Their one pitch is in a PRISON, 94.5 per cent of adults are overweight and it takes three days to get there… but ex-Reading and Stoke star Dave Kitson is relishing his new job as boss of Pacific island Nauru’s football team!

“Call me back when you’re sober,” was Dave Kitson’s immediate response when a good friend pitched this crazy idea.

The challenge was to take charge of a small Micronesian island, Nauru, form a football team and lead them to their first ever international match.

The island has just 13,000 inhabitants, one football field and an obesity crisis unmatched by any other country in the world.

But now, in former Premier League star Kitson, they have their first-ever manager, running operations from his home in Berkshire.

No, this isn’t a quirky Football Manager save, this is real life. “It’s a bit weird,” Kitson says with a hint of understatement.

The small Pacific island has a population of just 13,000 and is suffering from a serious obesity crisis

Where Nauru is located in relation to Australia, the island is part of Micronesia

‘I have a fascination for places off the beaten track, I always have. When I was younger, I wanted to be a travel writer.

‘I wanted to escape from the small town where I lived and see the world, which I did through football. This suits me perfectly, because I love football and traveling more than anything in the world.

‘I’ve always been a hound on finding obscure articles about these places.

‘One of those places was North Korea – God knows what they would think of me – and then I discovered travel writer Gareth Johnson, who kept showing up in these off-grid places.

‘He called me about a year ago and told me he was in Tuvalu and going to Nauru.

“He said, ‘I want to start a football team and put them in a tournament. If I could pull this off, would you come in and lead the team?”

“I said, ‘Yeah, okay buddy, whatever… call me back when you’re sober!’.”

Johnson, who once led a crowdfunding project to buy an island in the Caribbean and create a micronation, is now CEO of the Nauru Football Federation, as well as a travel company that organizes pub crawls around the island’s four bars and a carvery.

The former Reading striker takes charge of a team formed last year that has yet to play a game

Kitson also played for Stoke in the Premier League, playing in all of England’s top four divisions

He fired Reading for promotion in 2005/06 after a number of productive campaigns up front

But putting together a football team, especially on an island like this, is much easier said than done.

Part of the inspiration came from the American Samoa trip, which was made into a film starring Michael Fassbender called Next Goal Wins, directed by Maori Taika Waititi.

The film and the 2013 documentary of the same name chart American Samoa’s rise from a 31–0 loss to Australia in 2001, their biggest ever international defeat, to their rise in the FIFA World Rankings (they peaked at 164 from around 210 countries).

“Nauru is known for phosphate mining,” explains travel guru Kitson (44), who had a good career at Reading, Stoke and Portsmouth, among others.

‘They made billions from it, but it left scars all over the island. The way the wealth was distributed left something to be desired.

‘And so people understandably stopped working and the island began to rely more on the import of unhealthy food, leading to an obesity crisis.’

A 2007 World Health Organization survey found that 94.5 percent of Nauru residents were overweight.

“That’s one of the main reasons to provide help,” Kitson adds. ‘Can we get the next generation to play ball and get fit and healthy?

The sun rises between the rocky outcrops on Anabare Beach, Nauru Island, South Pacific

A photo of Buada Lagoon on Nauru, surrounded by tropical vegetation

“Our job is not to try to win, or to put the nation on the map, it’s bigger than that and more than just putting a team together.”

Kitson’s old friend Charlie Pomroy will help with coaching. Pomroy previously worked as a football director at Stevenage, but recently had a job at Cambodian side Angkor City, where his role was a bit of a mix between owner, physio, chef, kitman, coach and office manager.

Compatriot Lee Bowyer has taken on a similar challenge at Montserrat. Kitson and Co have emphasized that it is not a quick project and that a good place to start is finding a place to play.

As it stands now, there is one official field on the island, but there is a big catch: it is located in a prison.

“The only field is in an immigration detention center used by Australia,” Kitson said.

‘That is the only flat field anyway, the extraction of the phosphate has left sharp scars everywhere. It’s the only campsite on the island that would be anything like what we here in Britain would call a campsite!

‘There are other places to play, but let’s say they are more agricultural. We’ve worked with two companies that specialize in finding people with links or connections to Nauru – those who may have emigrated to Australia. That’s fine, but how can we finance them to fly in and out?

One of Nauru’s tropical beaches, but the idyllic island has weathered its problems

A satellite image of Nauru shows how small it is, with only one usable football field on the island

‘But this is about people on the island. We don’t want a white salvation project here that comes into their country and tells them how to do things.

“It’s really important that this whole thing is run, owned and operated by the people of Nauru, we’re just guests helping where we can.”

It’s similar to the mantra of Reading’s Dave Kitson Academy, ‘anyone, anywhere, at any level’, where he coaches children in the region and is oversubscribed despite only setting it up last year.

He coached a Reading school to their first national final victory in their 378-year history.

He also led a player pathway project with agency group Midas, which represented Liverpool star Curtis Jones. So taking on challenges is not a foreign concept to Kitson, but this one is bigger than anything.

The first hurdle is his upcoming three-day trip to Nauru.