WHAT HAPPENED?
Former Plymouth striker Hardie became the Red Dragons’ first signing of the summer transfer window when completing a £700,000 move to North Wales. His arrival nudged Paul Mullin closer to the exits at SToK Racecourse, with a loan switch to Wigan eventually sanctioned.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Hardie has joined an exciting project at Wrexham that is being led by Hollywood co-owners Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. They were in touch shortly after his move was finalised, with A-list chairmen making a point of getting to know everybody on their books.
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Getty ImagesWHAT HARDIE SAID
Hardie told ESPN: “The day that it was announced, the signing, I got a message from a +27 or something, it was an American number, and it was a video from Ryan. It’s just things that you don’t get elsewhere, obviously to have that type of profile contacting you, it’s something that I was excited to get and, obviously, sharing it with the family, it was really good.”
Next Match
DID YOU KNOW?
Hardie has already hit the net for Wrexham during their pre-season tour of Australia and New Zealand, with the 28-year-old adding on his targets for the upcoming campaign: “I always set targets for myself: to beat the goals that I scored last season. As a striker, I want to score as many goals as possible, but I start it off small by beating the target that I scored last season, and that was 12 goals.
“I’ll start there, then when I get to 12, I’ll make it 15, when I get to 15, I’ll make it 20. I want to get as many goals as I can, and if I’m scoring goals, then that means the team is doing well, generally, so that’s the plan – score some goals and help the team get up the table as far as we can.”
Getty ImagesWHAT NEXT FOR WREXHAM?
On the back of three successive promotions, Wrexham find themselves in the Championship and one step away from the Premier League. Their first season in the second tier of English football since 1981-82 will be opened away at Southampton on August 9.