip of their meeting shared by his mother to TikTok since garnered five million views, with an affirming response of 'Yea buddy' from the singer warming the youngster's heart and drawing the envy of fans around the world. Noah said he feels 'lucky' to be able to share his exploits online, though his hobby requires much more than simply good fortune. If you'd like to view this content, please adjust your . To find out more about how we use cookies, please see our Cookie Guide. Describing his son as 'very confident', Mr Gianotti said Noah's patience and determination drove him to secure a meet and greet with elusive rapper Drake in February after waiting a staggering 15 hours the day prior. 'We went to stand outside the front of Nobu at lunch time, and because Noah had spoken to some of Drake's crew, when Drake went in I'm pretty sure they said on the way out to please talk to the kid who spoke to us yesterday,' he explained. Sure enough, the Canadian rapper extended just a minute to the youngster in a memory that will last a lifetime. Unfortunately, however, Noah's efforts do occasionally go unrewarded. Noah Gianotti and hop hop star Drake at Crown Perth in early 2025. Credit: @noahgmeets Coldplay and internet celebrity IShowSpeed are two acts to have eluded the young fan, but asked if he'd have a second crack at pursuing them if allowed the chance, he confirmed, 'Yeah, of course I will'. Noah said his mates at school are sometimes oblivious to his celebrity targets, and other times, they ask to tag along. With his father running regular sports functions through his company J&N Sports Entertainment, the youngster's familiarity with fame began by rubbing shoulders with local footy players. He's now progressed to jumping on the mic with his favourite athletes watching on. Meeting the likes of Harley Reid, Caleb Serong, and Luke Jackson, the mad Dockers fan attends most Freo games and has settled on his favourite player. Noah Gianotti and Eagles star Harley Reid. Credit: @noahgmeets Noah Gianotti and Freo ruckman Luke Jackson. Credit: @noahgmeets 'I didn't know him when I went to a game, and then he must have kicked three or four goals and I thought, 'Who is he?' Then I found out his name was Michael Frederick and I've just loved him ever since,' he said. Branching out to meet international sports stars, Noah has added Indian cricketer KL Rahul, French soccer player Olivier Giroud, and WWE superstar Logan Paul to his hit list. Noah Gianotti and Fremantle Dockers star Michael Frederick. Credit: @noahgmeets 'Sam Konstas, Shai Bolton, some of the boys actually follow him,' Mr Gianotti said of his son's Instagram account. Asked about his career aspirations, the Yokine product isn't aiming too high just yet. Noah Gianotti and WWE superstar Logan Paul. Credit: @noahgmeets Noah said he would like to be involved with a sports team, possibly in the media department. Building an impressive resume, who would bet against him. Visit @noahgmeets on Instagram to see the youngster's extended list of celebrity encounters.

Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ten new books to add to your reading pile
What's good, what's bad, and what's in between in literature? Here we review the latest titles. See all 51 stories. Looking for some psychological suspense? A reimagining of literary history? Perhaps a deep-dive into the work of the late Australian historian John Hirst, or a gripping real-life account of women working for the French resistance during World War II? Our reviewers have these and more covered in this week's reviews. Happy reading! FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Famous Last Words Gillian McAllister Penguin, $34.99 A nightmare day – one that seems too strange to believe. Camilla is dropping her daughter Polly off on her first day at school, and husband Luke, a mild-mannered writer, isn't there. He isn't responding to messages, which is unlike him. Her annoyance quickly escalates into alarm when the police arrive asking to talk to her about her husband, and shock sets in when she's told the news of an unfolding hostage situation in London. He's being held hostage, she thinks. She's incredulous at viewing video evidence of Luke as the hostage-taker. How on earth did her husband become a violent criminal, without the slightest warning? At a gut level, Camilla refuses to concede that Luke could possibly do what she is seeing him do with her own eyes, but she agrees to assist DCI Niall Thompson conduct hostage negotiations, hoping to defuse the crisis without bloodshed. The game will change, and the inexplicable will become clear in this taut and twisting thriller. Fans of Liane Moriarty (and superior, character-driven psychological suspense generally) should lap this one up. Stephen King's private detective Holly Gibney returns in Never Flinch, with more than enough to keep her occupied. There seem to be two cases, though her friend, Izzy Jaynes, a detective at Buckeye police department, is handling one of them. It starts with a sinister letter sent to police from a would-be serial killer who promises to mete out lethal vigilante justice to 13 guilty persons and one innocent, to avenge a grave wrong committed. The threat isn't idle. Chapters told from the killer's perspective are interwoven as the body count climbs, but when Izzy turns to Holly for assistance, Holly is temporarily indisposed: she's moonlighting as a bodyguard for feminist author Kate McKay, who fears being stalked by a radical religious activist on a speaking tour. Never Flinch is a rather tortured and over-realised novel for King. It really should have been split into two novels, as without radical condensation and extremely brisk exposition, there's simply too much here to merge the two narrative threads successfully without one pulling focus from the other. 