With World Cup fever just around the corner, Sareda Dirir previews this summer’s most anticipated football flick.

“When you love something unconditionally and it changes, you CARE. I even care if Bromley play in longer shorts than usual. I LOVE BROMLEY FC,” explains ardent fan Dave Roberts passionately to Ruby McQueen - the Club Chairman’s disinterested daughter. 

As any football fan knows - you don’t choose your team, your team chooses you. Set in 1969, The Bromley Boys is a feel-good summer football film centred around 15 year old Roberts’ lifelong loyalty to the ‘worst team in the country’- non league Bromley FC. 

The Bromley Boys is British film-making at its finest, funniest and most poignant. There are household names - the nation’s sweetheart Martine McCutcheon as David’s ever-supportive mother. Allan Davies as the cantankerous, irritable father hiding a painful secret - yet there is also an intimacy and charm that lends this film universal appeal. 

Based on true events, Producing Team TJ Herbert and Dean Fisher wanted to keep this film as authentic as possible “.. for us the film had to pop with colour – we wanted to re-invent the era.” Certainly the party scene at Chairman Charlie McQueen’s house is a vibrant affair - David and Ruby’s shy first dance against the backdrop of glorious seventies swag curtains, the lurid drinks, star player Alan (Stoney) Stonebridge’s vivid orange Ford Capri. This film is anything but drab.

...a sweet, coming-of-age love story, a teenager’s journey from boy to man, an incredible soundtrack, hazy nostalgia

This commitment to authenticity is a theme throughout the film, those home-made, felt-tipped football league ladders, the team scarves lovingly hand-knitted in the wrong colours. The football at times is bad - it has to be - but it’s played with genuine heart and soul. 

Producers hope that The Bromley Boys will come to be known as the definitive football film. Certainly there’s something for everyone here; a sweet, coming-of-age love story, a teenager’s journey from boy to man, an incredible soundtrack, hazy nostalgia, but most memorably, even for non-football fans, The Bromley Boys shines a floodlight on the indescribable surge of pride and validation when your team occasionally - just occasionally - gives you something back in return for years of devotion and dedication.

The Bromley Boys is playing at the Vue Printworks - check here for times.