PORTSMOUTH defender Christian Burgess made a wonderful gesture after appearing at an Under-12s side’s training session after his fixture against Crawley was postponed.
Burgess, 25, had his Saturday afternoon freed up after Pompey’s League Two fixture against Crawley at Fratton Park was called off due to a frozen pitch on the south coast.
The central defender took to Twitter as he pondered what to do after having the rest of the day off.
His tweet led to all sorts of ideas from people offering ideas of how he could fill his time before he decided to make a surprise appearance for the Skilful Soccer Youth under-12s side.
Their manager, Will Chitty, gave the defender a time and a place – which led to Burgess saying he will be there in five minutes.
Burgess ended up spending an hour overseeing the training session and also posed for photos and held a question and answer session with young players who compete in the Portsmouth Youth Football League Under-12 C Division.
Chitty could not believe it when Burgess took him up on his cheeky offer he made on social media.
He told The News: “Christian mentioned on Twitter that he was bored and wanted suggestions, so I posted we trained at Bransbury Park at 12 noon and to get himself down there.
“I thought no more of it, I didn’t think he’d read it to be honest.
“Apparently, others on Twitter were asking him to help with homework and some guy even wanted him to dig up a tree! Ours seemed like the best thing to do.
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“We started the session and 30 minutes in I looked up and saw him wandering over asking for ‘Will’. I didn’t know what to say!
“We asked him to take the lads through one of the sessions he does with Pompey, so he introduced a possession-based session where eight lads attempt to keep the ball, while four lads try to win it back.
“Afterwards there was a bit of a Q&A and one of the lads asked Christian if he earned £50m, which raised a few laughs!
“He was a really nice guy, fantastic with the kids, really encouraging and praising whatever they were doing.
“We thought he would be there for 10 minutes, but he insisted he’d stay for however long we wanted him, ending up being more than an hour.
“Apparently, others on Twitter were asking him to help with homework and some guy even wanted him to dig up a tree! Ours seemed like the best thing to do. ‘Most of the lads support Pompey and go to watch, so it really lifted them.
“Mind you, I forgot to get my son, Ansah, a selfie with Christian – but made sure I got one with him!”
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