The Isles of Scilly are an idyllic archipelago off the coast of Cornwall boasting sandy beaches, blue lagoons and a quintessential island life. Consisting of five inhabited islands- St Mary’s, St Martin’s, Tresco, Bryher and St Agnes- this remote outpost is home to 2,100 hardy residents.
The Isles are reliant on tourism supercharging the local economy throughout the summer with industry slowing drastically during the unrelenting winter months. Unpredictable weather events and fragile transport links make the Isles an unconventional place to reside, a fact made apparent by their steadily waning population.
Despite this, the main island of St Mary’s maintains a unique footballing heritage. It is home to the world’s smallest football league.
The Isles of Scilly Football League is not exactly cluttered with just two teams in contention year on year: the Garrison Gunners and the Woolpack Wanderers.
The unique nature of this duel is ridden with peculiarities. Nowhere else can a team be so close to glory and abject failure at the same time. A local derby, a title race and a relegation scrap all in one. This League represents an emotionally all-inclusive set up where players can experience the highs and lows of league football simultaneously.
Launching in the 1910s the League has always been a modest affair. Initially, the intra-island league had all five islands participating in a healthy-looking quintet. Population decline, however, saw the League diminished to a two-horse race in the ‘50s with the Rangers and Rovers, later rebranded the Garrison Gunners and Woolpack Wanderers, standing firm.
Since then, the two teams battle it out every week on the hallowed Garrison Field in a seemingly perpetual matrix of Sunday league football.
The sides clash eighteen times per season in the League with a few additional cup competitions diluting this mad prospect. The duality of Scilly island football, however, means straight cup finals are common practice, refuting the prospect of a coveted cup run.
The Charity Shield, by way of example, has only ever had two winners since its inception at the turn of the millennia. The Woolpack Wanderers hold the record with fourteen Shield victories, while the Garrison Gunners have managed only six. Interestingly, the outcome of the 2001, 2013 and 2021 finals remain ‘not known’ as opposed to cancelled- curious for such a tight-knit community.
The Foredeck Cup, amongst others, breaks up the monotony of straight cup finals with the old two-legged approach avoiding the anticlimactic nature of a one match tournament. This acutely prolongs the bizarre nature of two-team tournament football, somewhat, but fails to bypass the tedium of pre-ordained opposition.
League titles are a more balanced equation with the Garrison Gunners claiming twenty to Woolpack’s seventeen. A more interesting affair maybe, but mid-season player swaps pre-determine this competitiveness, giving the League a slight resemblance to North Korea’s DPR domestic championship...
The Isles of Scilly 2023 season
If a team is running away with the League, it is not uncommon for sides to swap players in an attempt to maximise competition, much like that of an U9s lunchtime kick about. Even so, if you’re pipped at the last hurdle, rest assured you will get that silver medal!
For better or for worse, such measures are there to ensure players don't get disheartened with the unorthodox nature of the island game and lose interest altogether. The retention of players is a leading cause for concern amongst the Scilly Isles football community with youngsters having to leave the island at sixteen to complete compulsory schooling, draining the clubs of their most lucrative resource.
Incredibly, these clubs continue to slog away at each other in a remarkably convivial ongoing war of attrition. One would think this would be the rivalry to end all rivalries. Two teams poised against each other week on week, year on year, toiling away for a slice of history.
In reality, this seems to be eliminated by customary squad rotations every year. At the start of every season both captains meet at the local boozer and pick their squads right down to the last man. Again, this seems strikingly similar to playground-ball except instead of a disgruntled ten year old being last off the wall, in the Scilly Isles it is most likely an old, hungover family man.
Garrison Gunners 2019 kit- sponsored by telecoms giant Vodafone as part of a two year sponsorship deal.
This yearly vestige to the brutality of archaic squad selection, along with mid-season player swaps, seems to eradicate the prospect of longstanding rivalries between the clubs, although certain players do admit they have superstitions over which club they perform better with.
What makes this blasé transfer policy feasible is the Woolpack Wanderers and the Garrison Gunners actually belong to the same club: St Mary’s Football Club. This technically makes their weekly encounters intra-club friendlies and not so much local derbies, despite the League being officially recognised by the FA.
St Mary’s Football Club, then, must be the most successful outfit to have ever existed having monopolised all trophies on the islands. It has positioned itself into a winning machine with a 100% success rate.
The Woolpack Wanderers and the Garrison Gunners are reminiscent of Sunday league football up and down the country with the only quite drastic difference being they are starved of competition. These two sides exist in an incestuous head on battle that persists without cessation. The Isles of Scilly Football League is underpinned by an obsessive love for the game, enabling a strong footballing tradition to live on vicariously in the face of impeding boredom.
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