Non-League Day, 28.03.26
A Love Letter to Non-League: Where Anything (and Everything) Happens
Hackney Marshes. The spiritual home of grassroots football. A special kind of place, where, once a week, on a Sunday, ordinary people who lead ordinary lives are transformed.
Bricklayers become prime 98-99 Beckham. Maths teachers are Maradona. Painters don their gloves and suddenly – they’re Pickford in the net. People who would be pensioners to the Premier League (anything aged over 25), but here - they may as well be Pele.
It's a place of possibility, a place where anything could happen, a place where nobody’s really checking if you kicked your opponent in the head – and you might get a flask of tea from somebody’s mum on the sidelines.
Push Gilbey has been in the heart of The Marshes for most of his life. Now, every week, he fills our Instagram feeds, capturing the true trials and tribulations of Non-League football. Who better to champion this year’s Non-League day, than the man who’s seen it all? He tells us his story:
“My dad used to play there (Hackney Marshes) in the 70s, and my cousins in the 90s. I can’t say I was a huge attendee during my teens (Arsenal were peak Arsenal in the 90s, and I wasn’t going to miss a game to go stand in the cold and watch my cousin shank a ball for 90 minutes).
I started going again in the 2010s. For 6 months I travelled every Sunday from Nottingham to Hackney to photograph arguably some of the worst football I’ve ever seen for a university project. The day I took the last set of photos our house was broken into and in amongst the stolen PlayStations, kitchen knives and phones was my hard drives with all the photos. I was only left with a few low-res images and sort of moved on from the project.
I think the project was something to do with rumours that the 2012 Olympics was going to shut down grassroots football in Hackney.
In 2022 I read an article which was complaining about the gentrification of the teams. I wanted to see if it was true, so went back there and of course it was all nonsense. Everything was exactly how it was in the early 2010s. Sure, one of the players manages Busted, and another is a writer for A League of Their Own, but they all want the same thing - to smash a ball as hard as they can on a Sunday morning in East London.”
What Gilbey writes of isn’t a rare experience of this kind of football. Non-League has an incredible, unchangeable staying power. Stubborn, unmoving, unwavering, despite it’s ever-changing landscape in the wider commercial game.
This lower tier of the football pyramid remains, for many, the game’s most stable foundation. As top-level supporters feel increasingly priced out and excluded, accessibility begins to erode their love of football. Meanwhile, non-league attendance is booming—fuelled by clubs that refuse to drift from the sport’s roots: where pints are permitted, pies are affordable, and children can still run freely in the car park. It’s football for everyone.
FA Cup giant-killings—Macclesfield, Tamworth’s near triumph—inject heart, grit, and belief into lower level clubs and their communities. Devoted local supporters don’t just attend; they volunteer, sustaining their clubs and shaping their future. Across the country, non-league sides host charity events, fundraisers, and youth programmes, restoring a sense of possibility within the game.
Initiatives like Non-League Day, founded by James Doe in 2010 as a social media campaign, have become a staple of the football calendar. Held during international breaks, it channels attention and support back into these vital grassroots environments.
We must recognise that without this level of football, none of the rest exists. This is the beating heart of the game in this country—and it relies on our support. Getting involved doesn’t take much: attend a National League or lower-division match, volunteer at a local club, show up, spend locally, take a flask of tea – or your camera - to your local fields on a Sunday.
Like Push Gilbey, who’s long understood the magic of the marshes, and what life and passion there is to capture in football’s underworld.
“Throughout the week I’ll get the usual messages over group chats about the weekend games. The standard, basic patter from friends who only watch the highest level - complaints about VAR, stolen memes, laughing at Tottenham type stuff. But I know there’s a whole other world of football out there. A world of acceptable two footed tackles, no linesmen, insane kits and players leaving midway through a half for christenings. Friends' mundane chat about their super clubs comes a very distant 2nd these days. Nothing really compares to nonleague.
Oh, you watched a game that ended in a 22 man brawl? Well, there was a 46 man brawl between Baddoo and Borough at The Marshes - someone threw a dog. Arsenal v Spurs was an all time classic ending 3-3? Ok, I saw a game finish 6-6 and all goals were scored in the space of 7 minutes. You heard your new signing is on £300k a week? Well Crondall’s defender earns 65k a month - I know because he got into an argument with an SE Dons player over who makes more while defending a corner. The best player in the Prem is a 17 year old Brazilian who can score 30 yard screamers without breaking a sweat? The best player on The Marshes is a 35 year old journeyman who is built like a fridge. He works in recruitment.”
- Push Gilbey
All photographs by @pushgilbey
