The Easton Cowboys began life in the early 1990s as a group of punks playing football in St Paul's Estate in Bristol, fighting an uphill battle to join a local league. "Ever tried getting punks and hippies up early on a Sunday morning?" asked Roger, a former British Aerospace worker, who made contact with neighbouring Asian and Jamaican teams.
The turning point for the team came in 1993, when the Easton Cowboys were invited to a football festival in the Swabian mountains, near Stuttgart in Germany. "That opened our eyes," said Jasper, another player, who discovered soccer's answer to the Glastonbury festival. Organisers erected a stage, hired generators, put on bands and a puppet shows for the kids. "They did it all themselves, without professional help," explained Jasper.
By 1998, the team felt confident enough to host an Alternative World Cup, a non-profit event with teams from France, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Belgium and Norway. The team raised £10,000 to bring a team from Soweto, South Africa, who walked away with the trophy.
"After that, we felt like we could do anything" said Roger, little imagining the challenge that lay halfway across the world.
The team members knew little about the Zapatista movement, but their curiosity was awoken by reports from returned visitors. "It seemed that their effort to win back control of their lives mirrored our struggle to stay independent within the global economic order," said Jasper.