Match of the day!

AND she said yes! John and Claire were engaged at Boundary Park this week

ROMANTIC John Walker proved he was man-of-the-match at Boundary Park this week when he proposed to his Latics fanatic girlfriend at half-time — and she said yes.

John shocked Claire Markwick, of Chadderton, when he got down on one knee in front of almost 3,000 fans at the Latics v Scunthorpe game on Tuesday night.

But, just like Claire’s beloved Latics on the pitch (Scunthorpe took the lead after only three minutes) things didn’t get off to the greatest of starts.

“I’d organised for someone to come over the Tannoy and announce that I had a special question to ask,” explained John, who lives in Middleton.

“But as they started doing it, Claire was still in the toilet! She came back to our seats only to hear the very last bit and started asking what was going on — so that’s when I just came out with it and asked her to marry me.”

By this stage, Latics had made it 1-1 and just like the team, John’s luck began to change too.

“Claire was really shocked and started to cry,” he added. “But luckily, she said yes!

“We’ve not got any wedding plans yet. We’re going to move in together soon, then we can start planning.

Claire, who’s also 27, said: “I’m quite good at guessing things and John isn’t the kind of person to plan this sort of thing, so I was really surprised.

“I can’t describe how happy I feel — I’m still in shock from it all! “




Only a small number of our daily stories appear, heavily edited, on this site. For the full story read our print or eChron editions.