LEIGH LEOPARDS owner Derek Beaumont is one of the most colourful characters in rugby league.
Whilst the vast majority of club owners rarely trudge through social media, Beaumont has a strong presence on Twitter and often spends his time on there promoting the Leopards as well as entering into banter with rival fans.
However, a tweet error earlier in the week got a number of fans on his back after unintentionally inviting Steve Prescott MBE to a Leigh game.
Of course, Prescott unfortunately passed away in 2013, with Beaumont describing the aftermath.
“I made an absolutely horrendous howler on Twitter. I am going through hundreds of messages, as you can imagine, we’ve beat St Helens and everyone’s buzzing,” Beaumont stated on the Eddie and Stevo podcast.
“I don’t look at Twitter other than my own notifications and I’ll go through, and then one has come up – Steve Prescott MBE – a really nice message.
“I’ve then not registered in my head who it is. I know who Steve Prescott is and what happened. I raised five figures for him on a weight loss challenge.
“But I didn’t read it as that, I just saw this nice message, quoted it back and said ‘fantastic support what a great message, thanks so much, be good to get you at a game Steve and have a beer.’”
“I was getting hammered and I still hadn’t twigged because this tweet has come from ‘Steve Prescott MBE’, it didn’t say it was the Foundation so it took me ages to register.”
As a result, after apologising to the Foundation, Beaumont decided to take his charity one step further by giving £10 to every activity – a like, a retweet/quote or a comment’ – to what his original tweet received.
Thus, the Leigh owner has donated £2630 to the Steve Prescott Foundation in an incredible gesture that encapsulates Beaumont at his brilliant best.
Beaumont tweeted: “@StevePrescott1 thanks for the understanding and support for the error tweet. The combined activity of it was 263. I am donating £10 for each so £2630 to the charity today and deleted the tweet. Best wishes for the Morocco challenge and ❤️ to Linzi and the family 🙏”
@StevePrescott1 thanks for the understanding and support for the error tweet. The combined activity of it was 263. I am donating £10 for each so £2630 to the charity today and deleted the tweet. Best wishes for the Morocco challenge and ❤️ to Linzi and the family 🙏 pic.twitter.com/gg5F2HkUrR
— Derek john beaumont (@derek_beaumont) March 17, 2023
Sensational effort!
