Players putting up the nets. Boots pulled on in the changing room. The practical business of getting a game of football underway. Keith Daniels’ black-and-white photographs of Warmley Rangers will feel familiar to anyone who has played amateur football in Britain.
Taken during the club’s 50th anniversary year, the series documents the surroundings, shared responsibilities and friendships that hold a local football club together. There is pride in these pictures, alongside the rough edges anyone who has spent their weekends on a recreation ground will recognise.
Based at Redfield Edge Playing Fields, Warmley Rangers has helped generations of young people find their feet in football. Some are now playing senior football alongside friends they first met as children. Through Daniels’ photographs and the experiences of longstanding player Matt Tilley, a portrait emerges of a proper grassroots institution: somewhere to learn the game, grow up and keep coming back.
Fifty years of the Green Army
Founded in 1976, Warmley Rangers has grown from a single pitch into a club serving more than 500 players across South Gloucestershire and East Bristol. Known as the Green Army, it celebrates its half-century in 2026 with 24 youth teams and a growing senior section.
For its youngest players, the Mini Shooters sessions offer an introduction to football between the ages of three and six. From there, the club provides opportunities through the youth age groups, with its senior teams extending that relationship into adulthood.
Continuity matters. A child’s first club can shape how they feel about football for years to come. It is where they begin to develop their touch, balance and understanding of the game, while learning to listen, compete and contribute to a team. Confidence comes gradually: asking for the ball, recovering from a mistake, realising you have something to offer.
Alongside that sporting development come lessons that carry into everyday life. Turning up when others are relying on you. Accepting a decision. Managing disappointment. Finding your place among people with different personalities and abilities.
At a club that lasts 50 years, those experiences pass through generations of local families.
The people who make Saturday happen
The work behind a grassroots club is visible in Daniels’ photographs. Before anyone can play, there are jobs to do. Someone has to get the nets up.
Across a season, those small responsibilities sit alongside the coaching, administration, maintenance and organisation needed to keep teams on the pitch. The game depends on people being prepared to give their time.
At Warmley, former chairman John O’Brien helped build the club’s foundations through the 1990s and 2000s, coaching teams including the 1996 Under-9s before moving into a senior advisory role. Today, chairman Nick Brain, treasurer Geordie Bulmer and secretary Charlie Cottrell continue that work, supported by clubhouse manager Leanne Hanna, youth managers and the wider club community.
Their contribution gives hundreds of players somewhere to go each week. It also creates a meeting place: parents on the touchline, coaches who become familiar figures, friendships that stretch beyond training and matchdays.
The changing rooms and local facilities in these photographs belong to that shared experience. Anyone who has played at this level will understand how an ordinary building beside a pitch can come to hold so much personal history.
A route into senior football
Warmley’s recent partnership with nearby Redbridge FC has opened another chapter.
Redbridge had worked its way from Sunday league football into the Bristol & Suburban League, collecting trophies and building a committed group of players. It needed a settled home. Warmley, meanwhile, wanted to give its youth players a clear route into senior football.
For the 2025/26 season, Redbridge moved to Redfield Edge and played as Warmley Redbridge in the league’s Premier Division. The arrangement brought an established adult side together with a club capable of supporting its future.
There were memorable moments along the way. A 2–1 Brunel Shield final victory over Phoenix Nextgen included two goals from Ed Searle, the winner arriving in the 90th minute.
Ahead of 2026/27, the senior side adopted the Warmley Rangers name and green-and-white stripes. With youth players coming through, a reserves team was also introduced.
The significance reaches beyond a change of name or shirt. Young players can now see a place for themselves at the club after Under-18 football, with experienced teammates alongside them as they adjust to the demands of the adult game.
The same faces, all these years later
For Matt Tilley, the joining of the clubs carries a particularly personal meaning.
“It all started in 1998. I was just a sprog lacing up my tiny boots for Warmley Rangers Under-5s, completely unaware that this club would become the backdrop for my entire footballing life.”
Tilley progressed through the age groups, playing men’s football while still representing the Under-18s. University interrupted the routine, before a group of his closest friends formed Redbridge.
“We battled our way up the divisions, capturing a few titles and the 2017 League Cup. Once everyone shifted focus from their other clubs, we made the leap to Saturday football.”
That group continued to develop together, winning a league title and cup honours. Returning to Warmley brought the journey back to where it began.
“Looking around the changing room, I still see a few of the exact same faces I played alongside back in ’98. With so much exciting young talent coming through, it’s comforting to know the club will be in great hands when my knees finally decide they’ve had enough.”
There is a measure of the club’s value in that changing room. Childhood friendships have survived university, changing routines and the physical demands of playing year after year. Now another generation is joining them.
For the love of the game
Daniels came to the project through Tilley, a work colleague, after finding inspiration in the photographers featured by Lower Block.
“Having been inspired by the work of the numerous photographers featured in Lower Block, I began pitching the idea of documenting Warmley Rangers FC to Matt Tilley, who I work with. The club was celebrating their 50th year, so the timing was perfect. A few messages later and the project began.”
The welcome allowed him to photograph a world he recognised from his own childhood.
“The club have welcomed me completely, all the lads have embraced the project and, for myself, it’s a pleasure combining the game I played as a kid and my passion for photography.”
His description of the experience gets straight to its appeal:
“These lads are in it for the love of the game, it’s Haribos and energy drinks, shit astro turf and bobbly pitches, Puma King’s and having to get the ladders out to hook the nets on.
“It’s grassroots.”
These are details shared across thousands of pitches every weekend. Together, they form a substantial part of Britain’s football culture: the clothes and boots, changing-room humour, competitive pride and friendships built through playing.
At Warmley, that culture has been sustained for half a century by people making football happen for one another. A young player gets their first touch. An older teammate offers encouragement. Someone brings out the ladders.
The next game starts with them.
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