MAN U, Another Shirt !

From Dave in New Zealand

You may recall that I burnt a Mackem shirt while over here in May. Well. just last week I went one better while representing the RNZAF at the 1999 interservice tournament against the Army and Navy. One of the other players had been to Singapore, and had picked up a couple of imitation shirts for training. One was a Toon top and the other was Manchester United. I was outraged that anyone could wear these shirts in an alternate fashion, and so proceeded to kick lumps out of him when he had the Man Utd shirt on. On the final night we went into town, and I wore my FA Cup final shirt, while he put on his imitation Man Utd top. After a heavy drinking session he told me that he was going to burn his Man Utd shirt as a sacrifice to appease the football gods, and to bring good luck to the Toon in the coming season. We left the pub and doused his shirt in Drambuie (after he'd taken it off). Unfortunately it didn't burn like the Mackem shirt had, and soon fizzled out. Undeterred, I paid for one litre of petrol, and poured it all over the shirt. We found an alley where the police wouldn't notice us, and I set fire to the shirt after a few appropriate chants to the football gods (There's only one Drunken Duncan followed by The famous Man Utd went to Rome to see the Pope). It went up like an inferno, and I tossed the rest of the box of matches onto the pyre. When the flames had died down, the place on the shirt underneath the box of matches hadn't burnt, so I kept the piece of shirt as a souvenir. If you check the attached file you can see photographic evidence of the sacrifice! We are now bound to do well this year, for which I intend to take all the credit!

From Dave