Honey, they shrunk the teams

TWICE IN recent weeks I have found myself recalling the ancient art of Subbuteo.

The first occasion was at Giants Stadium in New Jersey where the dizzying altitude of the press box served to miniaturise the game between the Republic of Ireland and Ecuador, with the sound-proofing effect of glass only adding to the slightly surreal sensation of watching a live match unfold in the comfort of your own living room.

All that was missing to complete a familiar scene from childhood was the sound of the Ma calling that my dinner was poured out, though at least Steve Staunton’s tiny men were never in danger of being stood on if I was suddenly required to leave the scene.

Then there was the sight of Cork City’s Liam Kearney having his picture taken in Temple Bar. Now, I’m not saying that Liam is small — well, okay, I am — but, with his frame pressed into a narrow alcove, there was something about the statuesque pose he was asked to strike which put me in mind of a Subbuteo figurine.

The irony of this observation was that Kearney was actually engaged in helping to promote ‘FIFA 08’, the next installment of the EA Sports video game which, for the first time ever, will feature all twelve teams from the eircom League Premier Division.

According to its makers, ‘FIFA 08’ will offer “a football experience that matches the complexity, finesse and beauty of the real-world game, challenging players to master the skills required to play like a pro footballer.”

As a very old man and a technophobe to boot, I’ll have to take their word for it, but I do have to ask: does this sound like something about which the blessed Undertones might write a song?

I refer, of course, to the sublime ‘My Perfect Cousin’, in which the object of Feargal Sharkey’s envy and wrath “flicked to kick”, the suggestion being that the wee rascal used his thumb as a spring to generate added force, a foul practice often resulting in hotly disputed goals which, if we’d only been a bit wittier at the time, we could have attributed to ‘The Finger Of God’.

Subbuteo was also the inspiration for the legendary Half Man Half Biscuit B-side, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit’, this being a real insider’s reference to the fact that while hundreds of team strips were replicated in the table football game, a Dukla Prague away kit was never produced.

While all concerned with the eircom League are understandably delighted with the ‘FIFA 08’ initiative, I feel it is my duty to inform them that Subbuteo got there first too. Way back in my table football infancy I even had a little yellow and blue Drumcondra side, albeit that their presence in the house was mainly to provide some domestic cannon fodder for my all-conquering Shamrock Rovers, when the mighty Hoops weren’t busy inflicting shock defeats on Man Utd and Everton — the standard red and blue sides which came with the basic game — as well as all the teams from the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico. (How vividly I recall the thrill of opening a fresh team box to discover that the makers had thoughtfully differentiated Israel from Leeds United by adding a little blue blob to the all-white strip to signify the Israeli national crest).

As well as developing your finger power, Subbuteo also encouraged creative customisation — by careful application of some black marker to the head, for example, I was able to turn one anonymous little Rovers man into an instantly recognisable Mick Leech, he of the flowing dark locks and memorable strike rate.

More problematic were running repairs. Although nominally a table football game, the expansive pitch size meant that most of the time Subbuteo was actually played on the floor, and the sickening crunch of a player being trampled underfoot was a familiar sound for the devotee.

Putting your man back together was no easy matter either. By the end of my playing days, I hardly had a single team which didn’t contain at least one member who wasn’t permanently disfigured by a crude coating of glue, something which not only gave the poor fellow’s legs a horrible Elephant Man-type appearance but which also unbalanced him to the extent that any attempt to flick him forward would see him career halfway ‘round the pitch and back again like a boomerang.

Somehow this didn’t matter. Just as it didn’t matter that the floodlights only worked half the time. Or that the nets constantly came apart. Or even that the ball itself was twice as big as the players. There was, I recall, a smaller ball available but it flew about at such ridiculous speeds that the game turned into something akin to Subbuteo hurling. (Interestingly, the makers never did try to replicate our native code, presumably on the basis that the players would all have been in bits and pieces by the time they took the field of play, ho, ho).

No, all that mattered was the flicking, the spinning, the joy of man-against-ball contact and the anticipatory thrill of getting inside the shooting line before lining up a belter to the back of the net. That and the roar of the crowd. Which, in my own case, I generated by what I can only now describe as a kind of deep heavy breathing sound but which, to my fragile, eggshell mind back then, uncannily approximated the roar of the Kop, the Stretford End or a full house at Milltown.

This was fine in the privacy of my own front room, sorry, home ground, but sadly a source of terminal embarrassment on the first occasion I played away. That the fixture was taking place in one of the posh houses on the main road perhaps only added to my pre-match nerves but, lost as I was in the opening end-to-end exchanges, I was entirely unaware that I was breathing out my “crowd noise” sound at an increasing volume until my opponent suddenly looked up and said with an air of concern: “Liam, do you have asthma?”

That pretty much brought an end to my table football days but I’m glad to see that, even in the face of computer wizardry, the grand little game continues to thrive. There are World Cups and European Championships for national teams, a Europa Cup for club sides and even an American Subbuteo Association, which will doubtless give Posh Spice another good reason not to go out on the town.

And now I learn that Preston in Lancashire is planning a 22-feet tall statue of a Subbuteo referee whose outstretched arm will point the way to the National Football Museum.

According to its designers, the work would double as “a striking piece of public art to catch the eye of motorists coming off the M6 motorway.”

Indeed. We’ve had The Angel Of The North. So why not the Devil?