From growing up in the Highlands to living every boy’s dream, and playing professional football around the world, Calum Ferguson has achieved a lot in his career. But, at 28 years of age, he has turned his passion for football and languages into a new project that aims to keep the Gaelic language and culture alive within current and future generations.
FC Sonas is a Scottish charitable organisation co-founded by Ferguson and a friend of his Donnie Forbes. It combines bilingualism and football into a beautiful partnership. Sonas translates loosely into English as prosperity or ultimate joy. The positive imagery is intended, and their motto is simple. Play football, speak Gaelic.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a blessing in disguise for the Canadian Scotsman. At the time, he was playing football in New Zealand at Canterbury United. Ferguson told Brig about making his big decision as the league shut down: “The club basically said you have a decision to make here, so I ended up coming back to Scotland for lockdown and myself and a good friend of mine, Donnie Forbes, who in turn is a professional in the game within football operations. The two of us came to this standstill where I wasn’t playing. He wasn’t coaching.
“And we just decided, right, let’s run with it. We’ve got the time. Let’s start this. Let’s launch it and see where it takes us.”
Growing up in the highlands, and experiencing other cultures
Gaelic has always been a point of curiosity for Calum. He grew up in the Highlands with his parents, both fluent Gaelic speakers. He even went to nursery with Scottish international footballer Ryan Christie, a friendship that has continued to this day. He soon entered the world of professional football at Inverness Caledonian Thistle. There, he found a world where Gaelic had no place.
It was not until he started experiencing other cultures through his involvement with the Canadian youth national teams, then playing professionally in Canada and New Zealand, that his curiosity and passion for Gaelic began to blossom again.
He enthusiastically mentions his experience of the Māori culture in New Zealand, as playing a part in planting the seed to FC Sonas: “Canterbury United very much based our team culture off the all-black values, so everyone would pick the equipment up off the bus, not just the staff. The reason being that it comes from the Māori values that no man is bigger than anyone else and our football club was fully connected to these Māori costumes.
“It got me thinking a lot about what I want to do in my personal life and how I want to use football as a force for good, to help our own community here in Scotland to embrace sports as an effective tool to change the narrative around Gaelic language and culture.”
He fears the football industry has also drifted from its origins in community values and has veered more toward business interests. The collective community roots are what Ferguson is trying to revive with FC Sonas.
He said: “A football team is just a community of people, and the players obviously get the majority of the focus and the majority of the attention, but football’s roots are in the community and community involvement, and what I feel the Gaelic culture really needs within Scotland is a pride in community identity and the consequent structure that brings people together.”
Nowadays he still plays football with Clachnacuddin FC in the Highland League, but FC Sonas is very much his focus.
He has high hopes for the project’s future. He eventually hopes to create a Gaelic-speaking national team that can represent the culture in international CONIFA competitions. But Sonas does not mean just Gaelic and football. He believes this model can be translated to other minority cultures, and other sports as well.
To learn more about FC Sonas, visit their website here.
Featured Image credit: FC Sonas website