Isles of Scilly Football League

In the 1920s, the Lyonnesse Inter-Island Cup, a competition between the islands of St. Mary's, Tresco, St. Martins, Bryher and St. Agnes, was formed. By the 1950s, only two clubs remained—the Rangers and the Rovers. In 1984 the two clubs changed their names to the Garrison Gunners and the Woolpack Wanderers, which are their current names. Since 2016, the league is recognised by the Guinness World Records as the "smallest affiliated football league" in the world. In 2019 the football league tested Fan Assisted Refereeing (FAR) in association with Vodafone. ==Competition structure==

The League competition involves the Woolpack Wanderers and the Garrison Gunners playing each other between fourteen and twenty times, often on a Sunday. Technically, the two teams are part of a single club, St Mary's Football Club. Team line-ups change at the start of each season. They are decided at a local pub before the first game, where footballers of the island appoint two captains, who then select their players one at a time. The league is played during the winter, from October until March or April. before changing to an annual game with West Cornwall side Dynamo Choughs. After a several-year hiatus between 2015 and 2022, the cup returned in 2023. The winner is awarded a 6 millimetres trophy, nicknamed the "world's smallest cup". A replica is on display at the FIFA Museum in Zürich. ==Concerns==

The Isles of Scilly are struggling to hold on to their young people. There is no sixth form on the Isles so when youngsters turn 16, they go to the mainland. In addition, house prices are expensive, so they tend not to return until much older. Between 2011 and 2021, population on the Isles of Scilly fell by 6.8%. As a result, the number of players in the league had been dwindling. In 2008 Howard Cole, a secretary who referees the games, estimated the average age of both teams to be within the mid- to late-30s. As of 2023, one player in his 70s still occasionally plays in official games. Due to the league's nature on-duty firemen or policemen play in official games, occasionally leaving one team one-player short in case of an emergency. Travelling to the Isles of Scilly is notoriously difficult and unpredictable due to frequent fog and storms, which means that including players living in mainland England is currently not a viable option. ==Champions (since 1991–92)==