SEALAND SEAHAWKS TOUR DIARIES: MONTPELLIER 2022
"That's a stupid idea. It'll never work."
Every good thing starts somewhere. This one started with a question nobody wanted to answer honestly.
What happens to American football players when they get older?
Recovery takes longer. The lads chasing you around the field are getting younger. The hits feel different at 35 than they did at 25. Nobody wants to be the one to say it out loud, but eventually, someone did.
The answer wasn't to stop. The answer was to do it differently.
And so the Sealand Masters were born. An over 35s touring team representing the Principality of Sealand, a sovereign nation on a fort in the North Sea, because if you're going to keep playing, you might as well do it somewhere that means something.
Building something from nothing
At first there was hesitation. A few raised eyebrows. The quiet worry that joining an over 35s team meant admitting something nobody was ready to admit.
But then one player joined. Then another. Then a full squad.
With help from Dario at Ridge, we created our now-iconic red jerseys with gold trim. Then we found our first opponents, the Servals de Clermont-Ferrand in France. And just like that, Montpellier was on the calendar.
24th September 2022. A double header. Two Sealand teams, one French city, one very eventful weekend.
The enemy nobody saw coming
The evening before the games, both squads trained in the stadium. Nationals on one side, Masters on the other.
And then there was the third participant.
Nobody had planned for the tiger mosquitos.
At first it was just a few bites. By 11pm it was chaos. Anyone who'd had the audacity to wear short sleeves was deeply regretting every decision that had led them to that moment.
By the next morning, the sideline looked less like a football team preparing for battle and more like a badly coordinated scratch-and-swell dance routine. Antihistamines were being consumed at a rate that would concern most pharmacists.
Some people handled it better than others. Most did not handle it well.
Game One: the Masters remember why they love this
Despite arriving at kick-off looking like they'd lost a fight with a hedgerow, the Masters took to the field against the Servals de Clermont-Ferrand.
And won. 20-0.
But the score line wasn't the thing. The thing was how it felt.
For a lot of the lads, it was the first time in a long time that football had felt genuinely fun again. Not the grind of training, not the pressure of a league table, just a group of people in their 30s and beyond, playing a game they love, in the south of France, with mosquito bites they'd be scratching for a week.
It worked. This daft idea actually worked.
Game Two: a harsh and brilliant education
Then came the Nationals against the Royal Roosters.
I knew early on that this was going to be a different kind of afternoon. Lining up against a defensive tackle twice my size, wearing a helmet from the Barcelona Dragons. That's never the sign of an easy day at the office.
What we didn't fully appreciate until we were already in it was that the Royal Roosters were an all-star French squad made up of roughly 75% of the French national team.
We got hit. Repeatedly. Enthusiastically. By people who were very good at hitting.
Final score: 27-0.
Which sounds bad. But here's the thing, it wasn't embarrassing. Not even close. Because somewhere in the second half, something happened on the side line that I don't think any of us will forget.
The Servals, the team we'd beaten in the morning, were cheering for us.
Not the French side. Us. The Sealand lot who'd turned up from a fort in the North Sea and given it everything.
That moment summed up everything we were trying to build.
The bath. The realisation. What came next.
After the game I was the last one out of the changing room. Back at the hotel, I ran a bath.
Getting out of it was, without exaggeration, one of the harder things I've done in recent memory.
My body had very clearly expressed its opinion of playing two games in one day...
But lying there, not quite able to move, I was already thinking about what came next.
Two teams. Two games. One location. Done.
So naturally the next thought was: what about three teams, three different places, the same weekend?
Obviously.
- Mike Ireland, Minister for Sports and Culture
The Sealand Seahawks have now toured across 13 destinations in 10 countries — and they're just getting started. The Masters, Nationals and Women's teams head to Italy in October 2026.
🌍 Sealand is more than a place—it’s a growing global community built on independence, creativity, and doing things differently.
From international sport to new ideas and events, this is just the beginning.
If you want to follow the journey, see what’s coming next, and be part of the story:
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-Mike Ireland, Minister for Sport and Culture
