Port Vale midfielder Michael Brown surprised his teammates by hiring an ice cream van to celebrate his birthday.

The veteran turned 39 on Monday but decided against bringing in the customary cakes, flapjacks and croissants for his colleagues.

Instead, he organised for the ice cream van to turn up for an hour after training on Thursday for the enjoyment of players, coaches and staff.

“Normally when it’s your birthday you’re meant to bring cakes in or croissants or some sort of flapjacks or whatever – some treats for the lads,” he told port-vale.co.uk.

“So they were sort of saying ‘come on Browny you’re getting on now, you’ve got to do something special for us’.

“We occasionally get a bacon sandwich or something like that for the lads so they were saying for me to do a butty van or that sort of thing.

“And I thought that a big bacon and egg sandwich shop isn’t ideal so I thought ‘what about ice creams?’”

Brown says the idea got rave reviews from his teammates, commenting: “They’re all loving it. 

“We mentioned the other day that it should be an ice cream van and I thought I’ll Google it and she was local, she was happy to do it and even the staff got involved.”