Sports
How Paul Mullin – via a text from Rob McElhenney – ended his Wrexham goal drought
Rob McElhenney takes the duty of care he has as Wrexham’s co-owner seriously.
When Phil Parkinson was still coming to terms with what remains the nadir of the club’s return to the EFL after a 15-year non-League exile, the co-owner reached out to his manager just moments after September’s 5-0 thrashing at Stockport County via text.
Hollywood actor and writer McElhenney did something similar with Paul Mullin during the latter’s recent run of eight games without a goal — comfortably the striker’s most barren period in almost five years.
The level-headed Liverpudlian’s response was no surprise. “I feel pretty good,” he told McElhenney, “it’s just a matter of time.”
The inner belief within Mullin that reassured his American boss is no act. Speak to anyone close to the player and they’ll wax lyrical about how adamant he was that the scoring tide would soon turn for him, even as Wrexham lost ground in the League Two promotion race.
There was no re-watching of old clips where he scored for fun, as many footballers do during such goalless runs. Nor did Mullin stew over the chances that had got away. He simply told anyone who asked, including McElhenney, that the next one was going in the net.
Such steadfast belief explains why, having ended his 649-minute wait for a goal with a stoppage-time equaliser from the penalty spot to secure a point away against Forest Green Rovers last Tuesday, Mullin celebrated his sixth hat-trick in less than three seasons with the north Wales club just four days later.
Ending that unwanted run was not only a lesson in retaining self-belief but also the need for timely reminders as to what a player does best. Mullin spent the day before that 1-1 draw with Forest Green taking part in a one-man shooting exercise that seemed, to onlookers, no more scientific than simply being urged to whack the ball as hard as possible.
To put himself through this additional exertion when he was still troubled by a back injury that required a pain-killing injection early this week underlined his determination to end what had become an unprecedented — in recent memory, anyway — drought.
Mullin scores from the spot against Forest Green Rovers (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
Last season, for instance, the longest Mullin went without finding the net was two games (which happened three times). The year before that — his first with Wrexham — there had been a five-match gap between goals around Christmas, but the team won anyway on three of those five occasions so the focus was largely elsewhere.
This time, the 29-year-old’s goals temporarily drying up coincided with a poor run of results — five of those eight fixtures were lost, with only two wins, and without his dramatic 93rd-minute equaliser, Forest Green would have beaten Wrexham too.
No wonder a priority for the coaching staff during February was getting their talisman back to his instinctive best. Not just in terms of scoring goals but also making the runs in behind defences that are so pivotal to how Wrexham play.
These had become less and less frequent, meaning the chances of the ball sticking up front to allow the midfielders and wing-backs to move forward en masse also took a hit. The upshot was a team who looked as disjointed as their results suggested, especially away from home.
Cue that individual shooting drill after training.
It lasted barely 10 minutes, with assistant manager Steve Parkin on hand throughout, urging the striker to put his foot through the ball. Some shots flew past the goalkeeper into the top corner. Others went harmlessly wide of the target. But it didn’t matter. Instead, to those watching from the sidelines, the intention seemed simply to be reminding Mullin just how much power he packs in his boots.
Whether that played a part in the return to scoring ways the following evening we’ll never know, but there was a brutal savagery to his penalty — and an earlier shot that fizzed just over the crossbar — that had been lacking when facing MK Dons and Gillingham during the previous eight days.
The second goal of Saturday’s hat-trick in the 4-0 home win against Accrington was similar. Mullin hit his 25-yard shot with such conviction that goalkeeper Radek Vitek had no chance.
All the added extras that make Mullin such a key cog in the Wrexham attacking machine were in evidence too, including a darting run behind the opposition defence that led to the striker setting up Elliot Lee’s goal which completed the scoring just before half-time.
Their main man was back.
This weekend’s visit to Morecambe will see Mullin on familiar ground.
He spent three years there as a youngster, following his release by Huddersfield Town in 2014 at age 19 without making a senior appearance.
Mullin was never going to get rich at Morecambe. His first contract was worth just £200 per week. But those three seasons brought a valuable grounding. He also scored 25 goals in 122 league appearances — with more than half of those coming from the bench. Mullin felt he was worthy of a starting role.
Back then, as one of several members of the Morecambe squad — managed by Jim Bentley — who lived down the Lancashire coast in Liverpool, Mullin would regularly car share into training. Groups of four would take turns to drive.
