A BORO superfan missed his first game since 1999 after having to isolate with Covid.

Rob Nichols who lives in Middlesbrough had attended around 800 matches - home and away - until he was unable to go to Saturday's game against Mansfield, due to testing positive for Covid and having to isolate.

Rob came out of isolation on Tuesday, but tested positive on Friday meaning he was unable to attend the Middlesbrough game against Mansfield.

Boro went on to win the away match 2-3.

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He said: "I got Covid probably at the Boro match over Christmas, I was a bit ill. These days if you go negative on the sixth day and then negative on the seventh day you can come out of isolation early, so I didn't sleep much before the sixth day test which I did in the morning, and I was just massively positive, so that was it, that was the end.

"And actually on the seventh day after I took my test again, it was too late then, I was positive again.

"Although I didn't sleep the night before taking that test, in some ways it hadn't really sunk in because we had all that time where we were unable to go to matches. I just appreciated going back to the games so much this season.

"The last match that I missed was for my brother's wedding in Hong Kong in September 1999. So I went to every game home and away after that, that was quite rare to miss a match, but I couldn't really get out of my brothers wedding! I wasn't there for very long, I was only in Hong Kong for three days so I did see the next game."

This match was against Southampton and the score was also 2-3 to Boro.

Rob has edited the Middlesbrough Football Club fanzine FMTTM (fly me to the moon) since the early 90s - which he sells at games.

Rob said: "I've never counted up how many games that is, I'm quite glad I didn't because it might have been a significant figure coming up. But it's got to be well over 800 games in a row. It's all the league, cup and European games home and away. It helps that I do the fanzine so I'm self-employed, and also that helps because it's part of my job in a way. I justify it that way to anyone else."

Rob has a home and away season ticket and said he sometimes does a park run before or after a match when he is in different towns.

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