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FOOTBALL

‘It’s not exactly how they do it in the Premier League, is it?’

After a year of Covid, football has returned to the Falklands, reports Robert O’Connor

Robert O’Connor
The Times
The team debuted their new colours as they lost 2-1 to a military XI
The team debuted their new colours as they lost 2-1 to a military XI
TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD
Robert O’Connor
The Times

In March 2020 Troyd Bowles took delivery of a small piece of highly niche football history: the first bespoke kit for the footballers of the Falkland Islands.

On Saturday the shirts were finally taken out of the polythene wrappers that they were delivered in after spending 12 months boxed up in Bowles’s spare room in the islands’ capital, Port Stanley.

Bowles’s team, previously called Stanley but a Falklands “national” side in all but name, finally debuted their new colours as they lost 2-1 to a military XI from the UK army’s Mount Pleasant Complex (MPC). The final fixture in a mini Olympic-type event for the islands, after a 12-month Covid-19 hiatus, it was a fitting way to welcome back competitive football.

The return of football