Gaol kickers Meet Glenochil Athletic, a team with a difference: they are all in a high-security prison. Right now football stops them getting in trouble. Will they keep up the good work when they get out?

It is a warm summer evening in Tullibody, not far from Stirling, and the sun is slanting through the thick clouds that threaten overhead. For the inmates of Glenochil, outside is another place altogether. At the foot of the Ochil Hills is a football pitch flanked by razor wire and high fences. There are no terraces or rusting hoardings, just a long pathway that connects the pitch to the main buildings of the prison. The wind carries the smell of early summer. It is quiet, serene as a cemetery. It is, perhaps, the most stunning location of any jail in Scotland.

Most of the Glenochil team are still in their cells but Maginess, Ged Neil, Foxy Walker and John Watson are in the one of the educational rooms discussing the merits of a 4-4-2 or a

3-5-2 formation for tonight's game. From serious assault to murder, the team is made up of the kind of characters that would give a ghost a fright. Neil, 26, a striker and occasional volunteer fence-climber when the ball gets booted over, is inside for serious assault. He is straight-talking yet courteous. Men like him, he says, need football while in prison because if they are locked up for 24 hours a day and then released into the community they are ''twice as angry and twice as vengeful''. They need a distraction. ''If you're not trained, educated or given skills then you're probably gonnae

re-offend,'' he says.

Walker, the team's 45-year-old goalkeeper, inside for a drugs-related crime, nods. ''We know what we've done,'' he says, ''and we accept the punishment for it. But we're getting out of here one day and we need to be ready to deal with what's out there for us.'' Neil agrees. ''If you put a lion in a cage and poke it with a stick all the time, as soon as you let that lion go it's gonnae bite everybody it sees. That's the same as us. You put us in a cage, lock us up and throw away the key - well, sooner or later you're going to have to let us out the door. Don't get me wrong, we've done some bad things and we deserve to be here and we all accept that, but we've also got an opportunity to do something with ourselves. We don't forget for one minute why we're here - and we don't forget the victims because that's not what it's all about. But learn from that and move on from it, because sooner

or later we're gonnae be out those doors and you'll end up with mad maniacs out on the street.''

The disorientation of prison life can be radical. You cannot see the hills from inside. The air is fetid and warm and the light is artificial and stinging. It feels claustrophobic and tense, and the noise is dull and constant. Glenochil has roughly 500 men in four halls, serving between four years and life. They are locked up at 9.15pm until 7.45am the next morning in single cells, and there is a toilet in each section for 14 of them to share. They can press a button and get out of their cell for 12 minutes. They are allowed out five times a night.

People grow older faster in prison, and Maginess, 36, is ghostly white with deep furrows on a scarred face that could have been ploughed by a tractor. He is nicknamed Giuseppe, after the wrongly convicted Giuseppe Conlon of the Maguire Seven, because of the amount of time he has been inside. Next season will probably be his last in the team: ''The old legs are getting on a bit and it's time to give some of the young boys a chance.'' Tonight's match is against Sauchie Juniors. Every game they play, says Neil in a raw, hard voice, is their own championship final, their own World Cup. There is also a little added spice to the game: two of the prison wardens play and coach with Sauchie.

Occasionally the team play matches against a staff select. ''When you play them there's a wee bit of aggro,'' says Neil, his face a perpetual crocodile smile. ''There's a right wee will to win and no quarter is given. We've beat them the last two years.'' Walker looks a little perturbed. ''They promised us a trophy,'' he says, ''if we beat them - and we did. They were shite. They couldnae hit ma arse wi' a canoe paddle. We've no' had our hands on it yet.''

Some of the conversations are delightfully reminiscent of the Marx Brothers' shenanigans and, for the next hour and a half, nothing and no one is excluded. The group are determined to talk for as long as possible, right up until the match begins.

McGinnes has been in the team the longest. He was in Glenochil in 1991 and played for the prison team. Then he returned in 1995 and has played in it ever since. Neil served two years of a previous sentence and has been back in for two more. ''I've been in a few jails,'' concedes Maginess, ''but this team is run properly - the best. There's none of this 'yous are cons and we're screws' - it's fair. Alex Potter [a senior physical education instructor, or PEI] treats us properly. We're doing our bit for them and they're doing their bit for us. When I was in jail the last time there was hardly nothin' for the cons to do. But now they give you a lot of courses. They're right into rehabilitation now, which is really good. All these things have become available. You've got work, study and courses.''

There are four main workshops in the prison - glass-reinforced plastics, metal fabrication, timber assembly and upholstery - providing employment for more than 150 prisoners. A number of the inmates are provided with employment places in the kitchens and the garden facility, while others work on producing high-quality glass-reinforced plastic boats. There are, of course, many prisoners who find it impossible to cope with their sentence. The prospect of facing another five to ten years in prison is numbing and they cannot work around a structured sentence of rehabilitation. These are the ones who usually end up with the drug problems.

