DIPPING into the waters of international football is presumably less daunting when you are representing a state set up specifically for naval combat.
It is probably even easier to acclimatise if you have already waded in from a different shore, Derek Stillie having made 14 appearances for Scotland under-21s and attending two senior squads in his career, before returning to the game a year ago to play for Sealand.
As an unrecognised microstate, its "national" side hold only an associate membership of the Nouvelle Federation-Board and would let slip three goals to the Chagos Islands that day, but the invitation had been gripping enough to convince Stillie to reprise his role as goalkeeper. "It was through a friend who said he was getting a team together and they were called Sealand - all in a whirlwind I thought, 'Yeah, why not?'"
His enthusiasm seems to jar with the melancholy Scots are often required to apply to international duty. There is little chance Sealand will get caught out of their depth, of course, since they are restricted to the shallow end; an interchanging squad having since beaten Alderney – an islet which has the misfortune of being referred to among the Channel Islands as "2000 alcoholics clinging to a rock" – ahead of fixtures this summer with Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka and a team with ties to the diaspora of Occitania.
The walls of the international arena can often feel as if they are closing in around Scotland but Sealand might be considered a refuge. It seems fit for such a purpose. Since its construction in 1942, the man-made platform some 13km off the coast of Suffolk has been a Second World War sea fort and a haven for pirate radio during the 1960s, before it was seized by former DJ Paddy Roy Bates, who proclaimed it a "principality" in 1967. It is perhaps also the only state in which the border defences constitute a precarious-looking winch, a stiff breeze and a stern test of resolve, while it has since become a bastion of international football for anyone who happens to hold an up-to-date UK passport.
As Sealand is little more than a relic, matches have been held in England – hosting "home" fixtures on the platform is complicated by the need to acquire a lifeboat to retrieve any wayward clearances – but it is a team with a certain Scottish identity. Stillie was joined in the side by author and journalist Neil Forsyth, who supplements his defensive duties with the role of president of the Sealand Football Association. One player was also drafted in from Glasgow, having applied for a spot in the starting XI.
"In our first 'international' I was probably the most experienced ex-professional. Being in goal I was able to put that to good use and keep us in the game a wee bit," said Stillie, whose club career comprised spells at Aberdeen, Wigan Athletic, Dunfermline Athletic and Gillingham Town. "We had some good players – [actor] Ralf Little has played for a few amateur teams in England and we had a couple of young lads who hadn't quite made the grade at other clubs. We had guys who loved football but played at a level a little above Sunday league - but maybe that is doing one or two a bit of a disservice."
It would seem churlish to criticise those players, since the attraction of representing Sealand lies primarily in its inclusivity, although there is still merit in adopting a more professional approach to some aspects of a call-up. "Training was always threatened but it never quite materialised," Stillie said. "We turned up early to be introduced to one another and then tried our best to remember the names -"
There is something quite endearing about a group so loosely affiliated coming together simply through a common interest in football, but Sealand's teams have met with cultural differences. That was made vividly clear in the match with the Chagos Islands – a collection of atolls whose native inhabitants were expelled by the UK during the 1970s to allow for the construction of a US military base, and who are still fighting the British government over their forced removal. "I didn't know the majority of them had found their way to London and were very much a community there. To find out a little more about their story was really interesting," Stillie said. "The game was very, very real for them; they had a good support, banging drums and singing songs. The Sealand anthem certainly passed us by but the Chagos islanders were giving theirs some – it was a wet day down in Surrey, but they made it seem like the Indian Ocean in the height of summer. They were very colourful, very noisy; it was wonderful."
Now 39 and having retired in 2008 from playing professionally to work as a lawyer in London, Stillie has been limited to a solitary appearance for Sealand, although there is at least one proposed fixture for which he would feel compelled to clear his schedule. "We would love to go and play Monaco," says the goalkeeper, his absence from the squad having apparently done little to diminish his sense of patriotism. "I don't want to hang up the gloves just yet if there is a chance to play again, especially somewhere like Monte Carlo."
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