By Isaac Wilson 2026
This short zine is my proof of concept for a personal project I've been thinking about for a little while. I plan to explore my experiences as a victim of primary and secondary schoolyard bullying and how the groups of people that typically took part in the abuse were ingrained in the 'lad' culture of team sports, inparticularily football and rugby. I want to explore how that developed into a strong bias towards these sports and the communities. My primary goal will be to challenge and grow my understandings, but also to explore what it was the people from my upbringing were influenced by and if this is still a problem.
I've chosen to combine this with my love of photography so as to not only explore my past experiences but also expand on my skillset and benefit my future as a photographer. The idea for the book will be to use high quality sports imagery of big moments during football and rugby games to juxtapose the negative experiences I'll include in writing alongside them. As the book goes on I hope to show my journey through my words and imagery and will end it with my findings and they have affected my thoughts and feelings towrads people from my past and the ever evolving communities that surround these sports.
The next few pages will contain anecdotes from childhood and recent memory, paired with imagary I have shot to go alongside this proof of concept.
I grew up in Pembrokeshire, South West Wales, not Manchester or London, and yet still the grip of football in the early to mid 2000's felt just as strong as if we were in a major English city. But it wasn't a city I grew up in, not even a town, it was just a little Welsh village, one of a few that were in the catchment for the local primary school. My village was near the start of the school bus run, which meant a long journey back and fourth everyday in an environment practically governed by children. This became one of the places I grew to fear the further I got through primary school. Social hierarchies developed within my year as we all grew, and being the red head who didn't play in the local teams was pretty much a social death sentence.
I was singled out and picked on often up until around year 4, always by the kids who played for local teams, it wasn't nice but it wasn't the be all and end all. However their clique slowly formed and by year 5 everything changed. I'm no psychiatrist but my best guess is this is around when peoples brians started to develop a little more, whatever it was, something flipped inside the bigger lads in my year, girls mattered, the sports you did were important, and how you looked defined you.
Suddenly just some kids picking on me changed to vicious plans of humiliation and a good few beatings, it ended up negatively affecting my small friendship circle, and even my home life.
Unfortunatly for me I struggled deeply with attachment and so no matter what people did to me, if they showed just the smallest bit of humility, I'd fall for it every single time. This was identified by the leader of the group that targeted me, who also happened to move to my village.
The confusion I felt was horrific, in the evenings he'd come to knock on my door and act like a friend, but the second we were in a school environment he'd just change up and use anything he learnt from being around me, to then humiliate me infront of as many people he could. This really showed itself when word got out that I liked a girl in class, he then proceeded to pursue her, eventually ending up in a relationship with her. Given this all happened in primary school its something no one would usually bat an eye at, however given my previously mentioned attachment issues, this absolutley crushed me, resulting in me breaking down and locking myself away in a school shed with people stood outside teasing me.
Unfortunatley this escalated again, one day I was invited to sit up with the 'cool kids' at the back of the bus (the bully, his friends and the girl I liked) by someone in that group that I still at the point considered a long time friend, I remember getting up with a smile on my face, far too naive to realise what was coming. Once I got up to the back of the bus I was badly beaten by the main bully infront of his new girlfriend and the rest of his group and then thrown back to the front of the bus in pain and in tears, nobody stepped in.
This is only one of many stories I have from my upbringging that deeply shaped my bias towards these team sports. I'm hopeful these feelings are misplaced and I look forward to exploring this turbulent and confusing part of my mine through the thing I love most.