''The only thing that is compulsory in Glenochil is work,'' says Neil. ''You have to go. There are five sessions of PT a day and you can attend twice a day. I'm doing a painting and decorating course and I'm working on the computers. It just gives you a wee bit of practical experience, and I hope it might help me when I get out of here. I meditate as well and I'm right into Buddhism now.''

Walker shouts to Maginess, telling the older man to show me the door he recently finished. ''You're no a f-ing joiner,'' he adds. McGinnes looks vaguely threatening, his face taut. ''Ah never said ah was a joiner. I'm a scaffolder.'' Then he laughs. Alex Potter pipes up: ''It took you 12 weeks for a f-ing door.'' McGinnes laughs again. ''Ah was digging a tunnel in ma spare time.''

The team train two nights a week. It is the same as a semi-professional set-up and they take it all very seriously. ''We're trying to set up a players' committee,'' says Walker, ''and we'll draw up a disciplinary thingy so that you can get fined maybe a Mars Bar for not wearing your trainers for the game. If you get booked you could get a phonecard fine - a booking might even be about a (pounds) 2 fine. Considering you're only getting maybe a few pound a week, it's a lot.'' On average most of the inmates earn around (pounds) 9 per week.

In Scotland there were 4,860 prisoners in 1980 and 4,724 in 1990, rising to 5,869 in 2000. Prison is perhaps one of the most extraordinary social experiments ever undertaken, yet critics claim it has almost entirely failed to curb serious crime. Because of the nature of prison itself, a lot of men do not spend much time in the wide-open expanses of the prison grounds - yet this notion of rehabilitation is at the heart of the Glenochil philosophy.

The team, says Potter, the man with perhaps the toughest job in the prison - who exactly is he going to leave out? - allows a greater sense of freedom, and the players cannot wait to get out there. ''They'd be out on that pitch in hail, rain or shine,'' he says, in the loud, deep voice of someone who instructs for a living. ''You can see the benefits because they work together for the team and for each other. If they act up, get sent off or get caught for drug offences it can effectively ruin their chances in the team for good. Most of the boys are not willing to give up their place in the team for anything.''

There is a better relationship between the players and the team staff than the players and the staff in the halls. Potter treats the inmates as individuals, ''boys who messed up badly and are paying a heavy price.'' It would be naive to say that the prisoners and the coaching staff are friends but, in terms of prisoner-staff relationships, they are as close as the environment will allow. For the staff, football can give an insight into the mind of the prisoner; for the prisoner, it can relieve boredom and give direction. Competition for places on the team is fierce.

Last year, despite going 18 months undefeated and winning their local league in 2001, they were expelled from it because the prison changed the lock-up times, which in turn interfered with the kick-off times of the matches. ''We were gutted. We never got the chance to defend our title,'' says Watson - a quiet, laconic 25-year-old with a set of ears like wing-nuts, who is the team's centre half. He has served six years of a life sentence for murder.

One of the hardest parts is getting wound up by the opposition teams over the fact that the prisoners will not be out for years. ''It's tough enough in here, and you always get guys on the other teams who have a go because you're in the jail, but we live with that every day,'' Watson says. ''We try to get away from that and enjoy the game because we're only interested in the football. That's our only out in here.'' Any indiscretions will put players out of the team - and, despite the temptations to succumb to the drug culture that pervades most prisons, they know the value of staying clean.

Each inmate, whether they are involved in football or not, is given a mandatory drug test. The nature of drugs in prison has altered dramatically in recent years since the introduction of such testing. For years the drug of choice was cannabis, but it remains detectable in the system for almost a month. The result was far more positive tests, followed by far more punishments. For prisoners the answer was simple. Heroin. The advantage is not the effect that the drug gives users; rather that heroin only remains in the system for up to 72 hours and is therefore more difficult to detect. The harsh reality is that men who were once content to smoke cannabis are being turned into heroin addicts.

Glenochil's governor, Kate Donegan, has spent more than 26 years at the front line of the Scottish prison system - at Perth, Cornton Vale (where she has been both deputy governor and governor respectively) and Barlinnie. She says that ten per cent of the population is tested randomly every month. ''We have a very high level of negative testing in Glenochil, but they are very, very strict with the football team in particular,'' she says. ''If anyone should happen to test positively for drugs, they will lose their place on the team. There is no room for manoeuvre there at all.'' During the last 18 months Glenochil has carried out a total of 2,989 drug tests; 86 per cent of subjects tested negative.

