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Weekly parodies film poster to mark football club’s relegation fight

A weekly newspaper ran a spoof film poster on its back page as a football club on its patch prepares to pull of a relegation escape.

The Fife Free Press parodied war classic The Great Escape, swapping an image of Steve McQueen attempting to ride his motorcycle to freedom for that of Raith Rovers manager John Hughes.

Rovers are vying with Ayr United to avoid relegation from the Scottish Championship, and the two meet at Raith’s home ground in Kirkcaldy on the last day of the season tomorrow.

The Free Press has previously spoofed other films to illustrate stories, including Ghostbusters and The Untouchables.

Raith Escape

Editor Allan Crow told HTFP: “Matthew Elder, head of sport, wanted to do something different and we knocked around a few ideas and he came up with the Great Escape. The poster from the film is iconic.

“We swapped the image of Steve McQueen flying over the barbed wire with one of him riding over Stark’s Park, the club’s ground, Matthew added the badge to his top – which happened to be blue and fitted the club colours – and we added the head of manager, John Hughes in place of the actor.

“Matthew came up with the text and William Froggatt at our [Johnston Press] design team in Sheffield pulled it altogether to make a stand-out back page.

“Feedback has been excellent with the image widely shared on social media.”

3 comments

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  • May 5, 2017 at 9:26 am
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    Not exactly a new idea. A quick google search will find that this image is off the DVD cover, clearly copyright of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios as it is stated on the packaging. I doubt Johnston Press paid MGM’s license fee.

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  • May 5, 2017 at 9:50 am
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    Nice light hearted approach to a business (sport) that usually takes itself too seriously

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  • May 6, 2017 at 3:16 pm
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    I am afraid a Scottish paper being designed in Sheffield says a lot about the state of our beloved industry.

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