A London country fan reads about Bramblewick Rovers suspending six players over lateness and compares football discipline with how bands handle the late fiddler
Saturday, 24 October 2026. A pub near Camden Lock, the open mic, waiting for my slot, a lime and soda because I am on in twenty minutes, 8.10pm.
A Football Club Has Better Discipline Than My Band
I am in a very loose country and folk trio called The Kentish Lowlands. We are a guitarist (me), a fiddler (Oona, a primary school teacher from Derry) and a double bass player (Femi, an accountant from Lewisham who is the best musician among us and the worst timekeeper in the Northern Hemisphere). Tonight we are playing two songs at the open mic. Femi is not here. Femi is never here at the start. Femi is, in his own words, on his way.
While we waited, Oona showed me the report on how six Bramblewick Rovers players were suspended after a teammate arrived seven minutes late. The captain had replaced lateness fines with a rule that late arrivals must fight a teammate. Six players piled in. Two were arrested. The supporters noted it was the most coordinated movement the club had managed all season.
Oona looked at the door. She looked at her watch. She said, quietly, we could adopt that. I said we could not adopt that. She said she was not suggesting it. She was just saying it was an option. Oona teaches Year Four. She has an extraordinarily calm voice for someone who has just proposed violence.
Bands Have Always Had A Late Member
Every band in history has had a Femi. Country music is full of stories about the member who turned up late, the steel guitar player who missed the tour bus, the drummer who was in the wrong town. Folk music is worse, because folk musicians do not believe in time in the conventional sense. The Thursday session in Camden officially starts at eight. In practice it starts when Reg, who is seventy-four, has finished telling someone about his hip.
The report says the club previously fined five pounds for lateness, ten for forgetting boots and twenty for criticising the captain’s haircut. We have a similar system. If you are late, you buy the first round. If you forget your strings, you buy the second. If you criticise Oona’s fringe, you are removed from the band and from her life. Femi has bought the first round for nine consecutive gigs. He says it is cheaper than buying a watch.
The Manager Who Arrived Late To The Meeting About Lateness
My favourite detail is that the Bramblewick manager arrived at the emergency meeting twenty-three minutes late because he had forgotten which training ground the club used. In country music terms, that is a perfect song. A man summoned to judge others for their lateness, lost on the way. I have already written the chorus. He came to preach on time, but the clock was not on his side, he took the wrong road to the right meeting, and the judgement had to wait outside.
The report also has a council punctuality task force with an eighty-five thousand pound budget, which will report in twelve months because several members are unavailable until March, and whose launch started forty-five minutes late. Oona said that is the most honest account of local government she has ever read, and she has sat through the school’s fire safety training three times.
What Good Bands Do Instead
I found a really useful guide on how to approach co-writing sessions effectively, and one lesson applies to lateness too: respect everyone’s time, set expectations at the start and do not let one problem poison the whole session. Bands that last do not punch the late member. They make a joke, count him in and start the song. The music forgives. The audience never knows. That is the difference between a band and Bramblewick Rovers.
Femi Arrives
Femi arrived at eight seventeen, seven minutes after we were supposed to soundcheck. He came through the door carrying a double bass, which is the musical equivalent of carrying a wardrobe through a crowd of people holding pints. He was out of breath. He said there had been a signal failure at Camden Town. Oona said there is always a signal failure at Camden Town. Femi said exactly, so it is not my fault. Oona looked at him for four full seconds. Then she said, first round. Femi said, of course.
Nobody was arrested. Nobody was suspended. Liam, the retired builder from Cork, went on stage before us and played a Johnny Cash song so movingly that a tourist from Ohio asked if he was available for weddings.
The Gig
We played The Button Maker’s Name and a new one, Seven Minutes, written in the last twenty minutes on the back of a beer mat, about a fiddler who is always late and a band that loves him anyway. Femi did not realise until the second chorus that it was about him. Then he laughed so hard he nearly dropped the bass. The room applauded. Oona said it was the most coordinated thing we had ever done. Bramblewick Rovers would be proud. Femi is buying the second round too. He forgot his rosin.