'The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other.' So begins this revenge thriller from Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters. It's a killer line, and for Birdie Keller, vengeance has been a long time coming. The ice-cold nature of her rage is amplified by the casual way she goes about her daily domestic routine, as if nothing had changed, as if Jimmy Maguire – the man who murdered Birdie's sister 18 years earlier – had not been released from jail, as if she didn't have a gun and wasn't about to head into London to use it. The Sunshine Man layers multiple perspectives, including Maguire's, and flashes back to the events surrounding the original crime, where lurking in the westering fields of her childhood in Devon and Cornwall, a terrible truth lies in wait. It would have been easy for this one to misfire. Revenge is a basic human impulse, but without complications it isn't always thriller material. Stonex is excellent, though, at playing with the reader's sympathies, allowing elements of the story to be shaped by memory and character, so that provisional judgments jump around until the picture becomes more complete. The Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson Belinda Lyons-Lee Transit Lounge, $34.99 Where did Robert Louis Stevenson get the idea for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Well, his Calvinist upbringing influenced his psychological fable, but there was, too, a charming man of his acquaintance, Eugene Chantrelle, who was later tried and hanged for murdering his wife, Elizabeth. Geelong-based writer Belinda Lyons-Lee goes behind the scenes, reimagining a piece of literary and criminal history from the viewpoint of Stevenson's wife, Fanny, herself a successful author, who fell in love with the younger Robert after divorcing her wayward husband in the US. In Lyons-Lee's telling, theirs was an intellectual, literary and romantic bond, and their encounter with the two-faced Chantrelle is one of many episodes – including a seance with the Shelleys and a haunted wardrobe – that lace literary biography and an eerie, gothic sensibility. Some of the prose isn't polished to the sort of sheen that might make this dark material truly glisten, but it's fascinating literary historical fiction, nonetheless. Awake in the Floating City Susanna Kwan Simon & Schuster, $34.99 Seas have risen and climate change has caused disastrous flooding in a future San Francisco. Just turned 40, Bo – an artist whose desire to create has dried up, even as the rain refuses to abate – is set to leave the city as part of anexodus of residents. She plans to flee the sodden streets and crumbling buildings and head to Canada, but when the day to leave arrives, she discovers a note urging her to stay. Her elderly neighbour, Mia, is 130 years old, and she's been abandoned to her fate. Taking up Mia's offer to be her part-time paid carer, Bo befriends the supercentenarian and eventually, her muse returns: she begins to make art inspired by Mia's long life, finding a way to be creative in the shadow of catastrophic destruction. Awake in the Floating City is literary cli-fi that proceeds from a positively Biblical extreme weather event. The disaster is evoked in spartan but atmospheric detail, and the characters have some depth, but the plot itself is stretched too thin over the length of a novel, and it sometimes feels like the barest frame for philosophical musing on human nature and need. NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK John Hirst: Selected Writings Edited by Chris Feik La Trobe University Press, $36.99 John Hirst (1942-2016), as this collection of essays and commentaries amply attests, was a historian who went his own way. No stranger to controversy, evident, for example, in his views on colonisation and the dispossession of Indigenous Australians. History in its British imperialist incarnation is almost presented as a kind of impersonal force, indifferent to and beyond moralising by 'liberal fantasists' who, seeking some sort of reconciliation with the wrongs of a shameful past, imagine the tragedy could have been avoided and ignore the inevitability of the brutal 'phenomenon' of European expansion. A point that fellow historian and friend Robert Manne addresses in his commentary, stating historians are also humans and will make judgments. Mind you, at the same time, Hirst was morally outraged with the Stolen Generation and the damage done to Aboriginal culture. Whether talking about his politics over the years, multiculturalism, his pro-republic views or the democratic legacy of the convict years, this is a distillation of a contrarian mind that couldn't help but challenge orthodoxy (especially on the left). Overall, it's impossible not to be impressed by the scope of his works. The Scientist Who Wasn't There Joanne Briggs Ithaka, $36.99 When Joanne Briggs was growing up, her scientist father (who'd been a member of a research team at NASA) was the font of all wisdom. Even when he left his marriage and children, she defended him, saying her father knew all there was to know about science. But the charade of his life crumbled in 1986 when The Sunday Times ran an exposé headed 'The Bogus Work of Professor Briggs'. His daughter's investigation into the fabricated life that was the enigma of her father (who died mysteriously in 1986) is a compelling tale of delusion and deception – Briggs, at one point, imagining him as a spy with another whole hidden life. The story, which ranges from Britain, to the US and Deakin University in Victoria, involves, among other things, questionable research findings for pharmaceutical companies and faked qualifications. The fact and fiction of her father's life is mirrored stylistically in a highly imaginative way, Briggs frequently borrowing from fiction. Often very moving, this is amazingly assured