Mayo Valley

Mayo Valley Vo Football Club was a professional football club in Candelaria And Marquez, based in the small town of Hodgehill in west Candelaria. The team played in the CMSC1 for six seasons during the league’s ‘International Era’, including the division’s final five editions. Lacking the massive funding available at the time for many of the country’s more fashionable outfits; Mayo none the less attracted fans during this period for their ability to achieve consistent mid-table top-flight finishes without much means of visible support and had become established as the de facto team of rural western Candelaria.

Early history
Formed in the late 1920s, the ultimate goals of the businessmen behind Mayo Valley FC were ambitious from the off, with founders Douglas Holmes and Cecil Thompson aiming to create definitive, professional club side for the south and south-west of Candelaria. At the time, the area had a paucity of even amateur outfits compared to most other parts of the island and Marquez, with rugby instead holding sway in Vo, Hanlon, Mannouch and other key towns. The population west of the Mayo Valley mountain chain, and amongst it, was small and sparse, but many an industrialist remained convinced that the natural progression of the island’s colonisation would soon see the tiny mining and farming communities soon replaced by much larger settlements crying out for an instantly successful team in the new National Foot-Ball League.

Adopting the blue and white hoops that had for some decades been symbolic of the independently minded Candelarian south-west, Mayo Valley were established in the town of Brodoff as a heavily funded amateur side including players drawn from older teams from miles around, with Holmes and Thompson soon experimenting with corporate sponsorship and increased accessibility, going as far as to fund the building of improved transport connections to Brodoff in an effort to attract supporters from much further afield.

The club’s connections with Brodoff came to an end barely two years later, with magnate Walker Rogers buying the club for a then record fee and moving it wholesale to his adopted town of Walshside, a small but thriving community widely expected to emerge as the area’s major success story of the era. Bringing in highly though-of young manager Lewis Thomas, a progressively-minded figure brought up at Radyukevich CSC, and signing west Candelaria local Ronnie Peters from the Cockyard Cocks, Thomas finally entered Mayo into the NFBL in 1945. Gaining promotion to the top-flight within a season, the club soon became a true success story – attracting vast crowds from the rural working class in Walshside and beyond, while on the field they were instantly competitive at the highest level.

Their single NFBL title, achieved in 1948, still came as a shock to most pundits, with Peters leading the way with forty league goals. Mayo’s time at the top would prove short-lived, but they remained an increasingly popular outfit – not only as a football team, but as a symbol of the resilience and entrepreneurial spirit of an oft-derided region of Candelaria, particularly in the months following the country’s full independence. In tandem with a rapid rise in the south-west’s population, alongside its average standard of living, the area’s football club remained a confident mid-table force throughout the fifties.

Come the start of the next decade however, the character of this portion of the island was to be battered beyond recognition by the effects of the McManus regime and the subsequent civil war, with Rogers losing the overwhelming bulk of his fortune and Mayo Valley FC left to crumble. In hindsight, the football club could well have proven a vital tool in restoring the pride and economic well-being of western Candelaria, but the handful of attempts at re-establishing the club as a major force failed entirely while Walshside’s own population plummeted as the years went by and thousands abandoned the west to find work in the cities.

The CMSC
Mayo Valley FC itself, without even local amateur football during the immediate pre-CMSC era and acting as little more than a youth club, was eventually bought up by a consortium with unashamedly similar goals to those of its original founders. Moved to the market town of Hanlon – one of the few success stories of the era itself, and by now arguably the south-west’s key settlement – the club was entered into the CMSC for its VI season, remaining a second tier outfit until promotion in XV.

By then, Mayo had undergone yet another move – this time accepting an offer from Vo City Council to move into the city’s large, if dilapidated and not unjustly vacant, Fox Street Stadium. Though it was clearly a ground barely fit for top-flight football, it was here that Mayo came into their own during the modern era, repeatedly finishing comfortably mid-table under first Wes Simmons and then Pedro García, whilst specialising in lengthy, if unsuccessful, cup runs.

During this period the club’s latter-day fanbase began to solidify – bringing Mayo support from amongst industrial workers and middle-class intellectuals from Vo itself, suburbanites from the developing neighbourhoods serving relatively distant Albrecht and Allemali as well as Vo, and villagers from the much older farming communities still clinging onto life both on the plains and amongst the mountains. The settlement of the area by a considerable number of Serbian-speaking migrants would likewise supply a new seam of supporters. The name of Vo was also added to the club’s official name as a means of further identifying it with the city.

