ROONEY KICKED THE BALL LIKE A ROCKET
THE stars of gross-out comedy prank show Dirty Sanchez once blew £7,000 on booze, the night before filming a multi-million-pound TV ad with a football superstar.
Matt Pritchard, Lee Dainton, Mike “Pancho” Locke and Dan Joyce were hired by Nike to have footballs blasted at them by Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney.
But the sportswear giants made a huge error – after putting the foursome up in a swanky Liverpool hotel and offering them a free bar.
“It was Nike’s money, and they have all the money on the planet, and so we tried to drink the bar dry,” Dainton said.
“You don’t get a gift horse like that often. We were like, man, let’s go. We were drinking really, really expensive bottles of wine that cost hundreds of pounds each.
“We went to bed at half-four and had a half-seven wake-up call to go and film.
“We went down to the foyer and Pancho had not even made it to bed from the bar. He walked straight from the bar and went straight to the shoot.”
The crew were paid £100,000 for the series of adverts featuring a host of footballers including Gennaro Gattuso and Florent Malouda.
“There were four of us there so that was almost £2,000 each we hammered on drinks,” 43-year-old Dainton said.
“It’s not that hard to do. I can’t even put into words how bad the hangover was. It was an intergalactic hangover.
“When [Rooney] was kicking balls at us I thought it was going to be hard but it was a lot worse.”
Pritchard, who runs a barber and tattoo shop in Cardiff, admitted his memories of the night were blurry.
“Saying ‘help yourself’ back then were dangerous words,” Pritch said.
“It was rock’n’roll. They said help yourselves and we enjoyed it.
“The next thing we went to meet Rooney. I said, ‘Come on then Rooney take a penalty and I will save it,’ and he said, ‘Whatever.’
“I have never seen anyone kick a ball as hard, it was hard as a rocket.
“He went for the right-hand corner and I dived and caught it and it nearly broke my fingers. I saved the penalty though!”
The ads were filmed in 2008 for Nike’s Put It Where You Want It tour.
“Rooney was a really nice guy,” Pritch said. “There were no airs and graces or any attitude.”
He added: “Put it this way, he asked his agent to get our autographs and that says a lot.”
Dainton, from Pontypool, brought home an autographed ball for his dad.
“I was bouncing it on the floor and I said, ‘ Do you know what this is?’ and then I told him,” he said.
“He said, ‘Get it off the floor!’ and grabbed it like it was a massive historic artefact.
“My daughter had been playing football with it for 20 minutes outside in the garden. He grabbed the ball to make sure the autograph was OK on it.
“That was the biggest reaction I’ve ever had from my dad.”