Team Name: Team Logo & Mascot: Home Stadium Kasaoka Stadium Seats 10,000

		Momo-suke & Komomo The Okayama area is famed as the supposed home of the storybook character "Momotaro". Okayama City even named its main sports stadium "Momotaro Stadium. Thus, there should be no reason to question the reasons for Mizushima's choice of mascot. Hopefully by the time the team reaches the J2 someone will have given this kid an image makeover. For the time being, though, Momo-suke is a suitable mascot for a still-amateurish team.

The history of this club extends back to 1946, when in the immediate aftermath of World War II, football fans in a decimated Okayama prefecture decided to form a club at the Mitsubishi auto factory, as a focus for their interest and as a much-needed opportunity for recreation. In 1965, Mitsubishi Mizushima was among the founding members of the Okayama Prefectural League Division 1, although it was not until 1980 that the team was able to participate at the Regional level, in the Chugoku League.

The club survived only three years at the higher level before being relegated back to the Prefectural League, but in a second bid for advancement, in 1991, the team returned to the Chugoku Regional league in a big way, and were crowned champions for the first time the following year. The club then entered the most successful phase in its history, winning the title again in 1999 and then claiming the championship for three years running in 2002, 03 and 04.

2004 ended with Mizushima taking part in the Nationwide Regional League Championship Tournament, where narrow wins over Shizuoka FC and AS Laranja Kyoto earned them a place in the final group stage. Once there, the boys in red drew with the Kanto League's Luminoso Sayama before beating Ryutsu Keizai University and Kyushu champions Honda Lock to make it through to the JFL.

When they looked back on the 2005 season, their first in the JFL, Mitsubishi Mizushima collectively and honestly described it as having been "an ordeal". With two wins and two draws in thirty matches, the Okayama prefecture-based club ended the season with just eight points. Indeed, on two separate occasions during the campaign they endured excruciating eleven-game losing streaks. Not surprisingly, given their inability to cope with the level of competition, the team finished dead last in the JFL table.

Early in 2005, the club adopted an organisational structure that makes them legally independent of Mitsubishi - a pre-requisite of J-League membership, to which they evidently aspire. This would certainly be a boost for football in a part of the country that has only one other team of any note -- Sanfrecce Hiroshima. But Mizushima will need to work hard to develop the necessary infrastructure, both on and off the pitch.

One step in the right direction involved the creation of a supporters' organisation named "the Red Adamant Club" (a take-off on the "Red Diamonds" in Urawa . . ."adamant" is another word for diamond). The allusion appears to be that, as part of the Mitsubishi group, Mizushima are a sister club to the J1 giants. This may have created a more powerful force than the company expected, however, as fans have begun calling the team "Mizushima Red Adamant", in an echo of the grassroots campaign that wrenched Tokushima Vortis away from parent company Otsuka Pharmaceutical. The local fans are already agitating for more independence from Mitsubishi Motors, as well as for a more aggressive campaign to earn J.League membership. It seems quite likely that the team will eventually be compelled to change their name to "Mizushima Red Adamant". As folks in Okayama are discovering, once a company lets "its" team develop a solid local following, they soon discover who holds the balance of power in the world of Japanese football. (Surprise! -- it isnt the corporations!)