ISLANDS' TIME

The Marshall Islands recently became the last country on Earth to play an international game - Matthew Eide of the Far Away Football blog was there

- 

Boarding my flight heading for Northwest Arkansas, I looked around. Joining me on the journey were college kids, families and business people, most with no idea of the history that was about to be made at their destination.

The Marshall Islands is a nation of atolls and islands situated in the Pacific Ocean, between the Philippines and Hawaii, just west of the International Date Line. It had also previously been the only sovereign country on Earth without a football federation or national team. But now they were preparing for their first ever international match - in the small Arkansas city of Springdale, more than 6,000 miles from home.

“Oh yeah, we have a lot of Marshallese here,” my Uber driver told me after we land. He wasn’t exaggerating - the total population of the Marshall Islands is only around 40,000, but that corner of Arkansas is home to more than 15,000 people of Marshallese descent.