When one hears about a football film, one usually expects a rousing feature on the thrill of being a fan, or a scathing look at past hooliganism. Documentaries are rare and usually focus on big names like Zidane. Ronan Pollock's work, by contrast, is a small scale project about ordinary people, but no less exciting for it. It also takes an unusual angle, looking at the stories of inner London football managers, and follows an unusual tournament, in which teams of young local men take on the police.
"The idea for Score Against The Law started when I met this one particular football manager," explains Ronan. "I knew a lot of the other guys in the film because I live in the same local area but I was keen to make a documentary based around this guy because he was such a strong character, really charismatic. It's not so much that I was interested in making a film about football, but the football was a part of him, part of his character. The film is really more about people. I started following the team, filming them, interviewing them, and it developed from there. I found out about tournaments and the police one just grabbed me. It provided such an interesting social context, and the main character had actually started the tournament himself."
Like many community-focused documentaries, the long running project took some time to develop. Ronan first started filming two years ago but it took him a while to get the kind of coverage he wanted. Then he met another manager who stood out as a strong character and whose team were also involved in the tournament. The two men had very different styles and different backgrounds, with one from a Caribbean immigrant background and one from a Moroccan immigrant community. He became fascinated by the contrast and felt it would work well on film.
"I wanted to put it in a historical context," he says. "I think the Caribbean immigrant community in the area has been quite well documented but the Moroccan community not so much so. I also wanted to look at the relationship these communities have with the police, because traditionally there's been a lot of distrust. Football is a way for people to come together when they wouldn't talk to each other otherwise. I interviewed a lot of police officers as well as the other players. Community police officers run the logistics of it, and it's a way for people to see each other as they really are."
Filming real events is always risky, but Ronan was lucky - as the tournament developed, he got everything he could have wished for. "It was ideal the way the tournament turned out. The draw was perfect, the final was perfect, there was drama on the bench - everything was perfect really."
Still, Ronan doesn't consider the finished film to be his final version. "It's a work in progress," he says. "At the moment I'm trying to get people interested in it and raise some money. I'd love to go back to it next year with better equipment and a proper budget so I can really do it the way I want." And if there's a reason why he has remained so passionate about it, that clearly has something to do with his subjects. "I think it's a side of these people that isn't often looked at," he explains. "They're really positive; they were positive about this from day one. That's what excited me so much about it. It's not just about football, it's about humanity."
The current version of Score Against The Law is screening at the Across The Street, Around The World festival as part of Black History Month.
