Prince William shocks football fans at a local pub – and buys a round!

Prince William joined fellow Aston Villa fans for a surprise pub get-together and raised a glass after completing his royal engagement.

On January 15, the Prince of Wales was announced as the new patron of the College of Paramedics and appeared in Birmingham, England, for its first Emergency and Critical Care Conference. It was his first royal duty of the year and came the day after his wife Kate Middleton announced she was in remission from cancer.

After stopping at the conference, where William met with paramedics, attended learning sessions and gave a speech about his commitment to supporting first responders in his new role, he made a pit stop at a local pub.

The 42-year-old Prince of Wales organized a gathering of Aston Villa fans to coincide with his stay in Birmingham (the Premier League team’s hometown) and treated them to a round of drinks at Wetherspoons ahead of the football team’s game later in the day .

Wetherspoon’s is a British chain with several branches in Birmingham. The meeting took place at Birmingham New Street station.

“Prince William surprised pub-goers when he jumped into a Wetherspoons store at Birmingham train station today. He arranged to meet a group of @AVFCOfficial regulars while he was in town to speak at the College of Paramedics conference and “bought them a round,” Rebecca English of the Daily Mail wrote on X.

“You have to be British I think to understand the cultural significance of a future king in the spoons!” she added in another message.

The Daily Mail reported that Prince William drank a pint of Bulmers cider in the pub before catching the train back to London and that he seemed comfortable in the company of his Aston Villa fans, as English shared in a video with X, in which he posed for photos and even smiled for a selfie.

Steve Jones, a Villa fan for 35 years, said the royal encounter came about after Aston Villa pointed out that Prince William wanted to meet local fans during his trip to Birmingham.

“We were contacted by the club and said Prince William wanted to meet a delegation of Villa fans as he was in Birmingham as he wanted to keep up to date with everything going on at Villa,” Jones said, according to the source . “He was fantastic. I was quite amazed at how committed he was to the club and how interested he was in it. He’s not a fan of fair weather. He really loves the club with passion.”

Jones, 56, reported that William is completely up to date with the team’s latest updates and even mentioned which of his children is part of the fandom! The Prince and Princess of Wales are parents to Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6, and William has taken George to several games over the years.

“We talked about the club, the transfers, the upcoming Champions League trip to Monaco and everything about Aston Villa. He asked a lot of questions – he was very interested,” Jones said.

“It was 95% about Villa, as that is our common interest, but also a little bit about his family. Young George is a Villa fan, but he didn’t want all three of them to be Villa fans,” he explained, referring to Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

Jones said the Prince’s passion had caused quite a stir and he stated he would watch Villa’s game later in the day.

“He was hugely interested and seemed like a really genuine guy and he just wanted to talk about Villa,” the fan said of William.

“He said he was confident of beating Everton tonight and that he would watch, but that he was afraid of new manager syndrome, or rather old manager syndrome,” he added, an obvious one Alluding to Everton’s managerial change last week.

Aston Villa face Everton in an away game at Goodison Park on January 15 at 7:30pm local time and William made his case for Aston Villa in his speech at the College of Paramedics Emergency and Critical Care Conference.

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“It’s great to be back in Birmingham and for all the other Villa fans who are with us today – I look forward to celebrating our win over Everton later,” Prince William began, which was recorded in a video obtained by X shared in English, eliciting laughter from the audience.

The Prince of Wales is a loyal football fan and a vocal Aston Villa fan – he even lost his voice during a game in the autumn! The King previously explained that he became a Villa fan because he wanted to root for a team with an underdog feel.

“A long time ago, at school, I was very interested in football. I looked around for clubs. All my friends at school were either Man United or Chelsea fans and I didn’t want to follow the everyday teams,” Prince William said of the backstory. The Telegraph reported in 2018. “I wanted to have a team that was more in the middle of the table and could give me more emotional rollercoaster moments.”

King Charles’ son is also president of the Football Association, football’s governing body in England, and brought Prince George to a Villa game last April.

A close source tells PEOPLE that Prince William was taken to Aston Villa because both his wife, Princess Kate, and his father, King Charles, were undergoing treatment for cancer. (Princess Kate said in September 2024 that she had completed chemotherapy, and palace sources said in December that the royal’s treatment was continuing into this year).

“The Aston Villa results have given him a big boost,” the source said of William. “You shouldn’t ignore the importance of football in these moments.”