Wrenford Town FC - The Rise
Wrenford-on-Hollow wasn’t the sort of place that made headlines. The biggest story most weeks was whether the clock tower would finally lean itself into ruin, or if the bus from Bath would ever arrive on time. People here liked their drama slow-brewed, passed between the market stalls with the gossip and the apples, or discussed over a pint at the Clock Tower Inn when the night came in damp and soft. That summer, though, the town had something to talk about.
The Wrens had a new manager — a foreign one, at that.
Felix Bauer arrived on a wet Tuesday in June, stepping off the Bristol train with a leather holdall, a green scarf, and the kind of cautious optimism you could only afford once in a career. The local paper called it “a bold appointment for a club of Wrenford’s stature.” Most people in town just called it “odd.”
They’d seen the photo in the Wrenford Gazette: thirty-eight, tall, sharp-featured, that faint European seriousness that made the pub regulars mutter about “continental ideas.” The sort who looked more comfortable in a boardroom than on a touchline. But here he was, shaking hands with the club chairman outside Hollowfield Stadium, a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
For a week afterward, he was everywhere without ever really being seen. A glimpse on High Street. A nod at the bakery. A polite “morning” at the riverside coffee van. He rented a flat above the old post office, two rooms and a view of the river, if you leaned far enough out the window. Every morning, he walked the same route: along the Hollow, through the Market Square, past the leaning clock tower and on toward the ground.
By eight, he’d be on the training pitch with his assistant, Tom Lacey who is a local lad who’d played a season for the Wrens before his knee went bad. Tom did most of the talking those first few days, introducing players, staff, even the groundskeeper, while Felix nodded, smiled, and took quiet mental notes.
He was still learning the town’s rhythms: how the mist clung to the river until nearly ten, how the bakery queue told you more about local politics than any newspaper, how the smell of apples drifted down from the Hollow Cider Co. when the wind turned east.
In the afternoons, he’d walk alone to the top of Church Hill, where you could see the whole town. The honey-stone terraces, the winding river, the industrial sheds glinting dull silver beyond the bypass. Beyond that, the dark fringe of Hollow Copse, thick and still even in daylight.
Felix would stand there, hands in pockets, trying to picture the season ahead.
He wasn’t naïve. He knew what the papers said, that he was an experiment, a gamble by a desperate club. The Wrens had finished seventeenth last year, crowd attendance dropping, the budget thinner than the pitch grass in February. But there was something about the place, the stubbornness of it, maybe that appealed to him.
He liked that the people were cautious. That they took their time deciding whether to trust him. It made their approval worth earning.
At the Clock Tower Inn, they’d already begun the speculation:
“Bauer, is it? The German fella?”
“Coach from the youth leagues somewhere abroad, I heard.”
“Talks about ‘pressing football,’ whatever that means. We’ll see how he does when it rains.”
By the second week, Felix had met the mayor, the head of the supporters’ trust, and the owner of Hollow Cider Co., who offered to sponsor the training kits again “if things look promising.” Every conversation ended the same way with a handshake, a smile, and a question hidden inside it: Are you the one to fix us?
At night, the town grew very still. Felix would sit by the open window, notebook in hand, listening to the quiet hum of the river and the last train leaving for Bristol. Some nights he thought of home,of Munich, the wide boulevards, the ordered streets. Wrenford, with its leaning tower and uneven cobbles, felt fragile in comparison. But it also felt alive. Imperfect, yes, but breathing.
He wrote a single line in his notebook before turning out the light:
Learn the town before you change the team.
And somewhere below, in the dark curve of the river, the mist began to rise again — slow, silent, and inevitable, the way all things in Wrenford did.
