Wrexham FC legend Dixie McNeil was the source of inspiration for a play about a man torn between the love for his wife and football. Jamie Bowman chats with playwright Peter Read as the show returns to its roots later this month...

WHAT happens when a football loving man marries a football hating woman?

That’s the question posed by a play inspired by Wrexham FC and one of their greatest ever players, which will make a return visit to the town later this month.

Written by award-winning playwright, author and poet, Peter Read, Dixie or Me, is a comedy set during the glorious 1977-78 season, when Wrexham reached both the League and FA Cup quarter-finals and finally clinched promotion to Division Two and as a long-suffering fan of the Red Dragons, Peter admits much of the play is born of experience.

“I don’t like to say it in the publicity in case my ex-wife turns up,” laughs Peter, whose eventful career has involved working for charities, including Shelter Cymru and a drugs rehab centre, as well as running the Stiwt Theatre, in Rhos, where he first began writing plays.

“When I was managing the Stiwt in 2004, I was asked to write a play about football, so I went to the library and got some books out on how to write a play. Thankfully it was a big success.”

During its inception, Peter even had a chance encounter with the play’s inspiration, which has led to the pair becoming firm friends.

“I was having a bit of a mental block when writing the play one day, so I went down to the Cross Foxes, in Erbistock, and I was standing at the bar when I realised the man next me was Dixie McNeil.

“I got talking to him and said ‘you’ll never believe what I’ve been doing this morning’. We got chatting and got very friendly and I ended up ghost writing his autobiography.”

In 2005, Peter moved to Swansea to become a freelance writer and while there he adapted Dixie or Me to become Toshack or Me about the great Swansea City side of the early 80s. Peter has pulled off a similar trick in Blackburn, where it became Shearer or Me and in Leicester, where it took the name Lineker or Me.

“I’ve been watching Wrexham since 1963 when I was 11,” continues Peter. “They’ve always been in the lower reaches of the league and pretty mediocre, but then in the late 70s when John Neal was manager followed by Arfon Griffiths, they became a wonderful side to watch and played great football. Bill Shankly called them the best team he’d ever seen out of the top flight.

“They were great days. I’d stand on the Kop and the crowd would be 19,000, which is amazing to think now.”

Central to the side’s success was the forward play of McNeil, who had moved to Wrexham from Hereford in 1977 for £60,000.

“He was a great player,” remembers Peter, who was born in Rhos and lives in Wrexham. “He was an old fashioned centre forward who would time his arrival in the box perfectly and always be in the right place at the right time.”

Last season was a tough one to take for the Wrexham faithful, with managerial upheavals and a dreadful run towards the end of the season meaning the Red Dragons missed out on promotion back to the Football League after they were defeated in the play offs.

“It was disappointing,” says Peter. “We ended up fourth but we were not really that good compared to some of the teams who were at the top. We had a very good defence and a good goalkeeper but not a lot in the middle and certainly not much up front. We could do with Dixie now!”

Dixie or Me will be directed by Theatr Clwyd actor and performer Mark Rodgers, and Peter is looking forward to the play being staged at Wrexham’s Ty Pawb.

“It’s a bit different now to the play I wrote in 2004,” he says. “Different actors put their own stamp on it and I’ve always had a relaxed view of my own writing.

“Like Arthur Miller once said, ‘when a playwright has finished a play the process has only just begun’ and that’s what I love about play writing. The actors and director take it on and mould it in their own way with lines and ideas being added.

“It’s fantastic it’s being staged at Ty Pawb. Morgan Thomas (Ty Pawb’s events officer) is doing a great job there and he has a huge interest in football as well as theatre.”

An incredibly prolific writer, Peter has completed 23 plays and ghost written the autobiographies for football managers Roberto Martinez and Garry Monk.

His full-length, one man show Dylan in America, about poet Dylan Thomas, won five-star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2004 and 2005.

He has recently been commissioned to write a new play for the National Trust about Erddig, which will be performed in the grounds of the stately home this summer.

The Brothers Yorke is a 30-minute play that tells the story of the last two squires of Erddig, Simon and Philip.

“It’s full of humour and pathos and brings to life two very different brothers who both struggled to rescue a crumbling Erddig as it fell into decline,” adds Peter.

Dixie or Me is at Ty Pawb, Wrexham on June 27, 28 and 29 at 7.45pm. Peter Read will also be interviewing Dixie McNeil at the Friday showing. Tickets £12 from www.eventbrite.com