Live football is back, and although it’s not in front of a live crowd of fans, hundreds of supporters will be heading to one match from Welshpool this weekend.

Welshpool Printing Group won a contract to make 1,200 3ft cut outs of Brighton and Hove Albion supporters, which will be placed in the teams home ground The Amex Stadium ahead of this weekend’s match against Arsenal.

The company, located in the Enterprise Park in Welshpool, was approached by an agency who wanted the life-size top half fan photos printed in order to fill up the stadium, which will otherwise remain empty during the game because of social distancing rules.

Sales director at Welshpool Printing Group, Andy Bebb, is looking forward to seeing his team’s hard work on television – the game is due to be shown on BT Sport at 3pm on Saturday.

“It’ll certainly be interesting to see,” he said.

“There’s not a lot of companies that do this and this is certainly the first time we’ve done a job to this scale.

 

 

“These are one-off cut outs so it’s really been keeping us busy.”

Andy said the process begins by Brighton and Hove Albion fan uploading pictures to their website, donating £20, of which £10 goes towards the NHS.

“On a good day we can get through 500 photos, but on Wednesday we delivered 1,200 and it’s taken us about a week,” he added.

The company’s hard work also appeared on BBC Breakfast, which showed off the prints they had also created of presenters Louise Michin and Dan Walker.

But this isn’t the only big job that Welshpool Printing Group has ave secured – Andy said that the company has also been busy printing face masks for Premiere League teams Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur, featuring the clubs' badges.

As well as printing signage for Covid restrictions for other businesses, the company is set to print event more fan photos for Brighton's next match against Manchester United.

“We’ve definitely been kept busy,” Andy said.

“The company turned 60 in April, which we obviously couldn’t mark properly – maybe this is a belated celebration.”