Lava Cup 2025
- danslawson
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
The International Lava Cup is a tournament for over 40's which is played annually in Scotland with teams travelling from all over the world for the prestigious event.
The Lava Cup Tournament is a seven-a-side football tournament which raises money for local charities, and this year’s event will be held at Falkirk Football Club on Saturday, May 24th.
This year's tournament is the biggest and most ambitious so far, with 20 teams from 9 nations taking part!
The grassroots tournament, which was formed by Marc Boal, started out with a pilot event in 2022 at Cormack Park in Aberdeen and has gone from strength to strength to become an annual invitational event!
Marc Boal, the Lava Cup Organiser explains what the tournament is about:
“Our Senior Grassroots Annual Event has four main principles that are embedded in the foundations of the Lava Cup ethos, which is paramount. The tournament is organised in conjunction with the Icelandic touring side Throttur Reykjavik Old Boys, who have been coming to Scotland since 2018. The Lava Cup is playing a crucial role in expanding players’ horizons and breaking any isolation people find themselves in. Playing international football is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many of us; players aged 40 to 75 are now doing this! The new friendships, bonding, and well-being it creates are providing a pathway to actively change the way people think and, more importantly, change lives.
The Lava Cup's four core principles are:
Helping to improve the mental and physical health of players.
Raising money for local charities.
Networking by giving teams the opportunity to meet others at the tournament and set up future friendly matches.
Inviting at least two teams from remote areas with no access to senior football and giving them a chance to play on the big stage at the Lava Cup.
The name of the tournament replicates the trophy which is actually made of lava picked from the most recent eruption from an Icelandic volcano!
The lava for this year’s trophy was collected from the Fagradalsfjall volcanic system in the Reykjanes region.
The trophy for 2025 is the heaviest ever, weighing in at 2.3kg, this is due to molten lava containing a mix of elements such as iron, magnesium, silicon and others such as aluminium.
Italian marble sits on the polished hardwood plinth base, there is also ice blue cobalt glass (which represents the Icelandic glaciers) that are encrusted into the main lava tower to give the trophy a distinctive look!
Last year’s competition saw over £3000 split between Strathcarron Hospice and Falkirk's Mental Health Association.
This year's tournament is raising money to support two wonderful local charities that do amazing work for our men and their families:
Maggie's Forth Valley, a local cancer support charity, and Andy's Man Club, a men's suicide prevention charity, tackling the stigma surrounding men's mental health through the power of conversation.
To donate please click the link below.
Dougie McCallum and Iain Mitchell from the host team, Falkirk FFiT T8, have helped Marc immensely to organise the tournament and will be welcoming old friends and new ones from countries such as Iceland, USA, Northern Ireland, England, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Poland and of course Scotland.
The tournament, which aims to bring men from across the world together to enjoy football in a friendly but competitive manner, begins at 10:00am with the opening ceremony followed by the matches played on Falkirk's pitch that will be divided into 4 smaller pitches that kick off at 10:30am and will finish around 5pm.
There is no admission fee for those wishing to attend and there will be volunteers with charity buckets around the stadium if anyone wishes to donate to the chosen charities.
There will also be a limited edition of the 72-page Lava Cup programme (£5) Lava souvenir mug (£6.50) Lava Cup notebook (£4.50), all of which will be available to purchase on the day at the stadium, (first come, first served) with all proceeds going directly to the chosen charities.
There is also an excellent free digital programme that you can find below by clicking the link.
We wish Marc and everyone involved on this fantastic day all the best, and may the best team win, but in all honesty, everyone taking part is a winner!
To find out more and to keep up to date with The Lava Cup check out their dedicated Facebook page.
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