On-field however, the XXIII season would be one of mixed fortunes for Mayo, with the club narrowly relegated and García sacked soon after. The CMS Cup had proven the ultimately distraction and, with most of García’s backroom staff also having exited, it was left to kitman Jamie Solvig, and club captain Lance Johnson, to take control of the team for the final against Radyukevich – a 1-0 victory making them the only side before or since to win the cup and drop a division in the same season.

Mayo returned to the CMSC1 four seasons later, this time with Dave Carr-Fluck at the helm – and yet another new home. With Fox Street declared unsafe by the league, and Vo City Council unwilling to shell out on a new arena, Mayo Valley were soon on the move once more. A short spell back in Hanlon ended with a permanent voyage to the otherwise anonymous small town of Hodgehill, and the expansion of the tiny central football ground into the twenty-thousand all-seater stadium, The Wall, that houses the club to its dying day. Soon the biggest employer in Hodgehill, Mayo Valley FC could certainly claim one of the more unusual settings for a CMSC1 stadium; nestled as it was between a communal park, replete with an ornamental duck pond and fountains a-go-go, on one side and a picturesque village high street on the other.

Mayo’s XXVIII season would see them reliant both on the talented strikeforce of Pascal Thorrington and Rick Sekerci, and some of the most strong-armed tactics seen in the top division for many a year. A touch of class was admittedly added by Kim Zetaback, the younger sister of Green Island star Roger, but despite a good start from the Vanorian midfielder and the team as a whole, a long-term injury to Thorrington and an overall lack of top-flight ability soon told. Relegation looked nailed on, despite a late rally and results including a 3-0 drubbing of the GIZ, but Mayo ultimately finished fifteenth of sixteen – comfortably dropping from whence they came in any other season, but this time facing a two-legged play off with Candelaria-Allemali as part of the top division’s move to eighteen teams.

They lost, comfortably, and remained in the CMSC2 under a merry-go-round of managerial appointments and playing squads. Seldom particularly competitive, even for a play-off spot, they were equally never at risk of relegation. Finally however, by XXXI, they began a string of top-four finishes both at the conclusion of the Apertura and in the final table, qualifying for the SBCC between its fourth and seventh editions and winning all but one group game at SBCC5 before a first knockout round exit repeated two years later, leaving Mayo’s record in the competition some way behind a number of their fellow Candelariasian sides.

In XXXIV, a young side built by new manager Zachary Telemans around Serbian talent took a leap forward from a previous couple of poor seasons by topping the Apertura table before slipping away to fourth. Mayo recovered from that however, and made it to a play-off final against Castillo FC, another side looking to return to the CMSC1 after a relatively lengthy spell of absence. A goalless draw in ninety minutes eventually led to a penalty shoot-out, with teenager Joe Milošević putting away the decisive spot-kick.

Final years
Valley and Telemans would go on to prove two of the notable stories of XXXV. Though the club ultimately finished only nine points outside the bottom three, Mayo never looked in particular danger of relegation, and won plenty of admirers with an attractive and inventive take on the classic 4-4-2, as well as an enviable defensive record built around the performances of Toyur internationals Gustav Johansson and Mikael Lilja and the superb young goalkeeper Greg Tipping. Teleman’s other pre-season signings, including the much-travelled Pasargan striker Samuka Szatmári and a third Toyur native, the energetic midfielder Justin Tillström, also performed fabulously. After her limited role at Cathedral City meanwhile, the Bears Armed harr’aynau Ilga NorthWalker was able to establish herself in a CMSC1 first XI at Mayo and help strike a blow against conventional beauty standards in the process (partly through eschewing the lady shave, partly through being ginger).

The star of the season – and arguably of Mayo Valley’s whole final stint among the powerhouses of Candelariasian football – was surely Manny Warren, as much for his off-field performances as his role powering down the left flank. The charismatic, dreadlocked, Taeshan international was taken to the hearts of the supporters soon after his arrival, but he became far more than a mere mascot in this whitest corner of the Candelarias. Instead he was an icon for his philanthropy, taking advantage of the lucrative tax exemptions available to foreign players to invest in the scattered local communities of his adopted homeland. Western Candelaria’s Anglican, Methodist and Serbian Orthodox churches alike found themselves with more donations that they knew what to do with, and a generation of low-income families lived in – as the song soon went – a Manny Warren house, all built in-keeping with the essential character of the village. Some of them were barn conversions, for pity’s sake. Truly beyond the call. The mansion he shared with his wife, meanwhile, heaved with children who might otherwise have been left on the adoption scrapheap. Some were ‘brain defected’. One, so it is said, was as much a small Russian pancake as a human girl, though some have suggested this may have been a typo. Either way, by the close of his CMSC career he was treated as barely less than a secular saint.

