Montserrat national football team competition in the next stage, losing 0–20 on aggregate over two legs against Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Soon afterwards, the Soufriere Hills volcano became active and the eruptions destroyed Plymouth, the capital of Montserrat, severely disrupting all football on the island. Despite the lack of football action, the MFA became a full FIFA member in 1996. However, it was a further three years until the Montserrat team played another international fixture. This was mostly because many of the island's footballers had emigrated away from the area, many of them to England. After a four-year hiatus, the team entered the
Barren Island (Andaman Islands) National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) spotted the volcano erupting on 23 January 2017. Abhay Mudholkar, the head of the team, said, "The volcano is erupting in small episodes of about five to ten minutes. During the day, only ash clouds were observed. However, after sundown, red lava fountains were spewing from the crater into the atmosphere and hot lava flowed streaming down its slopes." Based on Ar-Ar dating of samples from Barren Island it is now established that the oldest subaerial lava flows of the volcano are 1.6 million years old and the volcano is located on an oceanic crust