WELCOME TO THE BIG TIME

IMAGINE, DRAGONS

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Few fans would have thought four years ago that a tiny team from the fifth tier would now find itself in the Championship.

ON A SEPTEMBER evening in 2020, Rich Fay walked out of a vegan restaurant called Shrub, having had a mushroom kebab with his future wife. He switched his phone back on and saw that he'd missed a text from a friend.

Then another text.

Then three more.

PING! PING! PING! PING! PING!

The texts were from fellow fans of Wrexham, the club stuck in the fifth tier of English football for the last 12 years.

"Mate have u seen this?"

"Ryan Reynolds?!?!"

"What the f--- is happening?????"

A few days earlier, a club statement had said that unnamed investors were looking to pour $2.5 million into Wrexham. But Ryan Reynolds? And fellow actor Rob McElhenney? Fay thought it was a joke. Then he got worried.

Fans had wondered why even a local car dealer would buy a club that had just finished in the lower half of the lowest nationwide professional league in England. The Red Dragons didn't have a designated training ground. They played their home games at the crumbling Racecourse Ground, which they didn't even own at the time. As someone who grew up in this blue-collar city in North Wales, once fueled by coal and steel, Fay says you wouldn't just be made fun of for supporting Wrexham—you'd be made fun of for living in Wrexham.

He had a theory. “They're both comedians,” says Fay, a journalist who cohosts the Wrexham podcast RobRyanRed. “I thought they might be making a mockumentary. Oh, look at this crap little football team.”