Sport / Rusty retirees ready to return to footballing fold for new season
A TEAM of lapsed footballers are set to dust off their boots and return to the action for the upcoming senior season.
Rusty Spoons will join the Jewson Championship for the 2026 campaign, having been formed by a group of friends who are ending years of watching from the sidelines.
The team already have 30 players signed up – 29 of whom either stopped playing years before, or have never played senior football at all.
Scott Priest is one of the players behind the rusty revolution, with a musical fundraiser being held this weekend to help fill the club’s coffers before the new campaign.
He said last year’s European Championships in Germany, which Scotland were a part of, had inspired them to return to the footballing fray.
“Everyone was watching that, and so me and my friends decided we wanted to go for a kickabout,” Priest explained to Shetland News.
“We made a habit of that, started doing it every week and more and more people started coming along slowly.
“It was folk that had never played senior football, that maybe stopped at under-18s. We floated the idea of starting a team and we thought, ‘maybe we could actually go for this’.”
Rusty Spoons considered joining the newly formed Championship for the 2025 campaign, but with only around 17 players committed they decided to hold off and try convince more to join the fold.
Now there are 30 on the books, of which only one player has moved across from another team.
“We’ve got a really good bunch of us,” Priest said.
“It’s players like me that would have struggled to get a game for a B team. Some of the players said as well that they hated that some teams took it so seriously, and they wanted to just get a kickabout with the boys.”
That is exactly what Rusty Spoons want from the upcoming season, Priest said – a kickabout with their friends, rather than any lofty ambitions of league titles.
“We’re going out with the idea to have fun,” he said.
“We know we’re not great. Our aim is not to take ourselves too seriously.
“It’s never not going to be competitive, but we’re going out there to have fun with it.
“Everyone we’ve told that to has said, ‘that suits me perfect’.”
The team have been training weekly with Priest’s dad – a former Lerwick Rangers youth coach – agreeing to come aboard to coach the team for the season.
One thing that may raise eyebrows is the name, Rusty Spoons. For some millennials and Gen Z-ers the words will recall the early YouTube creepy creation Salad Fingers, whose obsession with corroded cutlery is infamous.
Priest said it was only after conversations with new team-mates that he realised that was likely where the name had come from.
“We’ve been playing Fifa pro clubs and Rocket League, me and a few of the core players, and we’ve always been called Rusty Spoons,” he said.
“We never knew why, and I didn’t even remember about that [Salad Fingers].
“It was always just going to be the name, because that was always our name.
“But a few of the boys did say recently about Salad Fingers, and I realised it must have been that.”
The team will celebrate their newly formed status – and raise essential club funds – with a gig at the Gulberwick Hall this Saturday.
Priest’s own band No Half will headline the night, with Brundlehorse and new band Heebie Jeebies in support.
He said that the music scene in Shetland was “bouncing at the moment”, and that it was “always good to put a gig on anyway”.
“It’s a celebration that we’re actually doing this, and we wanted to keep it as cheap as possible and keep people interested in the club.
“It will be a good fun, we have three good bands.”
Tickets for Saturday’s gig, which starts at 8pm, are available for £12 here.
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