The Abandoned Cup Final

Every couple of months I visit my mother's house to see if I can leverage a better deal for myself on the will. The triangular patch of grass at the front of the park opposite our house stirs memories of epic matches won and lost in fading light on the most geometrically impractical football pitch you could imagine (corner kicks at the apex were particularly eventful). The 'triangle' is empty save the worryingly mature looking trees that I clearly remember being planted as leafless saplings in protective cages.

We were perhaps the last generation who can honestly say ''we played football all day, every day''. We used the new trees as goalposts, and soon wore away a bald patch between the two most suitable young sycamores. To the Park-keeper's undoubted satisfaction this arid goalmouth has since made a recovery of growth surpassed only by the Lazarine follicles of Wayne Rooney's crown. It also betrays the fact that the kids are otherwise occupying their time.

Very often there was only two of us playing ball; the kid up the road was from a long line of Bohemians patrons, players, members, fanatics. One of us stood between the trees, the other took shots. This simple game developed a more competitive edge when a commentary from the shooting player was introduced. After blasting the ball in to the goal I would occasionally wheel away towards the non-existent adoring fans and in a nasal-drone owing much to Brian Moore's commentaries on ITV's 'The Match' enthusiastically rejoice “And Mark Ennis has surely put red and white ribbons on the FAI Cup.....it's heartbreak for Bohemians, glory for St Patricks...oh the magic of the cup!”

These forays in to fantasy were all too frequently overheard by roaming sorts not so interested in football. The requisite punishment for being imaginative was exacted with committed zeal. If they only knew the hooliganism opportunities that the 80's game offered I'm sure they would have been far more amenable to the sport.

The commentary would resume, flawlessly, once the beating had ended and the savages moved on to find kittens to crucify. “That unpleasantness seems to have abated, order has been restored, lets get back to the game”.

The 'after the fact' commentary was objected to by the goalkeeper. He noticed the pattern that every save he made was described as a Bohs shot, saved by the Pats keeper, and every goal I scored was credited as testimony to the majestic supremacy St Pats enjoyed over their city rivals. Complain as he did, it should be noted that his commentaries too were about as balanced as a North Korean 'State of the Nation' address.

These games we played until either the rain or the beatings got too heavy.

We'd then retreat indoors, to the fledgling world of computer-football. In the era of Pro-Evolution Soccer and FIFA 2012 games, it is difficult to comprehend how we got so much entertainment from primitive efforts as Kick-Off 2, Microprose Soccer and Emlyn Hughes International Soccer.

The physics of the games were not of this world – a player jumping to head the ball could cover about 20% of the pitch in his leap, centre-halves casually broke the world long jump record with each boinking clearance from their squarely pixelated and unfeasibly large heads. Players moved at extraordinary speed, and the computer controlled goalkeepers seemed to be programmed by an anarcho-absurdist art movement. The controlling joysticks owned no vocabulary beyond ‘point’ and ‘shoot’, yet invented nuance added infinite layers of meaning to all the clunkiness the 64kB of RAM could muster.

Again we provided our own commentary. High stakes Pats v Bohs games, multi-legged affairs depending on whether I was winning or not. These games with all their quirks of pseudo lunar gravity conditions were contested with a fervour that I genuinely think exceeded that of the real players week to week. Victories were gracelessly indulged, defeats an unbearable torment.

Noting that the ‘learning tool’ the shop spivs had sold them was being used for nothing other than video games by their kids, there would occasionally be a stuffy parental directive that the computer was turned off and we turn our attention to something more worthwhile.

Enter Subbuteo.

Marketed as table-top football, I expect there were few outside the Anglo-Irish gentry who possessed a table large enough to adequately host the vast cloth pitch. Consequently we played table-top football on the floor, on our knees, scurrying about the edges of the pitch to flick our players in to position.

Accidents were frequent.

Players met the most gruesome of injuries, full-backs were routinely sheared at the ankles when crushed by a careless knee leaning over the pitch. The snap was sickening. The severed plastic player would often still be stuck to the knee when the clumsy culprit rose; a tragic base with lonely boots filled now with utterly detached feet and mournful socks remained on the pitch. A once feared international footballer now a pathetic abandoned stump, an Ozymandias of the beautiful game.

Sometimes an urgent attacking initiative might result in a human player rising to his feet and leaping across the pitch to switch wings. I saw one West German midfielder horribly decapitated in consequence of such reckless enthusiasm. We lowered to half-mast the Crayola flag of the fatherland on a lollipop stick which we had blu-tacked to the top of the scoreboard for subsequent games in that tournament.

Medical techniques were rudimentary at best. Many a seemingly ruined stump of a man was blu-tacked back to his base and sent back to the pitch to man his post. It’s not like nowadays lad.

My friend had the genuine official Subbuteo Bohemian FC team. I had some budget team decked all in red which I, erm, ‘customized’ with Tip-ex to give a touch of whiteness to the sleeves and make a more realistic St Pats kit, who also doubled as Arsenal when the need arose. I must take this opportunity to apologize to John McDonnell and Eddie Gormley who suffered horrific eye-injuries on account of my unsurgeonlike hand in administering the Tip-ex to the red jerseys.

