Bristol have submitted their bid to bring World Cup football to the West Country if England win the rights to host the 2018 tournament.

Figures such as Wallace and Gromit and former Spurs and England defender Gary Mabbutt were part of the 16 strong Bristol campaign team to grace Wembley.

The representatives from the team travelled to Wembley in a bio-diesel minibus to further emphasise the city’s green credentials which helps live up to their title of England’s most sustainable city.

Stephen Wray, Bristol bid director, said: “It’s been an exciting day, meeting people, John Barnes, Paul Elliott, Paul Ince, these fantastic footballers from my era. We’ve done a lot of what you would call glad-handing I guess, formal and official photographs and quite a lot of interviews reinforcing the importance of the bid to Bristol. We want to be a successful city. And bringing the World Cup to Bristol would show the level of ambition that we have now as a major international city. It’s been a long nine months of preparation and in our view it is a very solid bid and one we are very proud of. I think what we have in Bristol, apart from a fantastic city, is creativity in spades and hopefully that would be valuable to England’s bid.”

The Bristol bid team have one last presentation to the England 2018 board on December 16, fielding any outstanding technical questions hours before the final decision is made on venues later that day.