THE BROMLEY BOYS: An All-Too-Familiar Feel-Good Story

This piece was originally published by Film Inquiry on August 29, 2019.

The English Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, and even if you’re not a fan of football (soccer, to us Americans), you’ve likely heard of some of the biggest names in the game: Manchester United. Arsenal. Liverpool. Chelsea. But there are only 20 teams in the Premier League; England is home to hundreds of other football clubs that will likely never get even a brief glimpse of the wealth, fame, and glory that these big clubs seem to have on lockdown. These teams don’t have shiny, world-class facilities or equally shiny, world-class players at their disposal, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their share of passionate fans.

One such team is Bromley FC, currently playing in the fifth tier of English football. Despite their lack of glorious exploits, author Dave Roberts has parlayed his lifelong passion for his hometown club into several books, one of which is now a film. Directed by Steve Kelly with a script by Warren Dudley, The Bromley Boys is a coming-of-age story chronicling a young Dave’s infatuation with Bromley FC and the insane efforts he is willing to go to keep this grassroots football club from dissolving into nothingness. And while the story itself is a paint-by-numbers affair, the overall feeling elicited by the warm is as warm and comforting as the mugs of tea the characters consume on the Bromley terraces.

THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL

After England beats West Germany in the 1966 World Cup final, an exceptional appetite for anything and everything football is awakened inside Dave (Brenock O’Connor, also known as that kid who betrayed Jon Snow on Game of Thrones). However, his father Donald (Alan Davies, who also narrates the film as adult Dave in a style reminiscent of A Christmas Story) loathes the sport with every fiber of his being and refuses to take Dave into London to see the big clubs like West Ham and Tottenham Hotspur play. Dave’s kindhearted mother, Gertie (Martine McCutcheon of Love, Actually) suggests an alternative: why doesn’t Dave support their local club, Bromley FC?

Before long, Dave lives and breathes everything Bromley FC. Bullied and teased at school, with no friends his own age, he ends up befriending a small group of equally passionate adult misfits with whom he can share his obsession. He also ends up in an awkward courtship of sorts with Ruby McQueen (Savannah Baker), the bookish daughter of Bromley chairman Charlie McQueen (Jamie Foreman). Through some dedicated snooping, Dave learns that both McQueen and Bromley FC are on the verge of bankruptcy; the only thing that might save them is a shock sale of their star striker Alan Stonebridge (Ross Anderson) to one of the biggest clubs in England, Leeds United.

Dave worships Stonebridge as a hero and would hate to see him go — but if Bromley don’t sell him, there soon might not be a Bromley for Stonebridge or anyone else to play for. With the begrudging help of Ruby, Dave and his friends can’t resist getting further involved in the business of Bromley — but as well-intentioned as their machinations might be, they’re in danger of doing more harm than good to the club they love.

LOCAL HEROES

There’s never a doubt while watching The Bromley Boys that the film, like Dave’s passion for the team, is a labor of love; one of the film’s producers, TJ Herbert, is a Bromley local who also costars as one of Dave’s fellow hardcore fans, and the end credits feature the real-life versions of Dave, his friends, and even Alan Stonebridge photographed alongside their fictionalized counterparts. (And Ross Anderson, who plays Stonebridge in the film, is also a Bromley local.)

There’s something remarkably pure and good about this love. After all, to spend one’s life dedicatedly supporting a team that will likely never have the resources to sign a big-name star or compete at the highest levels of European football isn’t easy. Yet as one sees throughout The Bromley Boys, lower division football also has so much to offer that the big clubs could never hope to match. The sense of community is all the stronger for how small the community is, while the scrappiness of the team’s few victories ensures that every single one is all the more precious and worthy of celebrating. As portrayed in this film, supporting Bromley FC honestly seems much more emotionally satisfying than, say, being an Arsenal fan (like me).

This genuinely warmhearted tone, aided by wonderfully relatable performances across the board and a healthy dose of early 1970s nostalgia, uplifts what is at its core an overly predictable feel-good tale. When the film does take a chance on a plot twist in its final act, it’s so absurdly over-the-top that it takes away from the sense of authenticity established in the earlier part of the film. For this and other reasons, I am convinced that if The Bromley Boys were an American film it would likely be far too saccharine to be enjoyable; fortunately, because it is British, there is a streak of wry humor running through it that helps offset some of the sweetness.

Unfortunately, the film is also sprinkled with cliched coming-of-age scenes such as the one where Dave is surprised to learn that mousy Ruby is actually quite a looker without her glasses (sigh). Indeed, The Bromley Boys is very much a film about boys, for boys: the only female characters are the put-upon mother, the nerdy love interest who hates the sport, and the Russian beauty in a relationship with the club chairman for the sole reason that he has a lot of money. I know the film takes place in the early 1970s when football culture was even more dominated by men than it is now, but I nonetheless would have appreciated more of a female presence among the boys.

CONCLUSION

Even with these flaws, The Bromley Boys is entirely pleasant to watch; it just never rises above mere pleasantness to be truly compelling. Like the love for Bromley FC at its center, it is almost too pure and simple for its own good.