At Garrison Field, the football pitch at the top of the hill that rises up at the back of Hugh Town, the black wooden lettering has been weathered by sunshine, rain and wind.
Two of the blocks have disappeared entirely, which gives the sign a strangely romantic aesthetic, helped by the shiny red bicycle with basket that one of the players has leant against the wall below: “Home of the smalle-t football le-gue in the world”.
This is both a boast and an accurate description. Walk from here down the hill, along Hugh Street and Lower Strand in the direction of Telegraph Hill, and you reach The Scillonian Club, where football players gather after each match. On the wall in the upstairs bar is a small framed certificate that you’d miss if you didn’t know it was there. It is the official notice from the Guinness World Records.
Fifa too recognises the achievement. Several years ago, two league officials went to Zurich to present the Fifa Museum with replica shirts and saw the display dedicated to the league, including the Lyonesse Cup. To keep up the theme, it is the smallest football trophy in the world (six millimeters high). It has a dent from being dropped on the bus during a tour. They did well to find it.
The Isles of Scilly are an archipelago of five inhabited (and more than 200 non-inhabited) islands situated 28 miles off the south west tip of Cornwall. They have a population of around 2,400 permanent residents, the majority of whom live on St Mary’s. Hugh Town is the only urban area on the islands. The majority of land (and a significant proportion of the housing) is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall.
Tourists come here via a three-hour ferry from Penzance or via quicker, more expensive flights. The weather is warmer and sunnier than anywhere else in the UK. It is the type of place that, when you visit once, you can’t believe that you ever went anywhere else.
Once there were four teams in the Isles of Scilly Football League – too crowded, if anything. Tresco and St Martin’s – islands two and three by population – each had a team. When that became unworkable, Rangers and Rovers on St Mary’s stayed as a two-club league. In the 1980s they became Woolpack Wanderers and Garrison Gunners.
There is a full set-up; this is not a league system by technicality. The two clubs face each other 20 times in the league plus a one two-legged cup final and a season-ending Scillonian Club Cup. The exception is on Boxing Day, when the tradition is for an Old Men vs Young Men fixture.
So as to avoid any issue of single-club dominance that would kill all fun in the league, there is a novel system: redraft or playground rules. Before each season, two players are nominated as captains. They meet up (almost always in the pub) and draft the pool of players in turn. You may play for your team for five years, by chance. You may pull on a different kit every season.
I have wanted to do a piece on the Isles of Scilly Football League for a long time. I come here every year for a week in September or October, staying on St Agnes (with its population of just 73), a short boat ride from Hugh Town.
St Agnes is my happy place. I am now familiar with its residents and those who stay here the same week every year. I adore the walk over the beach to Gugh, with its sheltered reading spots. I feast upon Troytown ice cream and pie night at the Turks Head. There are some rocks near the old stone maze where you can clamber up and watch over the sea towards Bishop Rock lighthouse and I can happily sit there for hours watching gannets dive into the sea and seals playing down below me.
It’s also a fairly difficult place to play organised sports, although the annual pilot gig racing championships is a big deal here. My matchday starts at 9am, and the pitch is roughly a mile away as the crow flies. To get there, I need to walk 20 minutes to get a small boat (commissioned because they don’t run on Sundays) for a 15-minute crossing then walk 15 minutes from the quay up to Garrison Field.
Sunday 12 October is the day of the annual curtain-raiser (yes the league has a Charity Shield and yes it is – obviously – between the only two teams). The start of the season was delayed by a fortnight due to birds pecking away some of the grass seed and a colony of rabbits digging into one area of the pitch. Nature tends to win around here.
The good news is that I have company for my football commute. Gavin Heald is 26, a St Agnes resident and the owner of, and chef in, the best fish and chips van I’ve ever been to that serves lobster scampi by the sea on St Agnes. He also collects retro and iconic football shirts, which means that I want to be mates.
The downsides: Gav fries in his kits (Atletico Mineiro limited edition 2022, Parma away 1995-96), which makes a plastic shirt bag ultra wince, and he supports Derby County. There has to be a downside to living on St Agnes.
Gav’s regular football generally comes at the start and end of the season, when boats to St Mary’s are easier to arrange with the weather. He can occasionally catch a lift back with a vicar when St Agnes gets its turn on the island service rota. Last year, there was no boat on the day of the cup final so Gav kayaked there and back. This is the sort of football dedication I admire.
On the crossing to St Mary’s, we discuss the uniqueness of the league and the international interest it has brought to the Isles of Scilly. In 2007, David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Michael Ballack and others filmed an adidas advert on Garrison Field. In 2021, Vodafone did a promo using the two teams and made a significant donation to the league as a result. It helps to be small and it helps to be different.
I arrive at Garrison Field to meet Will Lethridge, who works as the Business Support Manager for Visit Isles of Scilly, is a freelance journalist and is the chief organiser of the league this season. Will is a magnificent guide to the history of the league and the islands. He also pops a calf muscle during the game, for which I can only send a documented message of get well soon.
Now, I would describe my current fitness as somewhere between lapsed and agnostic. My Powerleague team stopped a year or so ago, I run occasionally and walk more. I have one of those gym memberships where the only thing worse than the cost per visit would be to cancel it because then you have admitted defeat rather than simply enduring that costly defeat on a constant basis.
