2023/24 · Home

A Select made in Portugal with all of Graciosa on it: the Santa Cruz municipality and the Guadalupe coat of arms on the sleeves, the Sabores supermarkets and Auto Varela's rent a car in a very islander orange, and one grown up detail, the green hoops lined with a watermark pattern of tiny lions, another golden lion signing the neck below the SCG. It served the 2023/24 season in the Graciosa island competitions, the antechamber of the club's presence in the 2024/25 Azores Football Championship, and it carries one of the loveliest birth certificates in this archive: this is the club born in 1955 inside the hall of the town's philharmonic band, football and music sharing a roof from day one.

Here at Hoopster this lion arrives from the white island with the band playing: proof that there is no piece of Portugal, however small and surrounded by sea, where the hoops have not washed ashore.