As for XXXV, the season closed with Mayo intent to hold on to both Telemans and the squad’s key players, despite the certain knowledge that the club’s relatively lowly financial status would make this extremely difficult, and the board were forced to fight tooth and nail to cling onto the big names, handing the Toyur internationals and several Candelariasians much improved contracts.

What was certain, however, was that Telemans and Warren had built a superb atmosphere in the camp, with Mayo increasingly seen as the ‘nice guys’ of Candelariasian football. Their squad was augmented by teenagers only, but Sterogan striker Jaival Subudhi and full-back Adam Darby made an immediate impact and Mayo never truly looked in danger of being dragged too far into the relegation mix-up, even if the top half was plainly beyond them. With the Clausura a considerable improvement on the first-half, Mayo ultimately finished up in eleventh place, on thirty-nine points, and with a 10-9-15 record – identical to their XXXV campaign.

With a defence augmented by C&M’s future ‘second lady’ Alice Gaynor in from Albrecht Independent FC and Ad’ihani full-back Darren Williams, the following couple of seasons brought more of the same to a jubilant fanbase perfectly satisfied with mid-table mediocrity. The apertura of season XXXVIII even saw Mayo miss out on the Globe Cup only by a single point following an undefeated opening six matches and results that included a pulsating 5-3 victory over MarquezOW, and the team ultimately finished a hugely impressive ninth in the final standings.

That the coach Telemans hadn’t been snapped up by a bigger club was a source of consistent bemusement to the domestic media, and by the start of XXXIX the man himself had cause to rue the unfashionability of Candelariasian coaches forged in the country’s lower leagues. Before the start of the season Telemans lost Subudhi to McDonald SC and, rather more damagingly, exciting young winger Zoran Živkovic to the El din Marbles, but the arrival of a Big Blues quality striker in Ryan Sheppard should have seen the club set fair for another solid season.

Instead, it was nothing short of a disaster. The opening five matchdays brought five defeats – albeit all by a goal to nil – and by the eighth round of matches and with a single point to their name Telemans had been relieved of his duties (he popped up at Alianza Jucaro in Sargossa no more than twenty-four later, so evidently wasn’t in mourning for too long). His assistant Michael Bailey stepped into the breach, and fans were soon proven entirely correct in resigning themselves to relegation.

Come the conclusion there was little in the way of wailing or gnashing of teeth, apart from one or two of Manny Warren’s children but that may have been coincidental, since the club’s relegation was confirmed in the aftermath of the Beatrice event, and even the more enthusiastic of Mayo fans had other things on their minds. Following a 3-1 home defeat to Port of Clotaire, Mayo followed the rest of the CMSC’s non-Nethertopian contingent into a hibernation from which they would never wake.

In time, The Wall became affordable housing – the only tangible reminder of it and Hodgehill’s time as a footballing centre being the statue of Manny Warren, the black Madonna of west Candelaria, children at his feet, his big bear arms outstretched unto the world. It has survived the general purge of such things following the country’s turn against professional sport and remains a place of pilgrimage for valley folk, who rub his jinky shins for good luck and occasionally leave donations of homemade Slavic baked goods for the habitually hungry, or merely the passing peckish, in honour of his most famous adopted sprog.

Notable CMSC1 International Era players
Goalkeepers
 * Greg Tipping
 * Jaime Zamora

Defenders
 * Adam Darby
 * Alice Gaynor
 * Gustav Johansson
 * Reuben Lawrence
 * Mikael Lilja
 * Tenicia Martinez
 * Adam Palmer
 * Dennis Williams

Midfielders
 * Mark Allbright
 * Matt Reddington
 * Joseph Miloševic
 * Ilga NorthWalker
 * Justin Tillström
 * Manny Warren
 * Kim Zetaback
 * Zoran Živkovic
 * Patrick Zoric

Forwards
 * Rick Sekerci
 * Ryan Sheppard
 * Flag of Ex-Nation.png Jaival Subudhi
 * Samuka Szatmári
 * Pascal Thorrington
 * Zach Witt