It was the start of a new football (that’s soccer for those Stateside) season last weekend, and with it comes the mouth-watering prospect of glamorous fixtures, and shiny trophies to dream about… but that’s not just for the likes of Arsenal and Aston Villa but also for Dingle Villa, Surreal Madrid, United Colour Asians, Peregrine FC and the thousands of other Sunday league football teams across Britain who don’t have the luxury of 5-star coaches, jacuzzis in the changing rooms and WAGs at the free bar, necking Tanqueray.

Come rain, come shine, on waterlogged or frozen pitches, amateur football players across the county – in Liverpool, in Nottingham and Scunthorpe too – assemble every Sunday morning, bleary-eyed from the night before, but unbowed. Their wives hopefully haven’t dyed their socks pink, and the dog hopefully won’t have eaten their boots. They can take out all their unbridled aggression on the opposition, or the referee, or both; and for 90 minutes they can relive their childhood fantasies, of being John Barnes or Paul Gascoigne, or Vinny Jones if they think they’re hard enough.

It’s this romance of Sunday league football that’s the subject of Reality Football by photographer Alan Powdrill. A real labor of love, it has taken him three years to complete. He’s travelled up and down the country taking photos, starting off in Hackney Marshes, East London, with its 85 pitches that make it the biggest football field in Europe. The images are a reminder that the Beautiful Game isn’t about 7-figure salaries, it’s about grit and determination and that unexplainable buzz you get from kicking a football about, and getting covered in mud.