United clamp down on Sampdoria at Aviva Stadium

Manchester United 2 Sampdoria 1

The breaking news yesterday afternoon, complete with photographic evidence, that the Manchester United bus had been clamped outside the team’s Dublin hotel, briefly gave rise to a social media storm of the ‘only in Ireland’ kind.

Then it emerged that the clamp had, in fact, been a prank, which rather took the good as well as the bad out of the whole thing, while leaving many of us natives to wrestle with the profound shock of discovering that clampers actually have a sense of humour.