Everyone loves Gary Neville…wait, no, that’s wrong. Sorry, no-one likes Gary Neville, not even his clown of a brother or his ridiculously-named father. He just has that kind of face you want to punch, not to mention the fact that he’s in his mid-30s and still can’t grow proper facial hair, but I digress. The story here is that two Scouse builders with clearly a keen sense of humour have flipped the metaphorical bird to fervent Manchester United fan and club captain Neville by building a small shrine to their beloved Liverpool under the swimming pool they were hired to build for him. Brothers Brian and Gary Greer came up with the joke idea while tiling the pool at Neville’s massive mansion and claim to have buried a copy of The Kop fanzine, a match programme and a Liverpool scarf in a plastic tube.
Speaking obviously to The Sun, Brian chuckled: “We went to Neville-Neville Land to tile his swimming pool. While we were there we created a Scouse time capsule under the pool and tiled over the top of it. When his house is dug up in the future, archaeologists will see what a passion he had for the Red men.” A mysterious United source, who clearly didn’t want to be named even though he definitely does exist, added: “Gary is United through and through. He might not like the idea of swimming over a Liverpool shrine. To say he is less than pleased is an understatement.” With any luck he’s in tears as we speak.
The Spoiler have clearly been busy recently, and have gone far beyond the call of duty by actually researching something; stop it guys, you’re making me look bad. Anyway, they managed to amazingly find a precedent for this kind of act, quite a famous one too. About six weeks ago in New York, construction workers busy building a new stadium for the New York Yankees baseball team found a jersey from arch-rivals the Boston Red Sox mixed in with the concrete foundations. Red Sox fan Gino Castignoli was apparently hoping to curse the stadium, in a bizarre act of modern day voodoo that has since been condemned as “dastardly” by the Yankees chief executive Randy Levine.
Unfortunately for Gary this is not the first time that he has been a victim of a practical joke. About two years ago now, friends tried to get Neville a guitar signed by United hating Noel Gallagher for his birthday, but the Oasis star just returned it with the scrawled message “Happy birthday, knobhead.” Harsh but fair.
