There are many groups and associations local people like to get together in. Quite a few of these involve football. I am not a particularly sporty fellow myself, at least not in the sense that I would ever join a club to do something I can do messing about in a park. There are a number of others like me, such as those local lads and fathers I see in the High Street in the evening after the stalls have gone and the sweepers have been down it. Scratch games take place on small patches of land, like the one at Coppermill Park next to Coppermill Primary School. Kids even jump fences in the holidays to use playgrounds in local schools, their passion for the game quite overcoming their aversion to academia. (Of course, if someone ran an official scheme these same lusty lads may not be so keen). Some pubs have teams for people who want to stave off their beer bellies, players often made up of people who would never have dreamt of taking the sport up when at school. One, the Cock, has recently won the local pub league.
As well as these, a lot of people round here do like to band together, train regularly, join up for a proper programme and try to do it properly. There are a number of such designated places to expand lungs and run about in pursuit of spheres, such as at Low Hall Sports Ground.
Football can also be seen being played at varying degrees of competence and formality in our neighbourhood parks such as Lloyd Park and St James's Park. It starts to get quite serious at playing fields such as at the Douglas Eyre Sports Centre. Douglas Eyre has over 40 different football teams playing there regularly, including such august outfits as Aztec Athletic, Future Stars FC, Galatasaray, Old Firm Green, Old Palmitarians, Somali Eagles FC, Spartans, Unduyu, Valentine United and West Ham Girls. (They also host football coaching courses, basketball and floodlit hockey). Some of our local clubs, like Walthamstow Red Star, even have their acts together enough to have their own websites.