To those who were part of those 150-mile round trips, an abiding memory is how the young striker attempted to channel that disappointment at not being selected positively. Where some might have blamed the manager — to this day, Mullin credits Bentley with being a good influence on his career — he instead did everything to try to force his way into the team.
Mullin’s recent goal drought was his longest with Wrexham (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
He did running sessions on the town’s beach in his own time, as well as gruelling work on the weights to bulk up. He wanted to be more in tune with the physically imposing lone-front man role demanded by Bentley’s system.
In time, Mullin realised his error. His game had always been about using skill and speed — but now, with the extra muscle he’d packed on, he felt heavy. He learned a lesson about the need to stick to your own beliefs.
This will no doubt have helped him navigate not just the recent barren run in front of goal but also Wrexham’s signing of fellow forward Jack Marriott on deadline day at the start of last month.
The arrival of Marriott, who was playing in the second-tier Championship as recently as two years ago and has over 100 career appearances in that division, was billed as a means of pepping up an attack that, even accounting for Mullin to reach double figures for the season by mid-January, has largely struggled for goals since the club’s return to the EFL. But, as has since been made clear via one replacing the other from the bench in six of Marriott’s eight appearances, the newcomer is effectively direct competition for Mullin.
Mullin had recently ruled the roost. He started on the bench just once in more than 100 league appearances for Wrexham — and even then this came when returning from the collapsed lung and four broken ribs he sustained on last summer’s U.S. tour. This was naturally going to jar.
But it also triggered the well-honed trait of wanting to prove people wrong. This has burned inside him since being released by his beloved Liverpool at 16. This desire perhaps explains why Mullin was ever-present at training despite the discomfort of that back issue. This problem led to the medical team taking advantage of a rare blank Tuesday this week to administer that pain-killing injection.
Those who know Mullin well will all say the same thing: what you see is what you get from someone who still lives just around the corner from his childhood home in Litherland, a northern district of Liverpool. So settled is life with partner Mollie and son Albi that even serious interest from Saudi Arabia’s second division last summer couldn’t tempt him. Family and friends long ago realised the futility of trying to contact Mullin after 9pm, knowing full well he’ll either be asleep by that time, resting up for the next day’s training or match, or not far off.
Even McElhenney, who once claimed only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi were more famous as footballers in the U.S. than his No 10 thanks to the Emmy Award-winning documentary series Welcome To Wrexham, concedes: “Every once in a while, I want to get him to tell me how great he is. But it’s always the same (from Mullin): ‘I just put in a shift, I do my work and I go back to my family’. Every week!”
Mullin has been a key star for Wrexham owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
This level-headed attitude, however, again helps explain how Mullin came through that recent dry spell in front of goal.
It was his longest since going 16 league and cup appearances without scoring for Tranmere Rovers — either side of three months as an unused substitute or out of the matchday squad — across the end of the 2018-19 League Two season and the start of the following campaign in League One.
He also has the sense of perspective that four-year-old Albi’s autism diagnosis has brought. That said, there are those in and around the dressing room who insist the striker “looked six inches taller” after that point-rescuing penalty against Forest Green, suggesting there was a big sense of relief when the ball found the net.
So, what now? First, he’ll be itching to continue a remarkable scoring record against Morecambe, having scored eight times against them in the past three meetings with Cambridge United and now Wrexham.
Then, providing all is good following this week’s jab in his back, there are the twin targets of a second straight promotion and joining an exclusive club of Wrexham strikers to reach 100 goals. Mullin is joint-eighth on their list of all-time scorers, five short of three figures from 129 appearances.
Should he go on and reach that landmark this season, chances are Wrexham will be celebrating those first-ever back-to-back promotions and a return to the third tier for the first time since 2004-05.
It would be a fitting end to an eventful year for their on-pitch talisman.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
Sports
Trump admin says SJSU now faces ‘impending enforcement’ for transgender volleyball scandal conflict
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FIRST ON FOX: President Donald Trump’s Department of Education said it has notified San Jose State University (SJSU) that it faces “impending enforcement action” for its “refusal to comply with Title IX.”
SJSU and the California State University (CSU) system filed a lawsuit earlier in March to challenge an Education Department investigation that determined the university violated Title IX in its handling of a biological male transgender volleyball player on a women’s team from 2022-24.
Now, the administration is cracking down against that resistance.
