Scots Super Bowl star vows to return to Arbroath after Carolina Panthers bid for historic win
A Scots-born American footballer is planning to return to his Arbroath roots and brush up on his Scottish accent, but first aims to clinch a historic Super Bowl win.
Kicker Graham Gano, 28, was born in the Angus town where his US Navy officer father was based in the late 1980s.
He moved to the US in childhood but many relatives, including his sister, still live in Scotland.
Since a successful college football career he has played for teams in Las Vegas, Washington, Baltimore and Carolina, where he signed a contract worth a reported 12 million US dollars (#8.2 million) in 2014.
He is now preparing to line up in Super Bowl 50 in California on Sunday as the Carolina Panthers take on the Denver Broncos.
It is the Panthers kicker's heritage that led half-time act Coldplay to pledge their allegiance to Carolina this week and Gano is keen to take his current family to visit where he was born in the near future.
Speaking to Press Association Sport, he said: My aunt and uncle came and visited this past year, they travel a lot so I've got to see them quite a few times.
I haven't been back in a while. I want to take my wife and my kids back and see my family - I've got my sister, aunt and uncle, cousins and nieces (in Scotland). It will be good to get back and maybe pick my accent up again.
It will be hard to travel all the way across the ocean with two small kids but it will be great to be able to go back to where I was born.''
Gano is hoping the Panthers elect to kick off at Levi's Stadium so he can be the one who triggers the array of camera flashes for the beginning of the NFL's biggest game.
An average of 114.4 million people watched the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks in 2015, making the game the most watched in the history of US television.
The 28-year-old said he would welcome the pressure of a potentially game-winning field goal after previously making the kick that won the Las Vegas Locomotives the inaugural United Football League Championship game in 2009.
He is aiming to follow in the footsteps of fellow Scot and former New York Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes, who was born in Greenock and won two Super Bowls titles in the last decade.