For any Irish fans out there who assumed they were following the Twitter account of Damien Duff, we’ve some disappointing news for y’all.
It seems that the account that supposedly belonged to one of the best players ever to put on a green shirt, @Duffer16, is in fact a fake.
Suspicions over the legitimacy of the account were raised earlier today when the Fulham Communications Director Sarah Brookes tweeted the following message.
She then posted messages to @Duffer16 and another account which was said to be belonging to the Irish international, @DAMIENDOFFICIAL, telling them to “stop posing as Damien Duff” as “he does not have a Twitter account”. She later tweeted Sky pundit Chris Kamara in an attempt to get the word out to the Twitterverse and the BBC’s Phil McNulty was amongst those who passed on the message.
The whole situation got a bit murky for a while when @Duffer16 made a counter claim against Sarah Brookes, tweeting:
Although @Duffer16 was not listed as an official Twitter account, there had been nothing in the previous tweets on the account to suggest that he might be an impostor.
Tweets that he sent out to his 6,500+ followers included his take on last night’s Europa Cup exit to Odense: “Gutted isn’t the word! Should have never let a lead like that slip, no excuses!” and what he thought of Ireland’s draw for the Euros a couple of weeks back: “Spain- World and European champions, Croatia- great players, great manager, Italy- ageing side but always do well in major tournaments!”
However, if there was any doubts, the matter was resolved beyond all conclusion with @Duffer16’s next tweet, which read:
To be honest, we were always a bit skeptical. This, after all, is a man so fond of the cot that he once said that sleeping was his favourite hobby and we could never imagine that he would become an advocate of the social networking site to the extent that, for example, the extremely annoying Rio Ferdinand is.
Nah, our Duffer is not one for shooting his mouth off and as long as he continues to do his talking on the pitch, we’ll all be happy.
