Ashley Vickers of English minor league club Dorchester Town was dumbfounded after getting red-carded for tackling a mankini-clad fan who was successfully dodging securityguards.
“I’m dumbfounded and speechless,” said Vickers, a 39-year-old player-coach whose team was tied 1-1 at Havant & Waterlooville when he was ejected and lost 3-1. “I thought I wasdoing them a favor. The ref lost the game after that and he knew he had made a great error. … It beggars belief. Their players told the ref not to send me off and their chairman even offered totake a player off to even things up.”
The quasi-streaker has been identified as Havant & Waterlooville fan Alan Young, who said: “It was only a bit of a joke, we allagreed at my local pub on Sunday I’d do it as a bet. The security there were too slow but Vickers caught me quite well. He should be a rugby player. He hit me quite hard so by the time I had got up Ididn’t know where I was on the pitch because I hadn’t expected the tackle.
“The security did ask me afterwards if I was OK but to be honest I enjoyed myself so much I didn’t really carewhat happened at the time.”