With her thick mane of blonde hair and smart suit, Donegan looks nothing like the bull-necked crimebuster you would expect from movies. She is witty and thoughtful. Two years ago, amid a fanfare of expectation, she arrived from Cornton Vale Women's Prison. Locking up prisoners 24 hours a day is a massive responsibility, no matter what your sex. Rehabilitation, she believes, ''is about helping individuals to build their self-esteem and and their self-confidence. You don't want to take damaged people in and return them damaged back into the community again. Because football is such a powerful interest for such a lot of men in prison it's such a good vehicle to work with.''

Does she ever worry about the security risks of other teams coming to visit? ''We have no anxiety about it. This is our business and we understand how the community works and we would never dream of putting outside teams at risk. I can understand if some outside teams have anxiety, but they can be assured that there would be no problems.''

Recently the team played Dukla Pumpherston, the last post for former soccer stars (and sports pundit Chick Young). They lost. Davy, the referee, is one of the prisoners. ''Davy sold it,'' barks Maginess. ''He's a qualified ref. Did his courses while inside. The wee bastard gave them a penalty. John McDonald, ex-Rangers, dived like a f-ing U-boat in the box and he fell for it. A f-ing submarine.''

The game was organised as a benefit match for a cancer charity. It followed the death of Maginess's son. ''The boys in the team put in a tenner and the boys watching put in a fiver,'' recalls Maginess. ''It was a difficult time. We were in the league at that time. I never took a break from the footie because I wanted to keep my mind focused away from losing my wee boy. All the boys, gi'e them their due, I knew I could come to them and they'd give me 100 per cent. They knew how I was feeling - no one went away laughing or anything behind my back. It was tough at that time.''

As well as raising money for charities, all of the team's activities are allied in some way to the development of individual prisoners. Recently Glenochil hosted an under-11's football tournament for around 150 children. The prisoners, who refereed the whole day, also did most of the organising.

Peter Godfrey, another member of staff, appears. A former player with St Mirren, he has been in the prison service for ten years. Tonight, however, he is coaching Sauchie. ''He's some f-ing player,'' says Neil. ''Cannae beat the bastard in the air.'' Football, according to Godfrey, gets the inmates away from the mental pressures of prison life. ''Just going out in the field, you can see how it helps them. The fresh air, the sun, the wind, anything like that. They'd be out there all day and night if there was a PEI there to take them. They're no mugs, and tough to play against. And I think they've learned a lot more respect.''

It is nearly match time and the boys are slightly apprehensive. Every 90 minutes of football for Glenochil makes their lives inside bearable, win or lose. We head down to the changing rooms, past various locked doors, and the four meet up with the rest of the team. ''Fingers. McGhoo. Foxy. John-John. Giuseppe. Feldy and Ged''. I catch some of the names read from the team sheet by Potter. The minder for the prison service reminds me to watch my bag. ''Come on, Glenochil,'' shouts Potter. Legs are massaged. Everyone stretches. A few of the boys are smoking. Everyone has pale, harsh skin. Most of them have trim, muscular physiques. Manslaughter United, I think to myself.

Everyone heads out to the park, and I follow. Before the team limbers up, they are given standard release forms to sign so I have permission to use their stories. ''Naebody can write,'' retorts one of the prisoners. ''We'll gi'e ye Xs.''

As with every contest, it is a game of two halves - and we are only here for the first. The Glenochil member of staff who has been assigned to us cannot stay for the duration and we pose a security risk by staying without an escort. After ten minutes Glenochil are 1-0 down (Walker has been lobbed by a sclaffed shot). Then there is an injury. Despite having a cartilage operation two days earlier, substitute Derek Dragness comes on and runs about like a Texan line-dancer. It is not pretty. The game looks like a field-dressing room during the Normandy landings.

None of the prisoners is foolish enough to believe that the football team will make them perfect. Prison life will not always alter criminal behaviour - and in many cases it will entrench it more firmly. But Walker, who has made his last appearance in goals, is convinced that rehabilitation works. By the time he reads this article he will be a free man, and has promised never to return. He wouldn't mind visiting, however, to cheer on his team. ''It gets under your skin,'' he says. The match result filters through to me the following day. The inmates have been beaten 4-3.

When Foxy is released he receives a travel warrant and a discharge grant. He has to sign on at the Benefits Agency for a week prior to receiving his first payment. Upon release a prisoner is given a discharge grant - an emergency payment to last him the seven days from signing on. This is the same amount they would receive in benefit.

Foxy is heading back to his old haunts. From the highs of playing for one of the most dangerous teams in Scotland he now has a bigger battle on his mind - keeping his freedom. n

Glenochil Athletic have just been accepted to play in the Sunday Welfare League.