It must be love if you’re happy to play in these conditions. Welcome to the Southern Sunday Football League

Barring the girlfriend of a player, no one was watching the game, the rain was lashing down on a drearily dark afternoon, the pitch was a few glasses of water short of a bog and the goal net was held in place by twigs, which had been used as substitutes for missing pegs.

This isn’t the glamorous football that millions of people have familiarised themselves with on TV thanks to Sky Sports extensive coverage of the game, this is something entirely different. This is Gun Show vs. Sporting Club Balham in the Fourth Division of the Southern Sunday Football League.

There were no comfortable seats from which to watch the game, just a muddy surrounding area and there was no protection from the unrelenting rain. Welcome to Clapham Common and it’s a million miles away from the comfort of the Premier League.

The game itself was dominated by the squelching of the ground underfoot, as players initially struggled to adapt to the swamp like conditions and at times the play resembled a rugby scrum, with players doing their best to hide the colours of their team by covering themselves in mud.

With players often running past the ball as it remained stubbornly in the thick earth the game became a test of endurance and determination, as the teams fought to overcome the English winter weather.

At first glance this could be considered a horrible scenario that no one should put themselves through, but on closer inspection and with the benefit of the same feeling towards the game, I understood that this was a genuine expression of love.

For no other reason would these 22 players happily don a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and brave this sort of weather, they were there because of their adoration for the beautiful game.

Others are happy to confine their love of the game to an armchair and watch proceedings from a comfortable distance and bar stool preach about the latest tabloid inspired scandal in football, but that wasn’t enough for these guys.

The game itself had none of the elegance of a top flight game, partly thanks to the conditions and also partly because of a series of humorously calamitous gaffs, but it was still hugely entertaining.

Whether it was the warm spirits in which the game the game was played, the amusing excuses given to the referee for a foul – “…but he’s bigger than me” - or the unrelenting willingness to attack, which ensured a hat full of goals. It was an extremely pleasurable watch.

In between battles to dig the ball out the mud, the game was peppered with skill and the woodwork was struck on numerous occasions before Sporting Club Balham’s left-back finished the game with a 25-yard thunder bolt to condemn the inappropriately named and tame Gun Show to a 7-0 defeat.

As the players trudged off the field happily recounting the last 90 minutes the rain finally stopped, but no one seemed bothered that they’d been subjected to a downpour for an hour and a half, after all this is love.

The fortunes of Sporting Club Balham, Gun Show and the other teams in the Fourth Division of the Southern Sunday Football League can be followed here.

Tags: Non-League, Sporting Club Balham