Olympic Subbuteo

Olympic Subbuteo by Neil McCall

When I won the UK Subbuteo Championships my mum cried, just as she had
cried when she thought I was getting interested in girls, cried harder
when she feared that I was more interested in men, and bawled her eyes
out when she realised that the only men I was interested in were made
of plastic and came in identikit packs of ten with a goalie on a stick.
But when I told her that this meant that I would be representing Great
Britain at the 2004 Olympics alongside Matthew Pinsent and Denise Lewis
she dabbed her eyes, hugged me and told me:

"Your dad would have been so proud if he could see you now!"

I had trained and trained and trained; shortly before leaving for
Greece I popped down to the beauty salon where Mum goes, and asked them
to manicure my right forefinger in preparation - a rough nail could see
me disqualified for damaging the pitch - only to be told that I
couldn't have just ?2 worth of manicure, so I'd splashed out ?20 for
the lot to be done; I felt very girly, but there it was.

Athens was hot and steamy; we shared a practice hall with the ping-pong
people, and table tennis balls were forever popping on to our pitch and
disturbing our concentration, but we had to accept this as a
consequence of being a minor sport. Soon the first round matches were
about to begin, and I was matched against a young lad from Mali in the
second qualifier; lots of oriental ping pong competitors whom we'd got
to know came over to watch.

I had never heard of Subbuteo catching on in Mali, and maybe this lad
had just picked up a set from somewhere, because he didn't know most of
the rules and was constantly being penalised for foul flicks by the
referee. After ten of the twenty minutes allotted for the first half I
was already three goals up, and my opponent hadn't yet realised that
placing his men in pretty geometric patterns didn't prevent me from
tip-tapping straight down the line to his goal. Pity overcame me, and I
sent my centre-back on a long, looping glide to obtain the ball on the
first occasion it came into my half; I misjudged it badly and sent him
crashing into my opponent's forward.

"Penalty!" declared the referee.

The lad from Mali set up his forward and stared earnestly at the
left-hand corner of my net; he flicked, I waggled my goalie in the
opposite direction and the ball went in.
3-1; the lad jumped for joy and kissed the little plastic hero before
setting him back amongst his fellows for the restart. I scored another
twice, and missed a couple of sitters before a suicidal back-pass
touched the base of one of his players and, before I could block or
grab my goalie, he had scored again. Final score; 5-2: the young lad
had not been disgraced and had an epic tale to tell his family. I shook
his hand, which a professional player would normally never do. This is
because an opponent may have perfected the Death Shake, using a quick
turn of the wrist to dislocate the flicking finger, but the boy from
Mali was as amateurish as they come.

Next day I was playing Iran in the second round and received a shock
when a woman in a black burqa with a familiar green box under her arm
strode into the room. I'd seen the Iranian Olympic squad at the opening
ceremony, of course; a mere three women hemmed in by twenty or thirty
male athletes. The other women went in for sports where they could
preserve their modesty alongside sending a clear message to would-be
aggressors i.e. rifle shooting and archery, but I hadn't expected a
female Subbuteo player. There was no reason why not, as the sport had
become integrated several years previously, the chauvinists' objection
that women couldn't compete on a level playing table on account of
their inferior finger muscles being countered by the fact that long,
tapering, feminine digits are ideal for movements of subtlety and
guile. I'd never played at this level against a woman before, and
wondered how I'd cope. I soon found out.

We'd only been playing for three minutes when the Iranian suddenly
looked me straight in the eye. The eyes were the only visible part of
her, and I found myself drawn into those mysterious, dark, long-lashed
orbs. I noted the mascara, the eye shadow, and wondered whether or not
the rest of her was beautiful when ?

"Goal!" cried the referee.

I awoke from my reverie; the woman had held my gaze whilst quietly
dribbling down my left flank, and had tapped the ball into the net,
flicking her man with an elegantly contoured nail; I wasn't even
holding my goalie at the time! This woman was no mug, she'd already
beaten the Polish contestant in the first round. I had to somehow fight
a rearguard action, and I'm afraid I had to use her weakness to do so.
All her players had been painted in a black tracksuit, doubtless on the
instruction of some Ayatollah in order to stop her mind from dwelling
on their naked pink legs during practice, so as soon as I got the ball
in her half of the pitch I made tiny passes between my front three
players, my hand hovering constantly. As she made constant adjusting
blocking flicks, I let my hand brush hers and she jumped back as if
stung. On the next flick she failed to block and I hammered the ball
into her net.

