I finally had some time to catch up on Welcome to Wrexham. It’s my guilty pleasure. I love it. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw during a recent episode. While I’m getting used to seeing the familiar Irish faces of James McLean lining out for The Red Dragons, I wasn’t ready to see a Kilkenny jersey pop up in the Ivory Coast. He’s even in the preview shot for the show in the Disney app.
But that’s exactly what happens in Season 3 Episode 6, as we follow the dynamic Jacob Mendy’s trip to play international football with Gambia at the 2023 African Cup of Nations. Walking through the streets of the Ivory Coast, Mendy stops to chat with a man in a Kilkenny shirt.
It’s not just any Kilkenny shirt though. This is the 2006 fan replica jersey which would have been sold as Kilkenny defeated Cork in a thrilling final by just 3 points.
But just like the memories of Kilkenny’s All Ireland hurling dominance are a distant memory, so too is this shirt from a Kilkenny fan at the time.
How did a a Kilkenny shirt end up over in Ivory Coast? Shirts like this are often dropped off in clothes bins and end up getting shipped to Africa and either destroyed, reworked or resold.
Going by the lad in this shot, he’s just spotted one of the most beautiful GAA jersey styles and was taken by it. He’s wearing it really well to to be fair to him, with the sleeves rolled up a bit. But I suppose I can’t rule out that he’s on holidays from Thomastown either. Oddly it’s not Kilkenny’s first connection to Wrexham either, with Thomas O’Connor, a defensive player with the club, also born in Kilkenny.
Seeing shirts abroad like this isn’t an unusual thing to happen either. GAA jerseys are forever popping up in places unexpectedly. And I don’t just mean the incredible number of times they’re spotted in crowds at sporting events. In fact, there’s an entire reddit dedicated to this called GAA Warzone, though it’s not been updated in a while.