The Main Man

Quite simply, Hightown JFL wouldn’t exist without Steve.

For years, an extraordinary amount of the league has existed entirely inside Steve’s head — fixtures, teams, managers, pitches, contacts and probably several things the rest of us still don’t know about.

Which might also explain why passing over the reins has taken a little while.

That process was rather unexpectedly accelerated in August 2022 when Steve fell from a 40-foot cliff.

He ended up in a Spanish hospital with a broken back, broken ankles, a punctured lung and a fairly substantial list of other injuries.

You’d imagine that might have persuaded him to take some time off.

There is a photograph of him lying in his hospital bed — and if you look carefully, he’s still working on the Hightown fixtures.

Unbelievably, two weeks later he was back home inspecting the pitches.

The Boss

Anyone who has spent any time at Hightown will know “Linda in the hut.”

She is the fountain of all knowledge.

Linda knows which pitch you’re playing on, who your referee is and — most importantly — exactly how much money you owe.

Like Steve, she doesn’t seem particularly interested in retiring either.

She occasionally grants herself a few days off when there’s an antique fair to visit, but otherwise you’ll still find her at Hightown, often picking up litter in whatever weather Merseyside decides to throw at us that weekend.

Linda really does epitomise grassroots football — someone quietly doing all the jobs that have to be done, week after week, because she cares about the league and the people in it.

The Middle Sister

Lucy is in charge of the Burger Van — unofficially home to the best hangover cure in all of England.

Together with husband Chris, daughter Holly and the ever-dependable Steph, she spends her weekends keeping the football parents of Hightown fed, watered and, in some cases, slowly brought back to life — one sausage butty at a time.

The food even comes with a celebrity endorsement.

Jamie Carragher once declared it the best Sausage Butty & Bovril he’d ever had.

The Next Generation

You may know Adam as the angry bald one shouting at people in the car park.

Which, to be fair, isn’t entirely inaccurate.

But there’s a little more going on behind the scenes.

You’ll often find him working late into the evening on the pitches with his headtorch and his trusted working pug, Eric.

It pains him enormously that the rule at Hightown is No Dogs.

Increasingly taking over from Steve — and, worryingly, increasingly looking like him too — Adam now handles more and more of the league’s administration.

That transition hasn’t always been straightforward.

When Steve had his accident, Adam suddenly found himself dealing with an email and contact system that had evolved over decades.

He remembers emailing someone saved in Steve’s contacts as “Mike — Crosby 7’s”, only for Steve to correct him from his hospital bed:

That’s understandable when you’re talking about a handful of people.

Steve’s system contained more than 3,000 contacts.