In the second half she played a long ball down into my corner, then
flicked her man down to my end of the table. Normally I'd have played
my man behind it, but in this case I simply adjusted my defence. This
meant it was her shot again, so she played for position on my goal
line. Again I declined to play the ball. To make her next shot she had
to virtually stand alongside of me, a strange Westerner. She nervously
muffed the shot and played it against my player, so I stepped round the
other side of the table and launched a rapid counter-attack before she
could get back to defend her goal. 2-1 to me! From the restart I set
all my players out in the form of a cross; I assumed she was a Muslim
and that using christian symbolism on the pitch would spook her. Her
game fell to pieces and I won 4-1; with only two rounds to go, I
realised with a shock that I now had a 75% chance of a medal!

The semi-finals attracted a horde of media personnel, and I was up
first against the Brazilian champion. He set off like a train, flicking
with flamboyant flourishes, carving my defence to score within two
minutes, and I had to dig deeply to come up with an appropriate
strategy. I decided to pack my defence, keeping only two players in my
opponent's half. The Brazilian was in my half for most of the game, but
couldn't penetrate an eight-man defence and, shortly before the break,
my long-ball clearance nestled sweetly between my exposed forwards, and
they tapped in against a non-existent defence, as all my opponent's
players had been flicked forwards. This merely caused him to redouble
his attacks; goalbound balls came pounding in, but I used my blocking
flicks well and rebuffed every attack. Late in the second half I scored
a copycat goal of the first, and I was into the final! The Brazilian
looked crestfallen, and I had to sympathise with him, for in truth he'd
played the most attractive game; however, one of the strengths of
Subbuteo is the way in which it mirrors real soccer, where teams often
grind out unlikely wins with massed defences and hopeful long balls. At
least he had the consolation of gaining the bronze medal at the expense
of the other losing semi-finalist from Germany.

Suddenly there were crowds of people wanting to interview me, and my
mum rang to say that my picture had not only been in the Keighley
Advertiser but in the national press, with headlines like:

"Will It Be Goldfinger For Yorkshire Flickmeister?"

In the final I had to face the Bulgarian champion, who'd made mincemeat
of the German, and for once I wasn't favourite. The match was a bitter
disappointment; I did score once, but the result was never in doubt
once he'd scored twice in the first two minutes with amazing
power-flicks which left my goalie floundering, and he came out 4-1
winner. I didn't believe that coming second could be so gut-wrenching,
and I stormed off to my quarters in abject unsporting misery. Later
there came a knock on the door, and I recognised Herr Sprayer, the
president of the World Subbuteo Federation. He announced that the
Bulgarian had been subject to a routine X-ray after his convincing win,
and it had been found that he'd had his final index finger joint
surgically replaced with an illegal spring-loaded contraption, and had
been disqualified. The gold medal was mine, and Keighley went
wild.

And so to the party following the closing ceremony; I've never been one
for big dos, but the ten British gold medal winners were on a
three-line whip to be there. As I was getting ready I looked in the
mirror and saw a balding, pigeon-chested man approaching middle age
pretending to be an athlete; but then I realised that I had more skill
in my little finger than many men display in their whole lives, and had
the gold to prove it. I squared my scrawny shoulders, and went to find
the action.

The hall hung heavy with scarcely restrained libido like dope fumes at
a Hawkwind concert and all around me couples were dancing, some with
wild abandon and others getting smoochy; tousled-blonde Australian
swimmers hugged wiry Kenyan middle-distance runners and tiny Russian
gymnasts clung to Tongan shotputters three times their size. I had my
picture taken with the other gold medallists and went to the bar.
Then I saw her, sat alone with a fruit juice. I've never been one for
chat-up lines, but here it was simple; where are you from, what's your
event and did you win anything?

She was called Maria, hailed from the Philippines and had won a bronze
in the women's weightlifting. I wasn't surprised, she was almost as
broad as she was tall and huge knotty muscles bulged from the
short-sleeved top she was wearing.

"And how about you?" she asked.

"From Britain, and I won the gold for Subbuteo," I replied, and her
eyes widened.

"I was lucky," I said modestly, "the other finalist was a much better
player but he got himself disqualified."
After a drink and an ungainly dance, she took me back to her
room.

"Lie down on the floor," she ordered.

She squatted beside me, hooked a large paw under my back and another
beneath my thighs, and lifted me clear of the ground. She straightened,
and I was level with her chest. Then the final upward thrust, and she
spun me triumphantly round above her head.
Now it was my turn to strut my stuff.

"I'm not a whole body athlete," I confessed, "all my glory resides in
the tip of my index finger."

"I was kind of counting on that," she smiled.

Mum was there to meet me at Leeds/Bradford airport; so were the Mayor
of Keighley, the local and even the national press. I showed them the
gold medal and let them photograph the most heroic finger in Britain;
an enterprising journalist had brought along a Subbuteo set so I
obliged with a few flicks and let the Mayor's daughter score a goal
against me.

"Mum, I've got a girlfriend at last," I added, and showed her a picture
of Maria, whereupon she burst into tears.