Reading passage
On Sunday mornings in autumn and winter, a group of men and women gather at a muddy field on the edge of the village of Bexley Green. They are members of Bexley Rovers, an amateur football club that plays in a local league against other village teams. Nobody at the club is paid to play. The players are teachers, builders, nurses and shop workers, and the youngest is sixteen while the oldest is fifty-two.
The club was founded in 1974 by two brothers, Alan and Peter Cole, who had moved to the village and missed playing football. At first, they organised friendly matches on a piece of land behind a pub. Two years later, the club joined the county league, and it has played in it ever since. Today, Bexley Rovers runs three teams: a first team, a reserve team, and a veterans' team for players over thirty-five.
Amateur football in Britain has a long history. For more than a century, millions of people have spent their weekends playing for local clubs like Bexley Rovers. The Football Association estimates that around three million adults in England still play some form of organised football each month, although the number of eleven-a-side teams has fallen in recent years as other sports and activities compete for people's free time.
The league season runs from September to April. Each team plays the others twice, once at home and once away, and three points are awarded for a win. Matches last ninety minutes, and although there is a referee, arguments are common and usually friendly. Bexley Rovers finished fourth last season, its best result for ten years, and the players celebrated with a barbecue at the chairman's house.
Training takes place on Tuesday and Thursday evenings under floodlights that the club bought second-hand in 2009. The coach, a retired schoolteacher named Brian Foster, has led the team for eighteen years without pay. He says he does it because he loves the game. Each session begins with running and stretching, followed by exercises with the ball, and ends with a short practice match.
Like most amateur clubs, Bexley Rovers survives on a small budget. Players pay a membership fee of ninety pounds a year, and the club receives some money from local sponsors, including a bakery and a car repair shop, whose names appear on the team's shirts. Kit, balls, league fees and hire of the pitch cost the club about 4,500 pounds each season. When extra money is needed, the club holds quiz nights and car boot sales.
Volunteers keep the club going. The chairman arranges fixtures and deals with the league. The secretary registers players and answers letters. Two members cut the grass and mark the white lines on the pitch before every home game. The treasurer keeps the accounts, and someone else washes the shirts. Without this unpaid work, the club could not exist. Professional clubs have staff, the chairman says, but Bexley Rovers has neighbours.
The social side of the club matters as much as the football. After home matches, both teams eat together in the clubhouse, a small brick building next to the pitch. Players' families watch from the touchline, and children kick balls behind the goal. Over the years, several players met their future husbands or wives at the club, and many friendships that began on the pitch have lasted for decades.
The club has faced problems. Interest among young people has declined, and for a time in 2016 the reserve team was closed because there were not enough players. In response, the club started free coaching sessions for local teenagers on Saturday mornings. More than forty teenagers now attend, and several have moved up into the adult teams. The veterans' team, meanwhile, has grown so popular that there is a waiting list to join.
Looking ahead, the club hopes to build a small stand so that supporters can watch games in comfort when it rains. It has also applied for a grant to improve the changing rooms, which are cold and old-fashioned. Whatever happens, the members are confident the club will continue. As Brian Foster puts it, villages change, but people will always want to play football together.