Matt Huxtable pulls the handbrake back in his Vauxhall Corsa. Before he steps out of his car, he double-checks it is on, for good reason. We are parked on the steep, winding road that runs through Cheddar Gorge in Somerset.
It is here in the village of Cheddar, more famous for its cheese than the country’s largest gorge and 130 miles from London, where a local grassroots team are in the midst of a bonkers run of 11 games in 24 days. Huxtable is Cheddar Football Club’s interim manager and has been since February.
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“That’s the size of the task ahead of us today,” the 34-year-old says, staring up at the rock face as, one by one, cyclists behind him shift their gears trying to deal with the ascent. “We have to try to win three games out of three and hope the team above us loses.”
Across the first three months of 2024, the club’s first team played seven games. Unprecedented rainfall has made for a repeatedly waterlogged pitch at their ground, Bowdens Park. This has forced them to cram five home games into the final nine days of the season.
Cheddar — the Cheesemen, of course — are a club with a maturity of 132 years. Huxtable, who works in a family embroidery business, knows they will need a miracle run of results to stay in Division One of the Toolstation Western Football League, the 10th tier of the English football pyramid.
Their game against Cadbury Heath this afternoon is a must-win. Cheddar are second from bottom and tiring. Defeat would all but confirm relegation. Their only hope for survival then will come down to whether the Football Association offers them a reprieve to keep them in the league.
For the past couple of weeks, they have been playing on Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday and then repeating the sequence as they try to avoid fines and see out their season. Across the country, many teams are in the same position after having multiple games postponed due to relentless weather.
Bowdens Park is a few minutes’ drive from the gorge on the other side of the village. The tourists who flock there to take in the spectacular views rarely find their way to Cheddar’s ground.
Huxtable has the less-than-enjoyable job of pestering players on WhatsApp to make sure the reserves and the first XI have enough players. He has been forced to name himself on the bench at least five times this season.
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“If someone breaks their leg I’ll go on and stand there but I’m not really good enough for this level — and I’m running a marathon tomorrow,” he says, having picked up The Athletic from the nearest station — it is difficult to imagine a Premier League manager doing the same. “I’ve never had to bring myself on but one of the coaches is going to start today. Though he’s 23, he has the legs.
“I’m trying to drag players in. The firsts have got 16 players in the squad today, three of which are injured and probably shouldn’t be playing.”
The aptly named Morgan Bacon has made himself available for the game against Cadbury Heath but should Cheddar lose, he will not play in the remaining games.
“Morgan has done his hamstring and can’t really move,” Huxtable says. “He has been one of the heroes of this little run. He’s a striker or winger by trade but he’s done a job everywhere. He’s played centre-back in four or five games, in central midfield and went back up front for a few games. He’s playing everywhere without a hamstring and with an ankle taped up so he can’t really move.”
Cheddar’s injury list keeps on growing. They have two centre-backs out for the season with concussions. “Another one of our centre-backs was sent off on Tuesday night so he is banned now and another centre-back who broke his ankle in October still isn’t back. The list is endless,” he almost laughs.
Players who play in nearby leagues can be dual-registered to play for Cheddar in a one-off game. Before the March deadline on registrations, Huxtable was scrambling to sign up as many players as possible. “I ask everyone the same questions when they turn up. ‘Can you start and can you run?’. And I really hope they say yes.”
Huxtable understands there has to be a cut-off point for the season but playing 11 games in 24 days feels “unreasonable and dangerous”.
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One defender played on through a concussion recently without alerting the club physio, who was livid. The player kept his headaches to himself and, given the position of the club and the number of games, he felt obliged to play on.
Huxtable says that with only a day between games, getting a doctor’s appointment around full-time work proved difficult for the player. When they did get an appointment, after playing another one and a half games, he was told he had post-concussion syndrome and his season was over. “It’s not safe,” Huxtable says. “If he had got another hit on his head it could have caused serious damage.”
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Pep Guardiola’s recent comments about the fixture congestion facing elite clubs, including his own team Manchester City, angered many within the grassroots game. Huxtable says Guardiola’s rant about having to play in the Champions League quarter-final on a Wednesday and the FA Cup semi-final on a Saturday was ridiculous. “It is just laughable,” he says. “I get the intensity is completely different but it’s like they’re just too far away from actual grassroots football to realise what’s going on.
“They think that’s unreasonable for them to do with all the facilities they’ve got, their under-23s squads and god knows how many players on loan. They could play other players — I get they might not be as good but we’re having to drag up under-18s and throw them in and basically say, ‘Good luck’.”
On top of the difficulty of finding enough players, Cheddar have needed to locate alternative grounds that meet the criteria of the league. The Bowdens Park pitch has been unable to cope.
