‘Hoofed’ Dundee ball washes up in Holland

AS football kicks go one taken in Dundee two weeks ago must take the record having turned up on a beach hundreds of miles away.

The football kicked into the River Tay in Dundee has ended up in the Netherlands – much to the surprise of the city team who were playing with it at the time.

Two weeks after the ball disappeared into the river it has been picked up on a beach by someone out walking in Holland.

Dundee Athletic, which was only formed two seasons ago, was playing against St James in the Dundee Saturday morning football league two weeks ago.

Team manager Matt Smith said the match had been one they would rather have forgotten about due to the 11-1 score against them.

However, thanks to one of the players being a little enthusiastic with his kick the ball and the game have hit the headlines thousands of miles away.

Matt said: “It was a brand-new ball and had only been in play for around 10 minutes when somebody basically hoofed it and it landed in the river.

“We thought that was the end of that ball for us and just carried on.

“We have had balls kicked into the Tay in the past and they usually end up washed up on the beach in Broughty Ferry, much to the delight of local children who land a decent football.”

On this occasion Matt and the team thought that exactly the same would happen again as they watched the ball taken by the current and was last seen heading up river .

However what happened next could not have been predicted by either Matt or anyone else.

On Saturday, exactly two weeks after the game the team received a social media message from a woman living in the Netherlands.

Matt said; “A woman called Esther Verlees contacted the team via the Saturday morning football league to say she had found the ball on the beach at Vlieland in the Netherlands.”

In something of an understatement Esther said the ball had “travelled a long way”.

Matt said: “We couldn’t believe it. It was really hard to get our heads round that our ball had been found so far away.”

Matt said that as soon as the team posted the news the story had gone viral.

He said: “It’s absolutely crazy. Hundreds of people have seen the story and have commented on it.

“I’ve honestly never heard of anything like this before.”

Matt said he hoped to be able to get in touch with Esther to thank her and send her over a complimentary club top as a memento – as well as the Dundee Athletic ball she now has in her possession at home.

In October a message in a bottle travelled all the way from the Bahamas to be found by a group of Lathallan schoolchildren.