It is the same every week: the same field, the same changing rooms, the same teammates and the same opponents. The only difference, this morning, is the hangovers. The rest is just another typical day in the smallest soccer league in the world.

A League Becomes Smaller

There were, once, four teams in the Isles of Scilly Football League: two from St. Mary’s, and one each from the islands of Tresco and St. Martin’s. But a dwindling population has meant that since the 1950s, there have been only two. Initially they were called the Rangers and the Rovers, but the names were changed in the 1980s.

Since then, on the same patch of grass at Garrison Field, high on the hill that overlooks Hugh Town, the same two teams have played each other every week. No derby in world soccer is played quite as frequently as that between the Garrison Gunners and the Woolpack Wanderers.

Between October and May, the teams maintain a full league season of 20 games. There are two regular showpiece exhibitions: one against a veteran’s side, on Dec. 26, and one against a team made up of the bird watchers who visit the islands in the fall. Occasionally, a combined side will take on Dynamo Chough, a club based in Penzance, the nearest town on the mainland, for what is claimed to be the smallest trophy in world soccer. There is a Charity Shield to kick off the campaign, and two cup competitions, too. “And one of those,” said Anthony Gibbons, the league’s chairman, with a wry smile on his face, “is over two legs.”

Over the last decade or so, Gibbons and the cadre of stalwarts who sign up to play every season have grown used to the idea that their unique sporting microclimate sporadically commands attention from the outside.