You can take the boy out of Yorkshire, but you can’t take Yorkshire out of the boy. After Halifax Wanderers were knocked out of last season’s Canadian Premier League play-offs, losing 1-0 at home to Pacific FC, ex-Leeds academy player Dan Nimick spotted Pacific’s right-back running around taunting the home supporters. Nimick had almost scored a late equaliser, his header from a set-piece bouncing into the ground and over the defender guarding the far post, only to be pawed away by the goalkeeper. His season had just been ended by a Pacific team who could barely believe their luck — 27% of possession, one shot on target, their winner provided by an own-goal — and he wasn’t going to have any of their players taking liberties. The full-time whistle was followed by plenty more blasts from the referee, trying to separate the two teams, with Nimick right in the thick of it.

“Our fans had been giving their right-back a tough time during the game and he did some sort of gesture at them,” Nimick says over Zoom, from almost 3,000 miles away from Leeds. “And obviously I was upset that we’d just lost the game, we were out of the play-offs, and he was doing that. Me and our ‘keeper went over there to ask him to stop doing the gesture.”

Politely, I assume? “Yeah, just politely ask,” Nimick smiles. “But yeah, you know, it happens in football. I’m sure every player has had a moment like that.”

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