One rainy summer holiday afternoon, with RTE showing nothing but a caption for hours on end apologizing that rain had stopped play at Wimbledon, we ran an FAI Cup tournament from the quarter-final stages. We played out each of the ties between ourselves, broadly fiddling the thing to ensure that Bohs and Pats met in the final through what you might call collusive goalkeeping and officiating.

The final was to be deadly serious however.

We ironed the pitch in preparation. We lined the players up in a team group before the game, and took real photos with a borrowed camera which back in those days needed to be brought to a shopping centre to get developed. We had a tin foil wrapped egg cup for the winner. Honest to god, we sang Amhran Na bhFiann. We then lined up our formations and got the 2 x 10 minute halves underway.

The play was clam tight. Half time 0-0. Chances in the second half were few and far between again. My sweeper system was impenetrable. Dave Tilson had been in prodigious form in the quarter final and the semi, but I had his number, big sellotaped together lump that he was.

With time running out and extra time on its way I broke rapidly out of defence. The ball moved quickly down the left flank then bounced off a Bohs winger before touching the hand of my opponent which was resting on the pitch. Handball. Blatant. Free-kick.

He set his wall: four men. He flicked two defenders to get tighter to the two midfielders I had sent in to the box, but this was a shooting opportunity and we both knew it. He held the stem of his goalkeeper stick in one hand, and held the goal itself in its place with the other. Moving the goal frame from its spot was a penalty offence and could cost the cup. I was known to be more than a little ruthless in working these technical transgressions to my advantage, so things were pretty tense.

Pat Kelch was my free taker. He too was blu-tacked. Heavily blu-tacked in fact. One of the greatest properties of the adaptable adhesive was the extra ballast it gave to players. They could hit the ball extra hard with the added weight. For Kelch I used way more blu-tack than was needed. He was more adhesive than plastic if the truth be known but in keeping with the realities of the game, he hit the ball harder than any player I’ve ever seen.

I lined up the crucial free-’flick’ with immense concentration. I ok’d it with my opponent that I was now about to strike the free. He confirmed that he was ready. I loaded up my index finger, pulled it tight as a catapult, then snapped it out with all the force, intent and hurt I could summon from my being. 

The connection was sweet, Kelch propelled in to the air after impact with the ball and soared across the room. The ball burst through the wall sending the Gypo defenders spinning about the beautifully uncrinkled pitch like bowling pins. It tore past the helpless Bohs keeper, over the line, and smacked off the back stanchion of the goal frame before rolling back on to the 6 yard box.
  
“And Kelch has won it for St Pats!!!!....the very gods are held spellbound by what they have just witnessed here at Lansdowne Road....a strike worthy of a world cup final has won the FAI Cup....the hurt is over....the Saints are back in heaven”

But. There were protests.

“I saved it”

“You didn’t save it”

“I saved it, look at where the ball is”

“It hit the back of the goal and came back out. It’s a goal, I win, you lose, Pats win the cup.”

“No they don’t”

“Yeah they do”

“You’re a fucking spa....”

...and the conversation went badly downhill from there.

There may have been arm twisting. There might have been finger bending. It’s possible there were remarks about mothers. If we knew how to waterboard, we’d have done it. Some hitherto intact players were visited by a vengefulness so cruel and wanton that they were literally crushed by their feuding overlords and sent to the blu-tack ward. It wasn’t pretty. Match abandoned.

Decades on, this is the first time I have been able to address the hurt of the abandoned cup final. Morally St Pats were the winners, but in true League of Ireland tradition, our Subbuteo record books show only an asterisk and a lengthy explanation of injustices and the damage done.

I believe we may have stuck to European club tournaments thereafter .

Little Wingers

I didn’t have the armchair to myself, I seldom do. My kids have warped the timespace of inheritance protocol and have set up occupation in the sitting room of my house for many many months now. Clearance to watch a football match on my own television in my own sitting room requires me to call bilateral talks at lunchtime with the key delegates of the Cartoonocracy. They are a hardline sort. They didn’t like the idea one bit. They’ve seen this stuff before; the games are soooo long, and sometimes Daddy gets cranky.

Timing can be a great ally in negotiation. The leverage of my having the Easter Bunny’s ear proved decisive in thrashing out a Good Friday Agreement. Pats v Rovers would be a standing room only affair in the Armchair Saint’s sitting room. I would send the Bunny's ear back to him after the game.

You should know more about the kids. The boy is three. I expect he will eventually be barred from most of the football stadia on this island unless legislation softens about jumping on seats, or headbutting. He spends much of the game engaged in a construction / destruction cycle involving Lego towers and karate chops.

The girl is five. She is precociously logical and has no tolerance for throwaway answers. You’d best respond to her queries with the kind of sure-footed precision that someone staring down the business end of pistol held by a Samuel L. Jackson character ought to deliver. Much of the narrative of the past week has been set against the backdrop of her evolving affections towards the violin which a few months ago was oh so central to her well being.

