Greetings from the North of England, mates!
For the past three days, Man Mulligan’s advanced scouts have been immersed in all things Manchester, the first stop in our six-week, twelve-city tour of the Old World, and we have rain on the brain and buckets to share.
Our round-the-clock, turn-the-city-inside-out process went as follows, give or take a dust-up we may have unintentionally instigated between United and City fans:
dive head-first into what we know best—sports, of course—and catalogue, in throwback newspaper form, everything athletic the city has to offer (check), from its top-flight teams and signature stadiums to its beloved legends and rowdiest rivalries (see our sports page below);
get the city’s nickname lay of the land by flippantly but faithfully scoring a slice of local team names (spoiler: Manchester doesn’t disappoint), then pin the prize-worthy results to our trusted, never-leave-home-without-it cork board (double-check, also below);
ditch the ticket stubs and game-worn jerseys for local library cards and forged credentials to the city archives and dig into the area’s non-sporting history and unearth the essence of greater Manchester and its people (a.k.a., the secret sauce in great team names) through eight core influences, covering everything from the natural landscape to those man-made (check, check, and check);
bang our research-filled heads against the hardest walls in town (such lovely bricks here) until a team identity spills out of our ears and splatters onto the page in brand brief form (double-double-check);
get out of Dodge before we’re thrown out—or, as it happens, thrown onto a direct train to London as it rolls out of Dodge (check, ticket check).
And that brings us to the present, on the outskirts of Wilmslow, nursing our wounds and milking a pint, as we barrel toward one of the world’s great cities and what promises to be a dizzying few days.
This Saturday, we’ll send our digital dispatch from London, complete with a Man Mulligan-branded team identity.
Will it match Manchester’s or rain on its fiery parade?
Stay tuned!
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