Every team likes to turn their home ground into a fortress, but few have accomplished it quite so literally as the champions of the Livingston and District Sunday League. They are HM Prison Shotts FC, and their park comes equipped with watch towers, cameras, razor wire and sheer walls that reach high into the Lanarkshire sky.

The team’s manager, Alex Hendry, said: “We have had an advantage because we play all our games at home, for obvious reasons. But even so, we’ve done well. The boys have won 12 and drawn one, and we won the league handily.” Sadly, the lags were robbed of the chance to go for the Double when they were booted out of the cup. The committee felt it would be too much of a headstart to play every round, including the final, inside the jail.

“That was a pity, because visiting teams enjoy coming here,” Hendry, 57, who is a physical exercise instructor at Shotts, said. “It is a different experience for them.” It certainly provides a shock for your averagely disorganised pub team. They must arrive at the gates to the minute, alcohol and mobile phones are forbidden and they are subject to searches, in case anyone tries to smuggle contraband inside along with the shinpads, oranges and Fiery Jack.

“Football is a great outlet for them,” Hendry, who used to play at the back for junior sides including Linlithgow Rose and Bathgate Thistle, said. His pedigree as a nononsense stopper explains why he is so strict about criminal defending from the Shotts back-four.

“They keep themselves extremely fit, and they play fair as well. We have only had eight bookings all season, which for a Sunday League team is excellent,” Hendry, who has run the team for 20 years, said.

“I am strict about their conduct, as I would be with any team I managed,” he said. “If anyone abused an opponent, they would never play again. For lesser offences they’d miss the next game. But it’s rare, the game means too much to them, and they want to be involved.”

Hendry treats his players exactly as he would any other footballers. “I don’t know what they’ve done, and I don’t want to know,” he said. “Shotts is a high-security jail, and I would guess that seven or eight of the team are lifers. Inside the walls they are prisoners. But on the park they are footballers.”

Hendry is especially proud of the pitch, which is provided thanks to the governor and the prison’s gardening officer.

“It’s as good a park as you will find,” Hendry said. “That piece of grass means a lot to the guys, and they want to play as often as they can. They wouldn’t mind a bit of fixture congestion.”