The Union, Amberdale, The South West
Amberdale Union
The club that will not hit back, on principle, whatever it costs them.
The club
Amberdale Union were founded in 1901 out of a bakers' friendly society, and the constitution they wrote then is the constitution they use now. It contains a clause, never amended, forbidding the club from instructing a player to commit a deliberate foul. Six chairmen have tried to remove it. The membership has voted it down every time, on one occasion by a single vote, and the club has since printed that margin above the tunnel.
Union spent decades as everybody's favourite away day, which is a compliment and a diagnosis. They pass, they compete honestly for the ball, they help opponents up, and they have been comprehensively bullied by every side in the league that worked out there is no price for bullying them. The board's position is that this is the point. A principle you drop when it becomes expensive was never a principle.
There is a harder-headed case for the club too, and Union make it loudly. Nobody in the league builds attacking moves as freely, because nobody spends less energy on the fight. Against the league's other honest sides, Amberdale are a genuinely lovely team to watch and a difficult one to beat. The trouble has only ever been the fixtures against sides who noticed.
On the pitch
Union co-operate in every duel, in every match, regardless of what has just been done to them. Defenders contain and shepherd rather than press, and no Amberdale player has ever been sent out to make a point. The upside is a side that keeps the ball beautifully and creates chances nobody else creates. The downside arrives every time an opponent works out that a foul against Amberdale is entirely free.
Always plays nice, no matter what. Lovely to watch, and far too easy to bully. More on Always Cooperate.
Union Ground
Union Ground, 28,100, the oldest continuously used pitch in the league and the only one still bordered on one side by allotments. Away supporters get the covered end, a decision taken in 1974 and never revisited, and the club sells the same tea at the same price to both sets of fans.
The supporters
Amberdale away fans famously applaud good play by the home side, which unnerves visiting grounds more than abuse ever did. The club shop's best seller is a scarf reading WE STILL WON'T.
The manager: Neil Amity
A schoolteacher until he was thirty-four, then youth coaching, then Amberdale, which is the only senior job he has held. Appointed at Union after nine years running their academy.
Amity is the most-questioned manager in the league and the least defensive about it. He is asked in most press conferences whether his side is naive, and he answers the question properly every time, which after several seasons has quietly made him difficult to caricature. His position is that he is paid to pick a team and honour a constitution he did not write, in that order.
The coaching underneath the principle is genuinely good, and rival analysts say so. Nobody teaches build-up play like Amity, largely because his sides spend no energy on the fight and get more repetitions of the football than anyone else. Against the honest half of the league his teams are a serious problem.
He is realistic in private and honest in public about the rest. He knows which fixtures will be difficult and why, he refuses to describe those defeats as bad luck, and he has never asked the board to amend the clause. He has said he would resign before instructing a foul, and nobody who has met him doubts it.
"We are not naive. We know exactly what it costs. We are paying it deliberately."
Approach: Keep the ball, compete honestly, and instruct nobody to foul, ever.
Squad
| # | Player | Pos | Apps | Goals | Assists |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Noah Calvert | GK | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | Bea Hargreaves | LB | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 | Ollie Whitlow | CB | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | Talia Brennan | CB | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | Diego Okafor | RB | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | Freya Sørensen | LM | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 7 | Jude Bianchi | CM | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 8 | Elif Moretti | CM | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 9 | Amadou Vermeer | RM | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 10 | Naomi Costa | ST | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 11 | Emile Silva | ST | 0 | 0 | 0 |