FC Gvirabi

Our story

From the lamp-room tally board to the Ropeway Ground: ninety-five years of a miners’ club.

1931

the year the club was founded

Ropeway Ground

Stadium

2026/27

Season

The tally board

In 1931 the miners of the Gvirabi manganese works founded a football club in the gap between two shifts. Every miner in those days hung a numbered brass check on the board in the lamp room when he went underground and took it down when he came back up. If a check was still hanging at nightfall, the whole shift went looking. The club adopted the board as its emblem, and the numbers on our shirts are still the numbers of those brass checks.

The pithead and the plateau

The first ground was a levelled patch of slag beside the pithead, with the goals made from pit props. Matches were played on Sunday mornings, and the winners were paid in tea. In 1954 the ropeway opened across the gorge and the club moved up to a flat piece of the plateau, which is where the Ropeway Ground stands today.

The cable car crossing the gorge

When the shift ended you took your brass check off the board. If yours was still hanging at night, they came looking for you. A club is the same: nobody gets left on the board.

— Shalva Mebonia, former miner and club captain, 1972–1980

The mine closes, the club stays

The works shut in 1998 and most of the town left with the last trucks. The club did not. Former miners kept the pitch cut, the cable car kept running and the Sunday matches carried on. In 2009 the academy opened in the old lamp room, and a new generation of Gvirabi children learned to play where their grandfathers once collected their lamps.

Supporters on the plateau

Timeline

  1. 1931 — Miners of the Gvirabi manganese works found the club; first ground beside the pithead.
  2. 1954 — The ropeway opens and the club moves to the plateau.
  3. 1977 — First regional title; the team brings the cup home by cable car.
  4. 1998 — The mine closes. The club stays.
  5. 2009 — The academy opens in the old lamp room.
  6. 2026 — The Lamps start the 2026/27 Imereti Hills League season.

What we stand on

  • The club belongs to the town and its members, not to any single owner.
  • Every child in the Gvirabi gorge can train with the academy.
  • Each August we play the miners’ memorial match and read out the names on the board.

Photos