They started out in 1996 as a group of graduate trainees at accountancy firm Robson Rhodes meeting once a week for a game of six-a-side at the old Spitalfields Market and afterwards a few pints around the corner.
A bit of fun, some decompression from days spent staring at spreadsheets and numbers on computer screens. They called the team Robson Rhodes. It made sense. Simple, neat, precise – it reflected the day job.
After a couple of years, half the team got jobs at other firms and left. It’s the way with graduate trainee positions. The team played on but, now no longer trainees and the most junior members of staff, the younger guys at Robson Rhodes complained that the firm was paying for a six-a-side team that didn’t really represent them.
So Robson Rhodes became Old Robsonians, and they went out on their own. They changed the rule that only qualified accountants could join. They switched leagues to Battersea when Spitalfields close down to accommodate new office buildings. They found a new pub, The Masons Arms, for post-game drinks.
Over the years, Old Robsonians became more than just a weekly kickabout and a visit to the pub. They didn’t only chat about the match, the winning goal, the penalty save, but new girlfriends, engagements, weddings, stag dos, pregnancies.
“The whole circle of our lives spent meeting up once a week, discussing these things,” says Martin Eales, who has been there since day one and is now self-anointed manager and club secretary.
I was first made aware of Old Robsonians in 2011, when they won a prize in The Independent Christmas Auction to have “A Sports Reporter to Cover an Event of Your Choice”. It’s not the assignment every journalist would accept readily, but I was a young, enthusiastic freelancer and loved seeing my name and writing in print no matter what.
Little did they know, however, that the chronicling of one of the team’s greatest nights would come with a curse.
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All seemed to be going well when their title rivals Locale Loco lost 3-2 to Clitheroes, meaning Old Robsonians required a draw against Cheeky Beers to claim the trophy. Yet they were two-down within minutes, the second goal accompanied by an “aren’t you pleased you brought the journalist along?” from one of the players.
The score was, nonetheless, level at half-time. The team talk reminded the players they were 18 minutes away from winning a league title documented in the national press. But nerves jangled. They lost the ball on half-way and conceded. Old Robsonians panicked, the game became scrappy, full of long balls, misplaced passes and dismay. But with minutes remaining, a free kick was laid off to Jon Hunter who nonchalantly caressed it into the side of goal to secure the title. The celebrations continued at The Masons Arms, then into the early hours at a lock-in at a nearby pub.
I was reminded of the story when Eales emailed to let me know they had reached their quarter-century and will be holding a special celebratory evening in March. He also pointed out that night in 2011 was Old Robsonians 11th league title in seven years, and they haven’t won anything since.
But the club continues on. Games are played. Pints are drunk. Stories are shared. It was nice to be reminded that this is what, in essence, football is still about. That these stories of lives existing around a club still persist beneath the unending Big Six narrative, the millions disappearing into agents’ pockets, the transfer fees, the wages, the off-field misdemeanours, the VAR debates.
Meanwhile, away from the glare, Old Robsonians, and thousands of others clubs like them, roll on. November 2021 marked their 93rd season (roughly seven seasons are played every two years) and 962nd week. They are currently in season 94. “I’ve got a spreadsheet,” Eales says. “It’s the saddest thing: every season, the players, appearances going back to 1996. I’ve managed to turn up 710 times. I only do it because no other club would have me.”
He documented match reports for most games, tapping them out on a Blackberry phone, usually in the pub, his head a little hazy, in the early days. The team has outlasted the phone company.
It still pains Eales that Jeremy “Jez” Vaughan lays claim as founder, having first entered the side 25 years ago but left three months later. Vaughan has moved to America, but is due back for the anniversary night.
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They intend to play an 11-a-side Old Robsonians vs Morton Casuals game before going on to the pub for the anniversary dinner. Eales hopes as many of the current and former players can make it.
Players came and went – more than 40 in total. They welcomed new friends, and kept in touch with old. Team-mates became best mates, best men, godfathers.
Current goalkeeper, David Woodhouse, 53 – a former hedge fund manager who has written a recently published book Who Only Cricket Know – was Best Man at Eales’s wedding and is godfather to his son, James.
And the current squad traverses generations.
Eales is 49, while Ben Adams and John Edwards are in their mid 40s. They have guys in their 30s who work in private equity and journalism.
Three sons play. Simon Birch, 54, their oldest player, has two children in their early 20s, Hugo and Jacques, who join them. “Simon takes about 12 Nurofen before he gets on the pitch,” Eales says.
Eales’s boy James, 19, born after the club’s inception, plays when he is back from Durham University. And the signs are promising of another quarter-century. “He came when he was 16 and on the drive home asked if he would inherit the club,” Eales says. “I’d love it to carry on.”
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