Football Poets

Our much-missed Llama Lads of Nailsworth (recently renamed the Cotswold Llama Lads with their very own Facebook page ) no longer graze in the field by the tiny roundabout, next to the New Lawn up at Forest Green.

Up until this season on every other week, they’d welcome home and away fans with inqusitive piercing shrieks of “Oi! Got any carrots or apples mate?”in their quaint but familiar Llamanese/Cotswold dialects . With bigger gates and games though, the field now doubles up on dry days for overflow parking.

Spokesllama ‘Pete’ (brother of ‘Eric’ and ‘Wiggy’ ) was keen however to reassure fans the move to pastures new was not influenced by parking or noisy “Green/Black & White Army” chants. Nor were they offended that the club, for some inexplicable reason had a green dragon as a mascot , replacing the original Bradley The Badger.

Like their own special diets , they loved the vegan food and the odd left overs of a Q(uorn) Pie, often from an overfull homebound fan, went down nicely too.

“The lads are always looking for a more ‘level playing field’ (it did slope a bit ) and we’re eager to find new opportunities to develop our natural ‘poaching’ and spitting skills” he explained.

“We’ve been training with an old green bucket a lot lately and it’s totally tightened us up in the mid-field” he added.

Situated high among the hills above Nailsworth, Glos, thanks to Dale Vince of Ecotricity , the club is so green, ethical and sustainable you couldn’t make it up. It’s very Soy Of The Rovers.

We don’t know just how lucky we are really. Many here have seen the club through endless years in lower strangely-named leagues, (who couldn’t but love the wonderful old Beaver Homes League.) They now mingle freely in these higher League 2 echelons with the ever-growing vegan/hipster/new age family fanbase. Beards, top knots and green pony tails are still not compulsory though.

A strong and vocal section will always long to celebrate, embrace and preserve our past. We’d dearly love blue plaques on the remaining white breeze block wall of the old ground The Lawn, with it’s history and the long gone Jovial Forester the original changing hut pub home, now a private residence.

They deeply miss our black and white old strip and our old badge even though it was a total rip off from Barcelona’s crest! The royalist tinged lion and the unicorn on the current badge have been questioned too !?

But we’re on an amazing roller coaster this season and with just 11 huge games to go are desperately striving to stay in the League ( Two). This after taking well over a century to get here.

Having seen Spytty the Dog mascot at Newport recently , if we can’t be ‘The Llamas’ in honour of our lanky furry friends with their vegan diets, how about just ‘The Rovers’ with a Rover dog as mascot ? Just saying.

Bless!