Booze, late night romps, fights - Man United's wild pre-season tours remembered

But with Sir Alex Ferguson busy getting his knighthood in the summer of 1999, Manchester United's tour of Australia quickly mutated into the mother of all lads holidays.

From hangovers to late night romps - with a little bit of football involved - the Red Devils' tour Down Under was the stuff of dreams for the majority of the 20-something players.

"The trip to Australia in 1999 remains one of the greatest I've ever undertaken," Dwight Yorke told FourFourTwo. "And it was made extra special for me by meeting the most extraordinarily beautiful girl it has ever been my pleasure to know."

"There can't be anywhere on the planet with as many beautiful women as Australia," added Yorke, who perhaps unsurprisingly joined Sydney FC later in his career.

The tour started reasonably calmly as Man United, fresh from their heroic treble-winning season, beat a weakened Australia side 2-0 at the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground, with the turf being specially converted into a football pitch.

After that was when the carnage began and Fergie's assistant, Steve McClaren, recently appointed, just like he is this summer, couldn't keep the boys at arm's length.

"Steve was in charge, and while we respected him, we took absolute liberties," recalled Andy Cole.

"We just weren't scared of him like we were with the manager. He gave us curfews but we just ignored them. He'd only been at the club for six months and hadn't built up the authority to discipline us."

The team then moved onto Sydney but the antics from Melbourne stayed in the Man United camp.

"We had a few good nights out and broke the curfew that had been put on us," Nicky Butt said.

"We stayed out until four in the morning in Sydney at a big casino nightclub called Star City. I was with Giggsy [Ryan Giggs] and we were ducking and diving up and down fire escapes so that we didn't get caught going back to our rooms late. We got away with it, but Yorkey [Yorke] and Bozza [Mark Bosnich] got caught coming in at five o'clock. They got b********!"

It was at a training session at Sydney's Olympic Stadium where the pre-season party lifestyle caught up with one player and then some.

"We were stretching on the pitch, then I heard someone snoring," revealed Butt. "It was Yorkey. He'd fallen asleep.

"We were all giggling, but no one woke him up. He was fast asleep, but he was still sat up. After four or five minutes of stretching we got up to jog, leaving Yorkey asleep in the middle of the field.

"Yorkey snoozing in the middle of the Olympic Stadium remains the funniest thing I've ever seen in football.

"The story got back to the manager, who came out to meet us a few days later in Hong Kong. He went nuts."

"I'm lucky that I don't get hangovers," Yorke joked.

"But after 20 minutes my head was starting to spin. I was relieved when we started to do some stretches and thought I'd take the opportunity of lying down for a minute to stretch. Big mistake. Within two seconds I was fast asleep.

"The next thing I knew I was being drenched with water and I woke to find the lads killing themselves with laughter."

Another leisurely friendly against the Socceroos, and another win for Man United as they claimed a 1-0 victory.

True to form on their trip, the team went out in the city to celebrate the result - and it turned out to be a memorable one for Yorke and the 'Pleasure Machine' he managed to pull.

"I was on the lookout for one in particular who I'd been told would be there - Gabby Richens, one of the hottest babes in Australia," Yorke said.

"She was also known as 'the Pleasure Machine', a nickname she got from an airline advertising campaign in which she had steamed up the screens with a strip tease. When I saw her, I was transfixed. There was no time like that moment to approach her."

Yorke and Richens hit it off and arranged to meet the following night, meaning Man United's star striker had to break a curfew yet again.

The pair bonded the following evening and decided to venture back to Yorke's hotel room. The only obstacle in their way now was the hotel's security, who's main job was to make sure no guests were brought back to the rooms of anyone in the Man United camp.

"Listen, mate," Yorke explained to the guard. "I've got Gabby coming up."

"Oh yeah? Gabby who?" the guard said.

"You know, the Pleasure Machine," Yorke responded.

"I gave him a hundred US dollars but I would have parted with a year's win bonuses if necessary," Yorke added. "We had a spectacular night until she left at 6am."

But occasionally there are arguments on lads holidays, no matter how tight knit you are as friends, and it's fair to say things got very heated between Roy Keane and Peter Schmeichel, who came to blows in their pre-season tour of Asia the summer before.

Things got so heated that the commotion even woke up a Man United legend.

"I had a bust-up with Peter when we were on a pre-season tour of Asia, in 1998, just after I came back from my cruciate injury. I think we were in Hong Kong. There was drink involved," Keane said in his autobiography The Second Half.

"There'd been a little bit of tension between us over the years, for football reasons. Peter would come out shouting at players, and I felt sometimes he was playing up to the crowd: 'Look at me!'"

"He was probably doing it for concentration levels, but I felt he did it too often, as if he was telling the crowd: 'Look what I have to deal with.'"

"He said: 'I've had enough of you, It's time we sorted this out.' So I said: 'Okay' and we had a fight. It felt like 10 minutes. There was a lot of noise - Peter's a big lad.

"Peter had grabbed me, I'd head-butted him - we'd been fighting for ages.

"He [Ferguson] told us that we were a disgrace to the club, and that we'd woken Bobby Charlton up, that Bobby had come out of his room and seen us.

"Peter took responsibility for the fight, which was good. I admired him for it. But Sir Bobby could have tried to break it up."