He knows, of course, that Sunday mornings at the Garrison are not always the most pleasant experience. Paul Charnock, one of two regular referees, remembers officiating in “hail, snow, torrential rain, thick fog, thunder and lightning.”

As a rule, he calls off games only when the playing surface is badly waterlogged. “There was one match we had to stop because someone twisted an ankle in a rabbit hole,” he said. Charnock used to referee in the National League, the fifth tier of the English game. “A rabbit hole was a first,” he said. “We just filled them in and then carried on.”

It takes more than a hole in the pitch to stop play. They will persist in all but the worst weather the Atlantic can throw at them. The fact that it is all, officially, unofficial does not dampen spirits, either. When one of Gibbons’s predecessors as chairman tried to apply for inclusion in Guinness World Records, he discovered that because both teams in the world’s smallest league are registered with England’s Football Association as part of the St. Mary’s Football Club — to keep costs down — their games are formally considered intramural affairs.

They make it work even though there is a constant struggle for numbers. The draft system means that there is no risk of boredom, no fear that it might all become too familiar.

They are there, every Sunday, same time, same place, same teams; not that anyone can ever really remember which side he is on. Not the name, anyway. That does not matter. They come for the ritual, for the game, just to play.

Hayden Simpson is watching, enjoying the sunshine and the chill, as his colleagues set up the field. “I play in red,” he said, when asked whether he is a Wanderer or a Gunner. “Which one is that?”