Scottish League One footballers Ayr United FC have enlisted UK lingerie model Emma Glover to help erase the past season’s disappointment from their collective memories.
Although Ayr United’s Honest Men avoided relegation via a stirring road victory over Forfar Athletic to close out the 2014-15 season, there was little else worthy of celebration in that campaign. But new manager Ian McCall, who took the reins from Mark Roberts mid-season, is keen to put the past behind him and focus on another run at the League One title in 2015-16.
The team’s plan to focus on the future includes the unveiling of a new, never-before-seen purple kit. True to form, online gambling operator Bodog, who have sponsored Ayr United for five seasons, convinced Glover to model the new strip. Or, at least, a reasonable facsimile thereof.
As tradition would have it, Bodog took ‘unveiling’ to its logical conclusion, convincing Glover that the best way to promote the new shirt would be to go shirtless. As Glover’s 205k Twitter followers well understand by now, Emma tends to find traditional clothing norms a little too restricting and needed little encouragement to exchange cotton and polyester for bodypaint to promote the Ayr United cause.
While our Emma will undoubtedly quicken pulse rates, Ayr United fans are hoping their hearts don’t get broken all over again in 2015-16. To that end, McCall announced on Monday that the club had re-signed Brian Gilmour (the midfielder, not the financier) to a one-year contract. McCall said Gilmour would be “playing in a role much further forward from where he has been.”
The club also recently re-signed defender Martyn Campbell and offers have been made to Nicky Devllin, JP McGovern, Peter Murphy and Adam Blakeman. And McCall has high hopes for Robbie Crawford and Alan Forest, whom he referred to as “the two best young players not only in this league but in Scotland in my view.” Not to quibble, but see if you can spot two other candidates below vying for ‘best in show’ honors.
