It started with relegation, the way most divided football families do. Years ago, one branch of the family stayed loyal to their local Elite Division club through thin times; the other, tired of losing, drifted towards a nearby Alliance Division Two side on the rise. What began as a minor difference of opinion at family gatherings has, over the years, hardened into good-natured but very real tribal lines.
This season, for the first time, there's a real chance both clubs could end up in the same division again — one via survival, the other via promotion — depending on how the final weeks of the season unfold. It's produced the unusual spectacle of a family group chat tracking two entirely separate relegation and promotion battles simultaneously, with self-imposed rules about which results can be celebrated in front of which relatives.
"We've had to agree not to text each other straight after final whistles anymore," one family member said. "Too many arguments. We wait until Sunday lunch and hash it out properly, in person, like civilised people. Mostly."
Whether the two clubs actually end up sharing a division again this time next season is still very much undecided. But for one family, at least, the prospect of arguing about the same league table again has been, by all accounts, a strangely welcome one.