For Tim, who you may know very well by now from all his hard work leading the team that fulfills your Tommy orders, a football partnership at Christmas has an extra resonance.
He found in his great uncle Matt Denton’s war diary from three years after the fabled Christmas Truce.
“On Boxing Day he played football with 128 Siege Battery and the major played, apparently,” he said. “They lost 3-1.
“So he didn’t play football with the Germans on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, but they played a match themselves.”
He believes the Christmas Day truce still resonates today because it is “a story of forgiveness and coming together”.
And he believes it shows the power of sport to unite people.
He said: “Football is and always has been a common language between different nations and someone happened to have a ball, it overcame boundaries.
It’s just a shame it didn’t carry on longer.”
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