Naughty dog eats Norwich fan's three tickets for Championship play-off final at Wembley

A Norwich supporter feared he would miss out on the club's biggest match for years after a barking mad incident at his family home.

Season-ticket holder Matt Grimmer, 41, was horrified to learn his pet dog had chewed up three tickets for Monday's Championship play-off final against Middlesborough, which arrived through the post on Tuesday.

"I went to work like normal on the Wednesday and put the tickets where I thought would be a safe place, on a side unit rather than the breakfast bar where they could have been mistaken for recycling," he recalls.

Later that morning, Matt received the fright of his life during an important sales meeting at work.

"The phone rang a couple of times and I ignored it. I could see it was my wife ringing me. Then a text came through saying, 'can you ring me urgently?'

"I excused myself from the meeting thinking that something had happened to a family member," he explains.

Instead, his wife broke the news that Freddie, the family's pet cockapoo (above), had climbed onto the side unit and chewed his way through all three of tickets for Monday's showpiece event.

When Matt turned up at Norwich City's Carrow Road home the following day, the club couldn't believe his version of events until seeing the evidence for themselves.

"As I was queuing up, I explained what had happened and was told, 'yeah, we've heard some excuses in the past..'. Eventually, I pulled my tickets out and they couldn't believe it. I had tried to sellotape them together but it wasn't savable."

Luckily for the family (mainly Freddie) Wembley Stadium have agreed to print new ones which the boys can collect from the ground at 12pm on Monday, three hours before kick-off.

Matt believes Freddie's moment of madness could yet prove a lucky omen after something similar happened before last year's final.

"I read online yesterday that a dog had eaten a QPR fan's tickets last year and they won!"