A non league footy team has taken a battering before the season even starts with the delivery of new toad-in-the-hole themed kits.

Bedale AFC will take to the field for their matches in the North Riding League in shirts emblazoned with the classic British dish.

It means their shirts and shorts will resemble sausage and batter and the garish strip is completed with green socks.

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To make matters worse the goalkeeper's shirt and shorts are modelled on a side order of mixed veg.

The Northern Echo: Picture: KEVIN DONALDPicture: KEVIN DONALD

In the past few seasons Bedale have become notorious for having the worst kits in the entire footballing world.

Previous incarnations have included a hot dog shirt, a cheese grater kit and last season they wore a see-through kit in a push to remind men to get checked for prostate cancer,

The whacky kits have all been dreamt up by the club's sponsor, the North Yorkshire-based sausage maker, Heck.

The firm's co-founder, Andrew Keeble, said, ‘What started as an innocuous sausage kit a few years ago has snowballed into this massive, almost unstoppable force that shows no sign of letting up.

The Northern Echo: Some of Bedale's previous kits Picture: KEVIN DONALD Some of Bedale's previous kits Picture: KEVIN DONALD

"Every time we think that’s it, we get another idea for a new kit and away we go again. However, there is a very serious side to all of this because Heck and Bedale AFC continue to raise awareness and funds for prostate and testicular cancer.”

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Bedale chairman Martyn Coombes said: "To encourage the lads we've called this kit toad in the goal.

"We got such a huge response to past kits we were inundated with requests for people to buy them, so we decided to produce extra shirts to cope with demand and, in the process, raised thousands of pounds for our chosen charity, Prostate Cancer UK, with £5 from the sale of every shirt donated to the charity."

The Northern Echo: Picture: KEVIN DONALD Picture: KEVIN DONALD

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