Red Hand Man

The Tyrone County Board have assured Croke Park that their new mascot, Red Hand Man, won’t be appearing again this year after he goaded the rival Derry supporters with obscene hand gestures and verbals of a questionable nature.

The mascot, which is a large foam red hand placed over the head and body of a mystery person, ran onto the pitch with the team at the start and even took part in some of the warm up routines, much to the amusement of the children in the 5000-strong crowd at Owenbeg.

After Derry’s second goal in the first half, it was evident that the mascot was somewhat upset with the scoreline, as he folded in three of his massive foam fingers, leaving 2 large red fingers protruding in the air in front of the Derry support. Johnny Kearney from Knockloughrim explained:

“It was an obvious 2-fingered gesture at us, hi. I had to cover my wee lad’s eyes. Two boys from Swatragh were about to jump over the fence to give him a hiding, only he shouted that he was just letting us know Derry had scored 2 goals in case we couldn’t count. We didn’t know if that was an insult or not so we let it go.”

Later in the game, after Tyrone had taken the lead following a remarkable comeback, it appeared the mascot appeared to get carried away and, using his loudspeaker inside the costume, shouted over to the Derry support, ‘ha ha yiz inbred hoors‘, according to sources.

Ground security managed to pull Red Hand Man to safety as missiles such as blue rope, hammers, Mars bars, cans of Lilt, bales of hay, spanners and front wheels of wheelbarrows rained down from the stand as over 60 men tried to jump over the fence at the final whistle.

The Tyrone Board apologised for the mascot’s antics and added that he’d been drinking whiskey inside the costume as well.