“We have provided SJSU with multiple opportunities to resolve its Title IX violations with common sense actions: separating male and female athletes based on their biological sex, keeping men out of women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, restoring rightfully-earned titles and accolades to female athletes, and apologizing to the women forced to forfeit competitions to protect themselves,” Kimberly Richey, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in an announcement.
“Yet, SJSU remains obstinate, choosing a radical ideology over safety, dignity, and fairness for its own students. With today’s action, the Department is putting the university on notice: comply with the law or risk losing its federal funding.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to SJSU and CSU for a response.
Brooke Slusser and Blaire Fleming of the San Jose State Spartans call a play against the Air Force Falcons on Oct. 19, 2024, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
The conflict between Trump’s administration and the school stems back to the 2024 season, when a national controversy involving transgender player Blaire Fleming triggered an election-cycle media firestorm, all during Trump’s third White House campaign.
The Education Department’s investigation has claimed, “SJSU actively recruited and allowed a male to compete on the women’s indoor and beach volleyball teams and reportedly instructed members of the coaching staff not to tell the female players that the athlete was a male.”
The investigation added that “on multiple occasions, the male athlete spiked the ball so forcefully that it knocked females on the opposing team to the ground.”
One of the standout details of the investigation’s findings was that a female SJSU player “discovered that the male student had conspired to have a member of the opposing team spike her in the face during an upcoming match. SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected this female athlete to a Title IX complaint for reportedly ‘misgendering’ the male athlete when discussing this incident in online videos and interviews.”
Former SJSU co-captain Brooke Slusser has included those allegations in her ongoing lawsuit against representatives of SJSU and CSU.
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After SJSU and CSU announced they were suing the Trump administration to challenge the findings, Slusser, and other former NCAA players, came forward about their alleged experience during the scandal, and how it affected them, in recent interviews with Fox News Digital.
Slusser, who shared an apartment with Fleming at SJSU without knowing the athlete’s birth sex, became the subject of viral debate after her interview reflecting on the experience sharing spaces with Fleming.
“You find out you’re just chilling in a bed with a man that you have no idea about… I [was] unknowingly sharing a bed at that time with a man,” Slusser said, also alleging SJSU volleyball coach Todd Kress encouraged her to live in the same apartment as the trans teammate when another group of players was also looking for a final tenant.
Former Utah State volleyball star Kaylie Ray told Fox News Digital that during matches against SJSU and Fleming in 2022 and ’23, before Fleming’s birth sex was known, she had teammates suffer finger injuries from the trans athlete’s spikes.
“I had teammates who had seriously jammed their fingers, luckily not broken, but a handful of girls who had sustained minor injuries from the male player,” Ray said, adding, “We knew that if the male athlete had a phenomenal game, there was nothing we could do to stop that person.”
Ray’s Utah State team became one of five teams to forfeit at least one game to SJSU in 2024, seemingly in protest of Fleming. She says the forfeit impacted her team’s hopes of winning their fourth straight Mountain West championship.
Meanwhile, the University of Wyoming forfeited two matches to SJSU in 2024. Former Cowgirls player Macey Boggs told Fox News Digital that the decisions to forfeit the games “permanently ruined” friendships among her teammates.
“There were some of the girls who I really enjoyed, and we got along great, and then this situation came up, some conflict came up, and ultimately we went in separate directions because of that… as soon as we played in our last game, we all went in separate directions… it was hard to maintain those relationships,” Boggs said.
SJSU was plagued by a separate Title IX violation in sports that it had to resolve with the Biden administration in 2021. The university ultimately came to a $1.6 million resolution with the Department of Justice in 2021.
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The DOJ found that SJSU failed for more than a decade to respond adequately to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, of female student-athletes by an athletic trainer then working at SJSU, beginning in 2009 when female student-athletes reported that the trainer subjected them to repeated, unwelcome sexual touching.
The department and SJSU entered into a comprehensive agreement to address the findings of the investigation, which began in June 2020 during Trump’s first term.
Now, Trump’s current administration is giving the school 10 more days to comply with a series of resolution agreements to resolve the volleyball situation, or face enforcement action, including referral to the DOJ and termination of SJSU’s federal funding.
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Some major Tiger Woods news broke Monday night.
It had nothing to do with the Masters — not directly anyway.
The 50-year-old golfing legend will be playing competitively for the first time in more than a year as his Jupiter Links team competes against Los Angeles in the second match of the best-of-three TGL finals Tuesday night in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
TGL is a high-tech, indoor golf league that uses simulators and real surfaces, founded by Woods, Rory McIlroy and Mike McCarley in 2022. While a TGL match doesn’t present the same physical challenge as a PGA Tour event, the team event could serve as Woods’ first step toward playing at Augusta National on April 9-12.
