{"id":811912,"date":"2026-10-24T00:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T00:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/811912\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T00:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T00:38:14","slug":"dutch-football-team-celebrates-stranraer-links-with-tartan-kit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/811912\/","title":{"rendered":"Dutch football team celebrates Stranraer links with tartan kit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dennis Van Unen&#8217;s dying wish was to experience an Old Firm match in person.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The FC Twente fan, who had terminal cancer, achieved that dream in 2006 with the help of two Stranraer supporters. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">What followed was an unlikely friendship between fans of the Dutch club and the Scottish town that has endured ever since.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That bond has now been immortalised in fabric through a special tartan-inspired shirt, which will make its debut in FC Twente&#8217;s Dutch Eredivisie match away to AZ Alkmaar this weekend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The unlikely connection began in 2006 when Dennis met Stranraer supporters Jim McKie and James Hilton during a match at Twente&#8217;s De Grolsch Veste stadium, in the eastern city of Enschede.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Suffering from skin cancer, Dennis told them his dream was to experience one of football&#8217;s most intense rivalries, a match between Celtic and Rangers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jim, who also supported Rangers, and James, who was a Celtic fan, secured tickets and accompanied him on a football tour that included Ibrox, Celtic Park and Hampden.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The friendship formed during that visit survived Dennis&#8217;s death the following year, with Twente supporters subsequently travelling to Stranraer and establishing a tradition of reciprocal visits that continues to this day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dennis Van Unen&#8217;s dying wish was to experience an Old Firm match in person. The FC Twente fan,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-811912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}