The Nigels Who Followed England All the Way to America
There are friendships measured in years, and then there are friendships measured in decades in shared apprenticeships, shared promotions, shared retirements, and now, in a shared pilgrimage halfway across the world.
For Nigel and Nigel, it’s the latter.
Born six weeks apart in 1962, on opposite sides of the same city, neither could have known that a shared first name would one day become the least remarkable thing about their friendship.
That story starts in September 1978, in the clatter and grind of Devonport Dockyard, where two teenage apprentices began on the very same day.
They wouldn’t become close for another decade. It wasn’t until the late 1980s, while working side by side on warships in the yard, that something more than coincidence took hold.
What followed was a working life lived almost in parallel. Promotions came at similar stages. Careers ran on similar tracks. And when retirement finally arrived, it didn’t slow either of them down if anything, it set them loose.
These days, the two Nigels are fixtures at Home Park, season ticket holders who rarely miss a Saturday and rarer still miss a road trip when the Pilgrims play away.
But their appetite for football has always reached beyond Argyle. Over the years they’ve followed England home and abroad, stitching together a personal atlas of football pilgrimages. UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany was one memorable chapter.
This summer, that atlas gained its most ambitious entry yet: the United States and the FIFA World Cup.
Two lads from Plymouth, following the Three Lions across America for as long as England’s run lasts.
And while they were there, they did something that turned a football trip into something closer to a homecoming.
They went looking for Plymouth, the other one.
Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the Mayflower Pilgrims came ashore in 1620, is the town across the Atlantic that shares its name with the city they have always called home. During their visit, they explored the historic town and captured memories in a place that provided a fitting backdrop to their remarkable friendship.
It’s a small moment in the grand scheme of a World Cup.
But it’s the kind of moment that makes a friendship like theirs worth writing about, because it isn’t really about football at all.
It’s about two men who have spent almost fifty years showing up for each other: in the dockyard, in the stands, on the road, and now, fittingly, in a town three thousand miles from home that shares the name of the city they have always called home.
Back in Plymouth, Devon, they’ll no doubt be found exactly where they always are when the football’s done: in a local pub, pints in hand, putting the world to rights.
From apprentices to lifelong friends.
From Devonport to Germany to Massachusetts.
Nearly fifty years on, Nigel and Nigel are still walking the same road together and, by the look of it, they’re in no hurry to stop.
This evening we have the story of the Bishop brothers. The people behind the flags.
📸 Pictures by Nigel & Nigel /Plymouth Post
Photographs © Wayne Perry / Plymouth Post
