IAN HERBERT: Foster's enthusiasm is spreading right through Wrexham

IAN HERBERT: Ben Foster’s infectious enthusiasm is spreading right through Wrexham… back where it all started for him he’s fallen back in love with the game – and now the goalkeeper-turned-YouTube star is playing a starring role to help deliver promotion

• Ben Foster made crucial penalty save in stoppage time for Wrexham on Monday
• The stop put his side in firm control for a return to the Football League
• The 40-year-old insists he has found his enjoyment in playing again at the club

Ben Foster’s first YouTube film about his new life at Wrexham revealed some of the unexpected challenges attached to venturing out of retirement to play for a fifth tier team.

When he tries to drive into the club car park, with GoPro camera attached to his dashboard, he is turned away by an attendant and directed to a neighbouring yard instead.

The ten-minute film, published for the 1.3million people who subscribe to his The Cycling GK channel, provides good insight into the footballer’s life, laden with some of the small details that we don’t always think to ask about.

Foster is surprised, and rather delighted, to find that you don’t stay in a hotel on the night before a home game when you play for Wrexham.

To watch his GoPro footage of his teammates taking in the applause and returning to the dressing room after a 3-0 win over York City, is to wonder how many more cameras one squad can possibly take, given that the Welcome to Wrexham crews are a part of daily life.

Wrexham’s Ben Foster saved a stoppage time Notts County penalty to seal a crucial 3-2 win

Foster plunged to his right to make a brilliant one-handed save to deny County forward Scott

The goalkeeper was embraced by a stunned Ryan Reynolds in the tunnel after the climax

His infectious enthusiasm clearly takes him over that hurdle, as his teammates’ discussion of the 40-year-old after his match-winning late penalty save against Notts County revealed.

His energy was equally evident in the little community classroom which doubles up as Wrexham’s press room, when Foster appeared late on Monday afternoon to discuss a match which concluded, he revealed, with Rob McElhenney planting a kiss on his lips.

Press conferences can sometimes be pedestrian – at every level of football – but Foster’s candour and raw enthusiasm were of a rare kind. It was the adrenalin rush that he was trying to define, as he reflected on the 95th minute save from Notts County’s Cedwyn Scott.

‘That buzz there. That moment. Oh it gives you goosebumps,’ Foster said. ‘Phoar…! I was going to swear but there’s a young kid here,’ he declared, looking at the boy, the son of one of the assembled reporters, who had a ringside seat.

‘That’s as good as it will get that, honestly. That’s as good as it will get. I’ve never celebrated a save before. I hate celebrating saves and I’ve called out goalkeepers for celebrating saves because it’s just a bit of a douche bag thing to do. But I couldn’t help myself.’

It was an adrenalin he stopped feeling as his career petered out at Watford last season, he related. He’d always been a ‘game player’ who loved the approach of kick off. 

‘When that 3pm kick off comes, you are able to do stuff you are not always able to do.’

After being spotted playing at Wrexham in 2005, Foster signed for Manchester United (above)

But he had brought an end to his career at the end of last season after a spell at Watford

Phil Parkinson though helped bring Foster out of retirement to boost a promotion push

But that had gone at Watford when he announced his retirement last May. 

‘Towards the end, even when the game’s kicked off I was thinking, “This doesn’t feel like it used to feel.” Or, “I’m not really enjoying it so much”.’

The question for Foster from Wrexham’s manager Phil Parkinson had been whether the appetite was still there after nine months retired. Parkinson had asked him: ‘Do you want it? Do you really want to come back and do it?’ he revealed. ‘And I know what he meant when he said that.’

He insisted in the aftermath of the 3-2 win which puts Wrexham in the box seat for promotion that he had come to the club looking for the old feeling.

‘I didn’t want to come and be a bit of a circus. Do you know what I mean? he said. ‘I didn’t want to come and it would be, “Oh he played in the Premier League last year” and, “He does his YouTube and it all about getting content.” It’s not about that, I promise you.’

He’d rejected an offer from Newcastle United, several other from the Premier League and the US, he said. ‘Nothing really fitted me. There was nothing I was really interested in.’

But there was a circularity about this club. It’s where he played his first league games, on loan from Stoke City in 2005, and where his family first travelled together, in car shares and occasionally even a small coach to watch him.

But via YouTube, the keeper has found his love for the game again after returning to Wrexham

The keeper gives away his goalkeeper’s jersey to a fan following the 3-2 win over Notts County

Club owners Rob McElhenney and Reynolds are delighted with Foster’s contribution

‘Now they get to do it again, 18 years later. ‘They’re coming to all the games now – more than they did at Watford.’

The move will certainly do his YouTube output no harm. Research produced by Digital Funnel, a search engine specialist, revealed today that searches for Foster’s name increased by 4,900 per cent in the UK on Monday. A bewildering piece of data but there is no doubt that Foster has enhanced presence.

The hit documentary series Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds delivered seemed to have covered most of the angles of football and life in a North Wales town but Foster is delivering a level of insight hitherto unseen, into how it is to actually wear the jersey.

‘I hoped that feeling would come back,’ he said. ‘I hoped it would be there again and every game I’ve played so far it has. You just get that adrenalin rush.’

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