St Andrew's Day

St Andrew's Day XI: a football team in honour of Andrews

Celebrated on November 30th, the feast day of Saint Andrew gave us the idea of creating a team full of players whose name was a version of Andrew. And it's not a bad one!

As.com

Update: Nov 30th, 2017 06:09 EST

Andrew the Apostle, Saint Andrew, was one of Jesus' disciples, who preached the word in various places including Georgia and Russia and among a host of other things is famous for having pleaded to be crucified on a crux decussata, an X-shaped cross, as he felt he was unworthy to be crucified on the same kind of cross as Jesus had been.

He has been celebrated in Scotland for over a thousand years - even prior to the country declaring its independence in 1320 - and St Andrew is the patron saint of several other countries too. However, the date of the 30th November was not actually used until the early part of the 18th century when American immigrants set up an organisation in his honour.

Andrews around the world: Andrés, Andriy, Andrea...

Other nations that share the saint include: Russia, Greece, Barbados, Romania, Bulgaria and the Spanish island of Tenerife (who also share the Saltire flag - which was designed to remember Saint Andrew being crucified on an X-shaped cross, way back in 60AD).

On a lesser scale, we've decided to pay tribute to the man by creating a football team of Andrews. It was clear early on that professional players named after the saint have a tendency to play in more attacking roles which means we have several exciting options to bring off the bench if we go a goal, or three, down. You'll also note that there are the obligatory kilted couple in there as well.