Super Sunday has an entirely different meaning since the rise of YouTube stars SE DONS. For Billy Holmes, it used to mean calling up everyone to see what pub has a screen, now you can cheer on your favourite team live on YouTube.Â
My housemates and I start chanting their anthem, ‘Anything, Anything’ at the top of our lungs as the intro song for UK Grime Legend and founder of SE DONS, Don Strapzy, sounds out before their much-anticipated Sunday League upload. I’m just one subscriber amongst the other 139,000 worldwide. This isn’t just ‘a London thing’, it’s an unmistakably global phenomenon.
YouTube football teams have rapidly become the norm over the past few years, with other teams such as Baiteze (40k subscribers) and Rebel FC (110k subscribers) also benefiting from the virtual support of thousands fixture-by-fixture. Hashtag United (476k subscribers), who are perhaps the most well-known team, two years ago entered the English League system with enormous success. This move is starting to show the power and promise of unprofessional YouTube football sides in the professional world football.
However, founded in 2014, SE DONS are different. They ‘ain’t normal’, as six foot six Ugandan Skipper Big G reminds us. Week in, week out, The Dons represent the ups and downs of growing up in London, they celebrate their wins when they can and learn from every loss in and outside of the beautiful game.
Before the Dons, founder Andrew McHugh (Don Strapzy) was and still is one of the realest rappers from Lewisham. He put out countless unforgettable freestyles on SBTV and Link Up TV that were always talking points in the cages at school. Andrew’s managed to assemble a dream team of talented players, but the success of the Dons isn’t just about their tekkers on the pitch, it’s about their extreme likability, their authenticity and their charisma.
Skipper and original don Andrew McHugh, aka Don Strapzy
Each week the viewer gets a fly-on-the-wall insight into a Sunday League team. You see it all: the relentless side-line banter; infectious catch phrases; the career ending slide tackles and waterlogged pitches. All seamlessly edited and filmed by the man behind the camera, Kriss, who captures the contagious chaos at every game. The edits are packed with ridiculous sound effects and are amusingly voiced over by Andrew himself. It’s not just the football you look forward to each week, it’s the familiarity of the players that makes it so watchable, players such as Mad B and ex-Cypriot under-21s international Dinho. They all have something distinct to offer.
One of their most-watched games, titled ‘SE DONS CUP FINAL – They Don’t Want Us Here’, was released in May 2018. This clash against FC Cortez goes far deeper than just a Sunday League cup final. Recently mourning the loss of Andrews’s mother Paula, who had played a huge part in many of the players lives, the Dons went into the game screaming ‘Anything for Paula!’.
The game wasn’t just for them and the 700 plus supporters than turned up. It was to commemorate everything Paula had done for the team and how she had helped them grow from boys to men. For the players who had grown up during the London postcode politics and knife crime, loss is something many of them are incredibly familiar with. During the dressing room team talk, Mr Old Skool (Andrew’s dad) and the team chairman, steps in to tell them, ‘Enjoy yourselves and have a great day, we’re gonna win that cup’. 90 minutes later that’s exactly what they did, comfortably smashing their opponents 7-0 (see below).
Although newcomers to the concept of Youtube football might find it off-putting or believe it to be just another disposable millennial trend, I urge them to think again. SE DONS is about promoting grassroots football, celebrating your friendships and cheering people up. This doesn’t show as potently in other YouTube football teams. Fans are invited each week to come down and watch the games free of charge. SE DONS don’t just live on the internet, it’s all real and accessible. Some fans travel miles to come and be a part of this welcoming community, some just by themselves, or some who have dragged their poor mum out of bed on a Sunday to drive to the deep South East (or ‘The Jungle’ as the Dons call it). In a time where the internet can make you feel pretty shit about yourself, what Andrew and his friends and family have created is something incredibly human yet massively entertaining at the same time.
