Players who trained together for first time last weekend will take on Isle of Man in Pontefract

Yorkshire’s first “international” football team will play its debut match on Sunday after being welcomed into a world league for repressed minorities, independent nations and stateless peoples.



The fledgling team, who trained together for the first time last weekend, will take on the Isle of Man in front of a crowd of hundreds in Pontefract.

In true Yorkshire style, the squad from God’s Own Country has snubbed joining the English Football Association and instead become part of the Confederation of Independent Football Associations (Conifa), meaning it will play against the likes of Tibet, Quebec, Greenland, Zanzibar, Darfur, South Ossetia, Northern Cyprus and Myanmar’s Rohingya group.

The Yorkshire International Football Association, nicknamed the Vikings, has not officially revealed its “national” anthem, but it is expected that players will run out to the rousing unofficial Yorkshire song On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at.

While Yorkshire may not seem to have much in common with many of the others in the Conifa league, the Yifa chairman, Philip Hegarty, said the white rose region was engaged in a similar political struggle to regions such as Tibet.

“Every single one of these regions, to some greater or lesser extent, feel like their culture isn’t being given a voice or representation in some way, whether that’s to the extremes of Tibet, [or] to Yorkshire, which is having a fight against the government’s version of devolution,” he told the Guardian.

“Everything that reaches the outside world about Yorkshire goes through this London-centric lens. There is no voice internationally for Yorkshire, even through we’re a significant region. As far as the outside world is concerned, we’re just a subdivision of England, but of course we consider ourselves much more than that.”

Founded in July, Yifa advertised for players in December with only one caveat – a birth certificate that proved they were born in one of the ridings.

“If Lionel Messi’s mum was born in Barnsley, we will be happy to take a look at him, but otherwise we are just looking for those born in Yorkshire,” Hegarty said in an interview last month.

The squad, who will wear a blue kit bearing the white rose of York, are drawn from semi-professional clubs. Their first training session, in early December, was cancelled due to forecasts of 20cm (8in) of snow.

Hegarty said Yifa had already sold replica shirts to Yorkshire expats as far afield as New Zealand, the South Pacific and the Americas, and a football shirt museum in Peru had requested one for display.

The team has already had its first run-in with the FA, which Hegarty accused of using scare tactics when it warned grassroots clubs that playing for Yorkshire’s “national” side would be a breach of its regulations.

Hegarty said Yorkshire was ready to fight the “pointless threat”, which he said contravened the right to associate as enshrined in the European convention on human rights.

“It’s got no teeth at all and all it’s done is rattled us up here a little bit, and they can expect a fight if they carry on,” he said.

It may be a long way from Wembley, but the 1,000-capacity Hemsworth Miners Welfare FC Community Club is hoping to be nearly full for Yorkshire’s first game against Ellan Vannin, the Manx name for the Isle of Man team, who are ranked fourth in Conifa’s world league.

About 340 tickets have been sold, priced at £10 for adults and £5 for children, with a further 300 people expected to pay on the day. While the line-up may be finalised, Yorkshire are still looking for a kit man or woman and a mascot to play Ragnar the Viking for kick-off.