Living at Leyton Orient

A home within a home

By Where Is Football

February 7^th, 2018

Editor's note: This post was originally posted on our blog in February 2018. We decided not to publish it to our website at the time as it didn't quite feel grand enough for a full feature.

In times of necessary social distancing due to COVID-19 and the subsequent lack of sporting escape in our lives, we've decided to re-publish it here as it felt equal parts relevant and wistful.

Remember to stay home and stay safe, especially if you live inside a football stadium. We can get through this together.

Today we’re in Leyton, in East London.

It’s a pretty quiet, mostly residential area, one stop on the Central Line from Westfield’s glitzy, dystopian shopping Xanadu in Stratford and the London Stadium, which once played host to the Olympics and now is home to West Ham United Football Club.

We’re hanging out in the living room of Nicky and Rachel, who aren’t huge football fans.

They don’t dislike the game by any means, but they wouldn’t self-identify as supporters, choosing instead to focus their free time on other pursuits, like playing in bands or going to gigs.

None of this would be all that remarkable, or seem like feature-worthy fodder, except for the fact that we’re also inside a football ground right now.

Yes, ‘inside’… Nicky and Rachel don’t just live near the stadium known as Brisbane Road, home of local club Leyton Orient. They live at Brisbane Road.

While Premier League football is played in the 66,000-seat arena up the street, this neighbourhood is still proudly home to its own local team. After a calamitous few years under the ownership of Francesco Becchetti (“He Who Shall Not Be Named”) The O’s have dropped out of the Football League for the first time in 112 years.

While most fans have impressively backed the club in the first season of their hopefully-short non-league odyssey, some others have questioned if a trip to Brisbane Road should be a part of their Saturday plans this year.

Nicky and Rachel don’t really have that choice, as the pitch is their back garden.

They were kind enough to let us into their home for a weekend match, where we’re joined by their neighbour Lance. During the opening half of a match against Boreham Wood FC (a small club from just north of London that feels far more suited to the fifth division) these three locals shed a bit of light on what it’s like to live in their very unique abode.

You can listen for yourself here:

During the halftime interval, we make our way upstairs to meet another resident, Ben, whose balcony offers a view that feels far more Premier League than non-league. This is a vantage point one might expect in the posh seats at the Emirates or Wembley or one of those World Cup stadiums that FIFA makes countries spend hundreds of millions of dollars of public money on before leaving without paying any of the tab.

This is Ben’s description of what it’s like to live there:

Both views, from above and below, are completely surreal. No matter how often we remind ourselves, it seems crazy that we’re actually sitting in a flat in East London watching a fifth-division football match from someone’s living room.