Being the star striker of a football club owned by Hollywood stars has opened many doors for Rosie Hughes.
She’s gone from playing for free to signing a semi-professional contract, appearing on television with Hollywood royalty, meeting actual royalty and scoring a winning goal in front of almost 10,000 fans.
When she’s not unlocking defences and scoring goals on a football pitch, she is unlocking and locking prison doors in her day job as a prison officer at HMP Berwyn in Wrexham.
Walking around the vast HMP Berwyn site in Wrexham with Hughes, it is clear that the prisoners know she is a footballer.
“Not that I was ever shy to talk about playing for Wrexham, however I did keep it inside,” Hughes says.
“But there was an interview that I had when I was at the Racecourse ground with Ryan Reynolds and it ended up being on Football Focus on the television.
“It started getting spoken about, and once something is spoken about in prison it’s exciting, it is something new to talk about.
“Prisoners would come up to me and ask ‘do you play for Wrexham?’ and I couldn’t hide it in the end.”
Wrexham Women FC’s success has been very difficult to hide in recent months.
The women’s team were included in Reynolds’ and Rob McElhenney’s takeover in 2021.
They have since been promoted to the top tier of women’s football in Wales – the Adran Premier – and moved to a semi-professional model.
When asked if she’s met the owners she says that “they have met me!”
She met Reynolds for the first time on the Racecourse pitch after Wrexham clinched the Adran North league title at the end of March.
“I felt like the superstar, because I’d just scored the winner at the Racecourse ground in front of nearly 10,000 people, so when he [Reynolds] grabbed me to introduce me to his wife, kids – it felt like I was the star,” she adds.
Many prisoners make reference to Hughes’ football career as she takes me on a tour of the prison.
HMP Berwyn, Wales’ newest and biggest prison, is a vast site with its own football pitch and gym which Hughes uses to top up her football training during her lunch break.
She has been doing the job for six years and says there are plenty of transferable skills between her two jobs.
“You definitely need some resilience, good communication skills, an excellent listener and some emotional intelligence to do the job,” Hughes said.
“Communication and working as part of a team is massive for both football and as a prison officer.
“You need confidence in this job because you’ll get eaten alive if you don’t.
“It’s the same with football, you need to be confident on the ball. I’m so good at scoring goals and putting the ball in the back of the net because I’m confident to do it.”
Her record at Wrexham is incredible – she has scored 97 goals in 41 starts and one appearance as a substitute.
Before the club began offering semi-professional contracts in the summer Hughes had been tempted by offers to play and earn money elsewhere.
A chat with the club sports therapist Gaynor Davies persuaded her to stay, and she is glad she did.
“There was something that was keeping me at Wrexham, I don’t know whether that was because my dad used to support them,” Hughes said.
“I moved up here because I work here, and bought a house here so it felt right to stay at Wrexham – it was local to me they had great facilities.
“I’m so proud and happy that I stuck at Wrexham even though I wasn’t getting paid… it was the right decision to make.”
Now that she is getting paid her new semi-professional status should give Hughes more time to concentrate on football.
“Last season I found it a bit difficult. I struggled to get the time off for every game so there was a couple [of games] that I missed during the season,” she said.
“I have asked to drop my hours as a prison officer, the Prison Service can be good like that – if you have other commitments, so I’ve asked to do that and hopefully some time in the future that will be for me and I can focus more on the football side of things, because that is what I would love to do.”
Wrexham have made an excellent start to their Adran Premier season and sit top of the league after three matches.
Hughes has scored seven times so far in 2023-24, including all five of Wrexham’s goals in their most recent win against Barry Town.
