WHEN an unidentified flying burger descended from space and landed at Colchester United’s training ground, staff were understandably bemused.

The frozen burger attached to a polystyrene box descended from space and was discovered by Colchester United's groundskeeper.

In a Tweet Col U said: "So as you can probably guess, the world of football isn't like any normal business at the best of times.

"But what happened on Wednesday at #ColU took it to a whole new level.

"Settle in, this is worth sticking around for.

"Sometimes in the media team, we really have to work our grey matter to come up with good content.

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"At other times, stories just fall into your lap. And, on this occasion, it quite literally did.

"When the club secretary phones the media department, it's normally something interesting - transfer news, contracts being signed, that sort of thing.

"But this time? There was a burger that had been found at the training ground."

And the team were puzzled until until British YouTuber Tom Stanniland called the club to explain.

The 29-year-old, known online as Kill'em, said in a video posted on the club's Twitter account: "I sent a burger into space using a weather balloon.

"It's gone about 24 miles up, weather balloon popped, it's come back down, over 100 miles, and it's landed right here."

Gazette: Tom Stanniland takes a bite of the burgerTom Stanniland takes a bite of the burger

Mr Stanniland explained that the box, sent up to space with a GoPro camera, was also fitted with a tracker.

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"We lost connection with it when it got so high," he said. "It's crash-landed here but in the morning the groundskeeper found the box, turned it upside down, the tracker got connection again, we've found it and just followed it."

He travelled from his home in Sheffield to collect the space burger from Florence Park in Tiptree, on Wednesday.

Mr Stanniland said he wanted to see what the burger tasted like.

His review: "That's not nice."

He added that the burger, which was dry, powdery and frozen after its out-of-this-world journey, was "drying my mouth out".

An the story led to a hilarious thread on Colc U's Twitter account, starting with this.