Woods last played competitively March 4, 2025, in Jupiter’s final TGL match of that season. He missed all of the PGA season last year as he recovered from a 2024 back surgery and surgery in March 2025 for a ruptured Achilles tendon. Last fall, he underwent disk replacement surgery in his lower back.
A five-time Masters winner, most recently in 2019, Woods is listed as a 2026 invitee on the tournament website but has yet to confirm his participation.
Last month at the Genesis Invitational, a reporter asked Woods if the Masters was “off the table” for him this year. Woods answered simply, “No.”
In the opening match of the TGL finals Monday night, Jupiter lost 6-5, with Kevin Kisner narrowly missing a birdie chip from 20 feet that would have won the match. Woods was on hand as a team captain and supporter, roles he has served all season.
After the match, Woods told reporters he felt bad for his players — Tom Kim, Max Homa and Kisner — but expressed optimism that Jupiter could still come back and claim the title. If Jupiter wins Match 2, a third match will take place immediately afterward to determine the TGL champion.
“We have possibly two more matches,” Woods said. “We’re not out of this.”
Woods didn’t mention the possibility of placing himself in the next day’s lineup. After the news conference, however, TGL posted a graphic on X that showed what appears to be Woods’ torso and the words “He’s back,” along with the viewing information for Tuesday’s match.
Moments later, Jupiter Links posted a graphic on X that featured a photo of Woods and the quote, “I’m back.”
Woods will be replacing Kisner in the lineup for at least Match 2. It is unclear if Woods would take part in a possible third match.
Last week, after Jupiter clinched a spot in the finals, Woods told reporters he has been trying to play all season “but it just hasn’t worked out that way.” He added that the players had done well without him and implied that he didn’t foresee any changes ahead of the finals.
“I really don’t want to screw up the lineup,” Woods added. “I just want these guys to keep playing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Golf great John Daly shared a hilarious moment that may have been more serious after watching a video he posted on social media, calling himself a “jacka–” in the process.
Daly was in desert terrain at the La Paloma Country Club for the Cologuard Classic, when he was trying to hit a shot onto a green when he lost his footing.
As he tried to gain traction in the sand, Daly’s feet fell from under him, and he slid down a long desert hill. Multiple people got involved, voluntarily jumping down the hill to see if Daly was all right.
John Daly of the United States plays a tee shot on the first hole during the second round of the Cologuard Classic 2026 at La Paloma Country Club on March 21, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Daly left unscathed, but he did enjoy putting the theme music to the “Jackass” franchise over the video to share to the masses.
“Bellyfloppin’ in the desert,” Daly captioned the video, while shouting out his caddie, Joel Cooley, who sprang to action to see if his partner was doing fine at the bottom of the hill.
“On today’s episode of ‘jacka**’” was also seen on top of the video.
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While he doesn’t usually show off his bellyflopping, Daly remains a key figure in golf.
John Daly of the United States plays his second shot on the ninth hole during the first round of the Cologuard Classic 2026 at La Paloma Country Club on March 20, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
He spends most of his time on the course for the Champions Tour, which is former PGA Tour players 50 years and older. His most recent round came on Sunday, where he finished tied for 29th with a 6-under tournament in the Cologuard Classic.
Daly was just named the 2026 Ambassador of Golf Award honoree ahead of the Kaulig Companies Championship at the signature Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio. The award recognizes those making an impact on the course as well as in their communities off the course.
“I’ve always loved this game and what it’s given me,” he said in a press release for the award. “Golf has taken me places I never imagined and introduced me to incredible people along the way. To be recognized with the Ambassador of Golf Award is truly an honor, and I’m proud to support the meaningful work being done here in Northeast Ohio.”
John Daly hits his tee shot on the second hole during the final round of the PNC Championship 2025 at Ritz-Carlton Golf Club on Dec. 21, 2025 in Orlando, Florida. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
Daly’s impact on the sport is quite iconic, whether it’s his monstrous drives from the tee box, winning the 1991 PGA Championship as the ninth alternate in the field, or taking home The Open Championship in 1995 at St. Andrews, forever marking himself as a multi-time major winner.
His larger-than-life personality has always been on display, even today in silly moments like these on and off the course.
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