The violin looks beautiful and its sound has the potential to match. But the journey from screeching cacophony to elegant melodic flourish is long. Each persistent correction from her teacher nudges her further towards a satisfying sonorous articulation, but it too dents her enthusiasm. It’s an education in effort and reward, and right now she wants to throw the towel in.

It’s a new situation for me too. I’d like her to keep playing, but I don’t want her to play to please me. It was her idea to play the violin, it can be her idea to stop. But I know she will regret it, and that will be no satisfaction to either of us on the day some years down the road when that feeling bites hard on her. Rorsy and Tiger may well stroll down the 18th fairway at Augusta this weekend in epic sporting battle - both products of ‘enthusiastic’ paternal coaching from a tender age in their (fathers’?) chosen discipline. I can’t help but think of all the projects taken on by super motivated coaching Dads whose efforts are now eternally resented by their offspring. Must be scores of wounded kittens for every Tiger.

So each occasion she has expressed her admiration or appreciation of anything this week, I have planted a not very subtle seed of self-motivation by highlighting how much hard work the person who made it has put in to achieve that level of ability. She rumbled it pretty quick of course: “I know you’re talking about my violin Daddy, but I don’t want to play it anymore.”

An hour till kick-off. I have been admitted to the sitting room, I bribed the border guards with a small plate of ginger nuts. Channel hopping before the game I strike pure gold as Jimi Hendrix Live at The Isle of Wight is being broadcast. Now this is a proper pre-match build up. 

Jimi’s guitar grinds, squeals, howls and roars in lysergic euphoria. This isn’t music; it defies notation. This apparently free-form fury is all under Jimi’s control, like a god juggling lightning bolts. He mouths each wail in perfect synchronisation. The illusion catches the attention of a ginger nut eating ex-musician.

Question 1: “Daddy, is that music happening now, somewhere else?” 
No, this was over 40 years ago.   

Question 2: “Daddy, is that man making those noises with his mouth?” 

Daddy laughs. No, he’s making them with his guitar and kind of singing them too, but you can only hear his guitar.

Question 3 & 4: “Why is he doing that? Is he wearing the same kind of clothes as us?” 
Well....his clothes are pretty different, aren’t they....very colourful. He’s doing it as part of his performance.....he was the best guitarist ever.

Question 5: “Did he put his fingers in all the right places on his guitar?” 
Daddy laughs. Yeah, but he was way beyond that kind of thing.

“Daddy, I know you’re thinking about my violin and you’re going to talk about practicing”. Daddy laughs. This time, I actually wasn’t going to mention it.

The channel switched, the teams on the pitch. The boy sparks to attention. “Which one you-are Daddy, which one you-are?”. It becomes apparent that the boy thinks he’s watching a video game and that I am controlling one of the teams. My God, what have we done?

I explain to the crew that while I have no influence over the outcome of the game, we are rooting for the red and white guys. The boy gets excited at the numbers on the jerseys. “Number 9 kicking it, number 6 kicking the ball now, then number 8.” His commentary is preferable to and frequently more accurate than the efforts of the state broadcaster. However this is not the time to slate RTE, my gratitude to them for televising this game is eternal.

Vindicating my decision to not yet expose them to chilly evenings of football without the barrier of a television screen, the children express their boredom as early as the second minute. “Daddy are the red team going to score soon?”. Well, probably not. There may not be any goals, and that would be a good thing. 

It is while processing this counter intuitive proposition that the girl’s thoughts are unceremoniously derailed by the blizzard of ginger nut crumbs which fill the air as Chris Forrester opens the scoring.

The boy was building his Lego tower, its base was precarious. As he stretched to put each additional story on to the wavering structure he grimaced in the fear that all which had been built might collapse. I didn’t need a mirror to know that Gary Twigg’s header off the bar was the catalyst for a similar expression closer to home.

We had a little chat about balance and how he needed to build the tower in the middle of the base. If you put the pieces in the wrong places you’ll have all manner of problems. At this point Killian Brennan illustrated my point with greater clarity than my words could ever muster, 2-0 Saints.

Much will be said about Pats third goal. I’ll not burden it further than to say it was so outrageous an effort that I must plead guilty to calling Forrester a ‘cabbage’ in the moments between the ball leaving his foot, tagging a cloud and landing in the goal.

In the aftermath of Ken ‘not-my-fault’ Oman pulling one back, my wife noted that Damian Richardson sounded very like my father; whence I praised the zeitgeist of her expeditious interjection and noted it as a great advert for the domestic game.

Pats scored a fourth, and a fifth, Brendan Clarke improvising a quarterback role with his booming deliveries tucked behind the haplessly turned fullbacks. You’d almost feel sorry for his contemporary at the other end of the field if he weren’t a Shamrock Rovers goalkeeper.

The match ends, it’s all very pleasing. It’s bedtime for the little people. The girl offers this pearl of wisdom as she leaves the room: “Daddy, don’t those boys in the green and white need to practice really hard if they want to be as good as the red team?”.