Amongst those mates there’s always the guy turning up late, smoking a fag and stinking of booze; there’s the flamboyant striker who refuses to pass and still shoots a mile wide (me); the guy who loses his temper at the drop of a hat; the stoic defender; the guy who’s so unfit he either gets substituted before half time or gets ten minutes at the end of the game, and then there’s the poor referee who would have a hard time controlling his dog let alone twenty-two amateur players kicking lumps out of each other. It was an obvious fit for my new project.

I’d wake up on Sunday morning, see the weather and know the type of shots I’d get. If it was raining, the teams would be light on players turning up, there would be horrible tackles flying around and some great portraits to be taken at the end of the games. If it was sunny, the fags and spliffs would be out and the sidelines would look like a hangover recovery clinic with players lying around looking like they’d barely be able to get up off the floor, let alone run around a pitch for forty-five minutes.

Hackney Marshes has a wonderfully rich footballing history. In 1947, with the recent backdrop of the war, the Hackney and Leyton Sunday league was formed, the pitches being built on the foundations of rubble created by the Blitz. Within ten years, football on the marshes was so popular it had become London’s biggest sporting ground. Up to 2000 players would turn up on a Sunday morning, needing to book one of the 108 pitches up to ten months in advance. Hackney Marshes had begun it’s ascendancy into footballing history.

But that’s the history, not why I came to know it. For me, it was the mythical football place that I’d heard stories of, and not necessarily positive ones! Stories of regular fights and all kinds of broken bones caused by the terrible state of the pitches reached me. Adverts from huge sports companies occasionally aired on TV, featuring pitches as far as the eye could see. Ian Wright had played there, and then David Beckham, and no doubt countless other people on their way to professional status. And no matter where you lived in the country, if you played Sunday football, you’d heard of the marshes, so where better to shoot a project on amateur football?

Sunday Football is my love letter to the game that consumed me for so many years. A visual interpretation of the beloved game at amateur level. An ode to those players that turn up late, hungover and discussing last night’s conquest. Those who light a cigarette at half time whilst sucking an orange quarter for the supposed energy it gives you. Those that repeatedly call the referee, their team mates and the opposing team a ‘cunt’. Those that get lost in the emotion of the game and start the occasional brawl on the pitch, and those that round off the weekend with a quick pint of beer with their teammates post-game before heading back to the missus and kids for a roast dinner… British Sunday league football at it’s best, every week of the season come rain or shine, at Hackney Marshes, the spiritual home of amateur football.

Chris Baker, East London, 2016