MIDDLESBROUGH Football Club will honour the armed services at its Championship match on Friday (November 9).

The club, second in the table, has invited 250 members of the Yorkshire Regiment and their families to the home game against Sheffield Wednesday, which kicks off at 7.45pm.

Both sets of players will wear special shirts carrying a commemorative poppy ahead of the Remembrance weekend.

The club is also renaming the North Stand, The Yorkshire Regiment Stand for the night.

Special signage will be erected inside the stand and the military contingent will be seated together in uniform, to create an eye-catching spectacle.

Cleveland Army Cadet Force will lead a parade before a period of silence is observed ahead of the game in tribute to those who lost their lives fighting for their country in the two World Wars and all conflicts since.

Middlesbrough fan, Private James Rose, who lost both his legs in a bomb blast in Afghanistan in 2009, will deliver the match ball to the referee just before kick-off.

The club hopes the events will unite both sets of supporters, as the Yorkshire Regiment, which was formed in 2006 from regiments including The Green Howards, recruits from both Teesside and South Yorkshire.

The club's chief executive, Neil Bausor, said: “Middlesbrough Football Club has enjoyed a special relationship with The Green Howards over many years and we’re delighted this bond is continuing under the regiment’s new form.

“We hope all supporters in the stadium will join together to give our special guests the welcome they deserve on Friday.”

A commemorative programme has been produced for the match, featuring a cover created by the club’s artist-in-residence Richard Piers Rayner, whose graphic novel Road To Perdition, inspired a Hollywood blockbuster starring Tom Hanks.