CHECK out this bunch!

Can you guess who they are, or even where they are?

Here’s a clue. It’s not Abergavenny!

You guessed it. It was taken at Llanfoist playing fields way back when.

We’re not exactly sure when the photo was snapped, but judging by the cut of the cloth and the immaculately dapper dandies surrounding the folks in the football kit, it’s sometime in the past.

Probably the 1940s, to be precise.

They’re suited, booted and immaculately groomed and there are no flies on these gentlemen but who are they and what do they want?

Well, the chaps in suits may look like they’re auditioning for a job opportunity in Cosa Nostra’s Monmouthshire branch, but they were, in fact, all committed members of Llanfoist FC.

Standards were a lot higher in those distant days when everything was a little bit more black and white. There was no such thing as a tracksuit or leisure wear for committee members to let the team down in.

Having your photograph taken was a serious business when these lads were kicking the ball around the park.

In the monochrome days of yore, waiting for the snapper to snap you for posterity involved a lot of standing around. Hence, the sullen stature and no-nonsense vibe of this fine body of men.

Imagine what they’d think if they knew that we’d be gawping at them in 2026, and just imagine what they’d make of us and the mess we’ve made of things! Dear god!

Oh well! Nevermind! The World Cup kicks off this week and so what better time than to air an old photo from the days when football and lucrative sponsorship deals were bedfellows that had yet to meet.

Bill Shankly once famously said, “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.”

Rewind the clock far enough and every weekend it was quite literally a matter of life and death for grassroots players up and down the land.

A report from an 1894 edition of the Abergavenny Chronicle under the heading “Football Deaths” reads, “A painstaking statistician has collected as many as could of the newspaper records of accidents in the football field during the past season. On October 26,1893 alone , there were four broken legs, two concussions, one broken arm, one broken collar bone, and one serious internal injury.”

It adds that on almost every occasion “the game was played, or fought, with animal brutality in the presence of an immense road of hooting and cheering spectators.”

In total, there were a staggering 18 deaths recorded that season, three of which took place among spectators, apparently from excitement.

It’s definitely something to chew on when you watch the 2026 Football World Cup and admire the flamboyant technique of some precious centre-forward as they suffer the indignity of being touched, and have no choice but to leap sky high like an outraged salmon, before collapsing hopelessly to the floor and writhing with the agony of ages.

Yet, let us not be too harsh. At some point, we all have to take one for the team!