Beckenham Town to host international friendly

The Cascadia Team has organised its first ever exhibition game. They will play the Chagos Islands at Beckenham Town FC’s Eden Park Avenue stadium in South East London. The game will take place on Sunday May 26th.

Beckenham Town pla yin the Southern Counties East League 2018/19. They are known as the Becks.

Up until now, all Cascadia’s games have been competitive.

They played in the 2018 ConIFA World Cup in London where they finished sixth out of 16 teams, despite the players only first training together the day before their first game.

They went on to qualify out of a tough group by beating Tamil Eelam by the six goals required at Fisher FC’s Stadium.

Cascadia head coach James Nichols told Prost Amerika:

“We are delighted to be moving Cascadia on from our first tournament to the next stage. I want to thank Beckenham Town for their amazing hospitality and offer to host us. It is clubs like them with a commitment to the game that make all the difference.

“I am looking forward to meeting my Chagossian counterparts too. They are very enthusiastic to be playing us.”

The Cascadia team represents the bio region that includes the province of British Columbia in Canada and the US states of Oregon and Washington State. The area is a hot bed for football with three MLS sides, Portland Timbers, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps playing there.

WHO ARE THE CHAGOS ISLANDS?

The Chagos Islands are situated in the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

The area fell under the jurisdiction of the British Indian Ocean Territory. The UK government forcibly evicted the 2000 strong population between 1968 and 1973 to accommodate the US military’s desire for an air base on Diego Garcia.

Although many islanders are still fighting for the right to return, a large diaspora settled in the town of Crawley in Sussex. It is mostly from that diaspora that the Chagos Islands side draw their players. Their first game took place in Crawley in 2011 where they beet Raetia 6-1. In their last game in June, they lost by the same score to Tuvalu in Bedfont.

The side is run by the Chagos Football Association.

“Our aim is to play a home game in Cascadia”

The venue for the ConIFA World Cup was London so obviously Cascadia played their games in the English capital.

Cascadia however are very interested in playing friendly and competitive games in Cascadia. One of the problems is finding opponents according to Nichols.

“We’d love to lay a home game. Our aim is to play a home game in Cascadia but there are no ConIFA sides based in the area or who could afford to travel there. We would be interested though in playing a college or university side though if that would give us the chance to play in front of our own fans.”

The kick off time is not established yet but the EFL promotion League One promotion play off is in nearby Wembley that day at 3pm, so the Cascadians are hoping for an 11am kick off time, to persuade fans coming into London to do a double header.