As a result, my planned aim is this: meet the players, get assigned to a team, come on for 10 minutes at the end, rub some mud on my knees, shake some hands, meet some babies and then masterfully upsell my involvement in the whole thing while telling the story of the league. Some classic “bias journo”, if you will.
The good news is that the pitch is flat, in pretty good nick, there are already people putting up the goal nets and remarking the white lines and a decent crowd of birdwatchers (this is the best place in the UK, and the best time of year, for that passion) has assembled to watch.
The bad news: “We’re a little short of players”. Most of the work on the Isles of Scilly revolves around tourism and, as such, is seasonal. We are still in the last fumes of tourist season, so several regulars have no choice but to work or are off-island. I am assigned to Garrison Gunners and their all-red kit.
The Gunners captain, Tom Blackwell, asks what position I play, and I panic. The true answer is striker or just off the striker, but I figure that that sounds a little like I’m demanding to come in and take the No 9 or 10 shirt. So instead I just say “midfield”, which sounds like I’ve literally never played football before today. During the warm-up, I’m told that a) I am starting the game and b) that I will be playing at right-back. I have never played right-back.
Lots of people will know this feeling: you are vaguely unfit and haven’t played 11-a-side in a long time before a charity match or equivalent comes along. And then the whistle blows and something within your psyche takes over and you believe you are 24 again and can overlap and sprint back all day.
You play a couple of give-and-gos, put a cross or two into the box (one overhit, one not bad). You are a natural choice to take throw-ins and suddenly decide you have a long throw in your armoury. Hey, it’s taking over the Premier League this season.
Woolpack Wanderers take the lead against the run of play through a penalty – “You didn’t go for the ball,” the referee/schoolteacher shouts at a central defender. The Gunners are the better team and score twice, before being pegged back before half-time.
The worst moment of my own first half was asking the ref how long had gone and failing to hide my surprise at the answer: “16 minutes”. I feel a tightness in my calf but ignore it because what choice do I have? This is live content and it will not be stopped!
The Gunners – my Gunners – score twice in the first 15 minutes of the second half. The second of them comes after a mazy run from central defender Solly Hicks, who is the other St Agnes resident on show. He stayed over in St Mary’s on Saturday evening but the frivolities of the night don’t seem to have done him any harm. The lead is deserved and feels, dare I say it, unassailable.
I should not have dared to say it. Over the last 20 minutes of the game, the Wanderers score four times. I am definitely at fault for the first of those goals having misplaced a pass in midfield (lesson: never get confident beyond your station) and am not helped by the introduction of a nippy winger who is comfortably less than half my age. Gav scores twice, as he’s more than happy to tell me on the boat on the way home.
I play the entire 90 minutes and, while I am not expecting sympathy or respect from people who I had never met before today, I do think that an honour of some sort is suitable given the pain in my calves and hamstrings. I’ve just turned 40. Perhaps an MBE?
In the changing rooms after the game, the mood is suitably buoyant because this matters and doesn’t matter. Tom is keen to point out that the winner of the Charity Shield here doesn’t often go on to win the league. Also, next week they might have a proper right-back playing, which will help. Money has been raised through match subs and will be donated to a fund that raises money to help local children compete in sport.
This was a football bucket list experience for me because I love the Isles of Scilly so much and because the league is unique, but also because of how football here offers escape. One of the cliches of these islands is that the pace of life is so slow as to be gloriously soporific, and that’s true for tourists who will often say the phrase in a moment of reverie.
But for locals, life is hard. Work is seasonal and many work two jobs and seek extra employment during the winter. The players cover a broad spectrum – council workers, Duchy of Cornwall employees, service industry staff, electricians, flower pickers – but the one thing they share is that, every time they can, they walk up the hill to play football with the same people every Sunday in low season because this is a group of mates who seek an escape.
This league is as fragile as its environment. In the Scillonian Club post-match, we discuss the challenges that face these islands and thus this football league too. There is no education after 16 here – kids have to go to the mainland and some stay there if they find attractive employment.
The need to take work when you can means that football’s importance is secondary for those who would desperately love for it to come first.
There is a housing shortage for locals and key workers that must be addressed. There is an ageing population because life can be claustrophobic for the young who yearn for something wider. The cost of island boats and travel between here and the mainland has risen. What are you offering young people beyond hard work? Certainty at best and uncertainty at worst.
It is a magnificent place but that cannot always be enough, even to those who were raised here and cherish it.
The worst they have suffered in the Isles of Scilly Football League is a nine-a-side match, which mainly has me dreaming about having more time on the ball to make the wrong decision. Like most things around here, they will find a way to make it work until the point of impossibility.
Your next read
There is something about these islands that teaches you the value of things and that tends to strengthen its community values. The sheer geography of the place decrees that people look after each other and receive the same in return. Their football league is the same. This is indeed a match that you would kayak across the sea to play in. It is a traditional, amateur ritual playing on repeat.
People come and go. They move on or work away for months on end. Most will come back if they can, to the world’s smallest football league. It is the closest thing to a kickabout in organised competitive sport that it would be possible to find.
That makes it brilliant and beautiful and the location only adds to both. Sport is at its most special when it offers the perfect reflection of the place and culture in which it exists.
from Football - The i Paper https://ift.tt/aSlw2oI
Post a Comment