Bruce Harvey is club secretary and has spent his morning searching for the two footballs Cheddar lost during their 2-0 defeat to Cribbs Reserves last Thursday, their eighth game in 17 days.
He explains how most of the all-weather pitches, which can cost around £125 ($155) per game, book up in advance and most of them are based in Bristol, a 40-minute drive away, making it difficult for players and fans to be at games.
The club are as old as Liverpool (both formed in 1892) but that is where the comparison ends. It costs roughly £10,000 per season to keep Cheddar running. Most of the funds arrive from sponsors, covering not just the men’s first team but the reserves, under-18s and women’s teams too. Keeping the floodlights on and the cider taps flowing is a full-time job in itself, especially as costs continue to rise.
“It’s all-encompassing,” says Harvey, 42, who works for a brassware company. “I do a bit of everything. If it’s needed, I’ll do it. In pre-season, I’m down here cleaning gutters and painting.
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“The problem with the pitch is, if you look around us, we’ve got all these hills and rivers. When it rains, that water’s got to go somewhere. When the water levels are high the pitch can’t drain and we don’t have access to £12,000 for a Verti-Drain (a tractor that aerates the pitch) or anything like that. The cost to rent one is £500 and we don’t have it.”
Russell Heal is the man tasked with looking after the pitch. The 54-year-old lorry driver is up most mornings at three o’clock. When he returns to Cheddar later in the day he spends most of his evenings as the club’s only groundsperson.
“In the summer, I’m here every night doing pitch repairs after the season closes. In the winter, it’s probably every other night,” says Heal, who doubles up as ticket seller. “We had so many cancelled games because of a waterlogged pitch. It has taken a huge effort to get games on.
“I’ve spent plenty of nights here putting the spikes into the ground to aerate it. We’ve been doing everything we can and now there’s no rain and the pitch is completely hard.”
The gate receipts at Cheddar have taken a hit too.
“Midweek games used to be a lot busier,” Heal says. “On Thursday night, we had 28 through the gate, Tuesday night we had 22. The previous Thursday, we had just over 100 (due to the away team’s following) and the Tuesday before that, we had 13. A couple of years ago, it used to average anywhere between 70 and 100 but it has just dropped massively.”
Karen Heal, Russell’s wife, has dedicated almost 40 years of her life to the football club having first got involved at age 15.
The 56-year-old is the kit woman for all four teams and is at the club seven days a week. When The Athletic finally manages to track her down, she has three slow cookers on the go. Curry and pulled pork rolls are being prepared for half-time. Karen is not just everywhere but can do everything too. She has turned her hand to plumbing and window repairs in recent months.
“Every year I say, ‘Shall we give it up?’ Then we are like, ‘Let’s do one more season’. We said that about 12 years ago and we keep on coming back,” she laughs.
It is a role Karen adores and the club has helped her through the darkest times of her life too. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2021 and it was during that horrendous time when the club became even more important to her. Even amid hospital visits and radiotherapy appointments, Karen still found time to be at the clubhouse. When she was given the all clear in 2022 a charity match was held in her honour and raised £3,500.
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It is clear how much it means to both her and Russell. And the Heals are not the only Cheddar power couple who keep the club going.
Denise May moved from Oldham, Lancashire, to neighbouring Draycott 40 years ago. She runs the bar in the clubhouse with her husband, Brian. Now in their mid-seventies, the couple are retiring at the end of May.
“Me and my husband said we’ll take it on until you get somebody but we’re still here,” she chuckles, watching the game through the window. “We’re here most days, cleaning, shopping, working behind the bar. It takes up quite a bit of our time.
“It has been awful with the amount of postponed games. We didn’t know when they were going to go ahead or not. And now we’ve pretty much got a game every night this week and next week.
“We’re getting no younger so want to knock this on the head and relax a bit more. It is very tiring because if there is something on here I won’t go anywhere.”
Denise and Brian, whose daughter, Jo, is the chairwoman, have promised to return to the clubhouse to help out even after their retirement.
Kieran Webster, 28, is the team’s goalkeeper and captain. He grew up in Cheddar and has played for the club all his life. He acknowledges the importance of Huxtable, Harvey, the Heals and the Mays, particularly during a hectic month.
“They want to do it for the club,” says Webster, a primary school teacher. “Without them, we wouldn’t have the team or the club and without them everything would just spiral out of control.”
Even if there is no reprieve from the relegation they suffered on Saturday following a leggy 7-0 defeat, Cheddar will prevail. These past weeks have proven that.
(Top photo: Caoimhe O’Neill/The Athletic)
