Displaying items by tag: Royal 'Foxes' Crew Celebrate

17th May 2016

Hunt Visitor Brings Out the Foxes As Leicester City Turns Into Sea of Blue

Sailors and 'Fighting Foxes' football team! of HMS Atherstone that visited Dublin at the weekend, are seen earlier this month to cheer and celebrate Leicester City Football Club’s triumph.

#LeicesterBlue – A Royal Navy ‘Hunt’ class minehunter equipped with Sea-Fox mine-disposal team departed Dublin Port yesterday, the same day in which across the Irish Sea the City of Leicester also turned into a sea of blue, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The ‘Foxes’, the fans of Leicester City F.C. celebrated their championship of the Premier League title success as more than 240,000 people gathered in the city to watch the team’s open-top bus parade.

Crew members of HMS Atherstone (M38) which visited Dublin Port at the weekend until departing yesterday, had previously celebrated the historic and spectacular victory by beating Everton on 7 May. The club were 5,000-1 to win the title at the start of season.

It was during the game that sailors of HMS Atherstone a mine counter measures vessel (MCMV) while on a northbound transit through UK waters, cheer and celebrate Leicester City Football Club’s triumph.

In the latter half of 2015, Leicester City stepped in and sent out a new strip for Crew 4 following a call to assist with their old torn kit. The football team nicknamed the 'The Fighting Foxes' on board the 685 tonnes displacement vessel were then on a deployment in the Gulf.

HMS Atherstone, whose affiliated town is just 20 miles from Leicester, have found since inheriting the playing kit, that they have enjoyed a long spell of good luck including their 7000nm transit home from Bahrain last year arriving home just before Christmas.

Published in Naval Visits

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The most significant events for the Half Ton Class has been the annual Half Ton Cup which was sailed under the IOR rules until 1993. More recently this has been replaced with the Half Ton Classics Cup. The venue of the event moved from continent to continent with over-representation on French or British ports. In later years the event is held biennially. Initially, it was proposed to hold events in Ireland, Britain and France by rotation. However, it was the Belgians who took the ball and ran with it. The Class is now managed from Belgium.