A football team the remote island outpost where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled is launching an escape bid.

The St Helena Football Association wants to play in the Inter-Games Football Tournmanent on Anglesey later this year.

Back in 2011, the team had hoped to compete in the Island Games, but couldn't crowdfund enough cash to make the voyage.

And bids to play in the competition have been thwarted because St Helena cannot get FIFA membership because it is not a member of the Confederation of African Football or recognised as an independent country by the United Nations.

So now, eight years on, they are to take part in the "unofficial" verions of the tournament, the Inter-Games.

While the Island Games takes place in Gibraltar, the Inter Games will be held on Anglesey in June.

But preparations have not been easy. The island, which lies in the Atlantic around 1,500 miles west of Namibia, has famously ferocious weather. Training for the competition was interrupted for a whole month because the island's only football pitch was waterlogged.

A total of 35 players from the island's nine clubs put themselves forward for the final squad of 20.

The St Helena Football Association will be bringing a back room team of locals, to make the team feel as at home as possible on the 4,780 mile journey, which will be a gruelling one that will probably involve an RAF flight from Ascension Island.

Napoleon on St Helena

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoloeon Bonaparte was sent to St Helena by the British government after his troops' defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Bonaparte had returned to France to try to reclaim power after being exiled to Elba in the Mediterranean.

But his attempt to wrest control back from the royalists - whom the British were supportive of - was unsuccessful, and troops loyal to Bonaparte were beaten by the Duke of Wellington and his forces at the 1815 battle in the Belgian town.

Once back in Paris, he received a hostile reception from crowds that had initially hailed his arrival back on the mainland from Elba. He abdicated his imperial throne in favour of his son, and eventually fled the advancing Prussian troops in the hope of sailing to America.

With his route out of France blocked by blockading British ships, he sought refuge on the British HMS Bellleraphon.

He was then exiled to St Helena. He despised the island, and fell into a deep depression, eventually dying in 1821.

It has been theorised his death may have been down to arsenic poisoning from the wallpaper at Longwood House, where he lived out his miserable days on the island.

Ten teams will be competing in the men’s Inter-Games tournament, including Anglesey, St Helena, Norwegian island of Hiltra, Shetland, Orkney, the Isle of Man, the Isle of Wight, Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney.

The St Helena team have set a target of raising £20,000 for their crowdfunding attempt, and an overall target of £80,000 to cover the cost of sending the team and officials, and with the remainder to go into supporting grassroots football on the island. They are currently half-way into the fundraising drive.

If successful, the Anglesey tournament will be the first ever international outing of the island's football team.

St Helena FA chairman Nick Stevens said: "We are aiming to shock a few people. I am happy with the coaching team we have here, and we’ve got the boys playing a good standard of football. We have already shocked the local footballers as to how much we have improved the standard of the squad in terms of fitness and [the standard of their] football.”