for a first book. The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck Lynne Olson Scribe, $37.99 The eponymous sisterhood refers to four French women – Germaine Tillion, Anise Girad, Genevieve de Gaulle (niece of Charles) and Jacqueline d'Alincourt. All were members of the French Resistance during the war, though part of different networks, and all were caught and packed off to Ravensbruck, the all-female concentration camp in Germany. This thoroughly researched, absorbing tale incorporates the lives of many other female resistance fighters, and a key theme running through the book is that the vital role of women in the movement has been either ignored or played down. It's a story of incredible individual bravery that also emphasises the crucial importance and intensity of the lifelong bond between them that was forged in the hell-hole of Ravensbruck. Each of these women is worthy of her own biography. Tillion, an anthropologist, helped POWs and allied servicemen escape until she was betrayed by a Catholic priest working for the Germans who infiltrated her network. She survived the camp, lived to be 100 and, with Girad, is now buried in the Pantheon along with the greats of French history. Among other things, this is an inspiring study of character, courage and grace under pressure. If Hamlet had taken Tibbits' advice and forgiven all concerned so that he could move on, he might have been a happier character. Mind you, there'd be no play. But this is precisely Tibbits' point – that revenge and anger always end badly, and are emotionally, physically and psychologically destructive. A dead weight that anchors you to the pain of the past. The only effective way out is forgiveness. It doesn't mean absolving the other person of guilt, but the act of forgiving is the most effective way of letting go and conceiving of the future with hope. And it doesn't need to be reciprocal, he points out, quoting Oscar Wilde – 'Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much' – in this self-help guide with step-by-step strategies. Tibbits is a counsellor as well as a sports coach, and often enough the advice comes across like a half-time revving. And there's the inevitable, rousing 'you can do it' rhetoric, but he's got some pretty valid points. In a recent experiment, scientists placed a number of white volleyballs among a flock of geese hatching their eggs. The geese, attracted by the large, white objects, left their eggs and attempted to hatch the volleyballs. The geese were in the thrall of what Niklas Brendborg calls 'superstimuli' – his point being that humans are no less susceptible to it than geese. To prove it, he looks at food, sex and online screen superstimuli. Obesity, for example, is not the result of increasingly sedentary lives, but the rise of ultra-processed foods designed by food companies to make us eat more, thereby changing our biology. Similarly, recent surveys point to declining sex in relationships being caused by the rising consumption of the sexual form of superstimuli – glossy, air-brushed pornography. Brendborg makes his points entertainingly, while also drawing on copious research material. But there are also occasions when it feels like he's taking a long time to point out the obvious. Capitalism has always been greedy, grasping and devious.


Perth Now
6 hours ago
- Perth Now
Cameron Boyce remembered by Descendants co-stars
Cameron Boyce's Descendants co-stars have paid tribute to the late star on the sixth anniversary of his death. The Disney actor passed away at the age of just 20 when he suffered a seizure in his sleep due to epilepsy and on Sunday (06.07.25), he was remembered as an "angel" by his friends. Sofia Carson shared a behind-the-scenes cast photo and wrote on Instagram: "Our Angel. Forever." Booboo Stewart shared the same photo on his own Instagram Story, while Sarah Jeffrey shared a photo of herself with Cameron 'on a BC ferry to Victoria to shoot more of Descendants." She added: "Life is good. Miss you Cam.' Meanwhile, Jenna Ortega recently reflected on the last time she saw Cameron, explaining how she felt "uncomfortable" when they were put in a "weird" position and asked to kiss during an audition, but her friend spoke up for her. Speaking to French TV outlet Canal+, she said: "The last time I saw my friend Cameron Boyce — I'd known him since I was like 11 or 12, and we were supposed to kiss [in an audition] and he knew me, since I was 11 or 12. This is a few years later, 15, 16, came in, we were supposed to be love interests. "But because he obviously felt weird and he was a bit older, he was like — we both just kinda looked at each other and we were like, 'No, we can't do this.' "And it was so sweet because I was uncomfortable and I was having a hard time. .. And then, we wished each other well." Jenna was "really thankful and grateful" to Cameron for speaking up, and agreed with her Beetlejuice Beetlejuice co-star Catherine O'Hara when she said he had been a "gentleman". Following his tragic death, the actor's family set up the Cameron Boyce Foundation to provide "young people artistic and creative outlets as alternatives to violence and negativity". At the time of his passing, Cameron's "utterly heartbroken" family remembered him as one of the world's "brightest lights". They said in a statement at the time: "It is with a profoundly heavy heart that we report that this morning we lost Cameron. 'He passed away in his sleep due to a seizure which was a result of an ongoing medical condition for which he was being treated. The world is now undoubtedly without one of its brightest lights, but his spirit will live on through the kindness and compassion of all who knew and loved him. 'We are utterly heartbroken and ask for privacy during this immensely difficult time as we grieve the loss of our precious son and brother."