Stags on pitch halt training for Scottish football team

A football club were forced to stop a training session when the pitch was invaded by stags.

Fort William, who play in the Highland League, were training at their picturesque home ground Claggan Park when the unexpected guests brought proceedings to an unscheduled stop.

Michael O’Meara, who runs the club’s social media channels, told PA: “When we arrived for training there were originally six stags at the back of the park which was pretty amazing. We then started at 7pm and three of them remained to train with us.

“The stags moved to the other side of the pitch to avoid us but then half an hour later they were standing in the centre circle. Ten minutes later one stag came running over and most of the players got a fright. Then the other two stags followed their leader and ran onto the part where we were training.”

Mr O’Meara said they “had to stop training as we didn’t want to give them a big fright but they were also in our way”.

A clip of the incident uploaded to Twitter had racked up nearly half a million views by Friday afternoon. The training session did eventually resume.

Claggan Park is located in the shadow of Ben Nevis and has been described as one of the country’s most scenic grounds thanks to its views of the mountains.

Mr O’Meara said that, while it is not common to see deer on the pitch, it is not unheard of.

“It has happened in the past,” he added. “One game last season got delayed half an hour because we had to remove some deer droppings off our pitch.”

Fort William are sometimes described as the worst team in the UK thanks to a well publicised 73-game winless run that came to an end with a cup win in July.

In September they ended a run of 882 days without a league win by beating Clachnacuddin 1-0 for their only points of the season so far.