Sub culture

It was the annual football friendly between the reporters and sub-editors. A fixture eagerly awaited; so eagerly, in fact, that at official kick-off time last Saturday, a total of three people had turned up.

Still, it was a nice morning for hanging around. Autumn sunshine bathed the city centre park, playfully illuminating the tiny shards of glass on the tarmac football pitch which the subs had chosen in a vain attempt to intimidate the mainly younger, softer-skinned reporters.

The term "friendly" is a bit of a misnomer, of course. But then, as you'd know if you'd seen the game, so is the term "football". Annual is just about accurate, though, and the event is now an important feature of the newspaper's year, ranking in excitement just behind the shampooing of the office carpet.

There is a natural tension in any media organisation between reporters, whose job is to supply copy as long as possible after deadline, complete with misspllings and typographical erors; and subs, whose role is to make sarcastic comments about the copy and then fit it into the existing page design, even if this means cutting it brutally and leaving carefully-crafted sentences hanging in mid

The reporters had been in charge of publicity for this year's game; and the alarmingly low turn-out at match time gave rise to fears that the advertisements had said "11 p.m." instead of "11 a.m.", or "December" instead of "November", or "Cork" instead of "Dublin", or any one of those little errors that creep into one's copy under pressure.

But gradually, the other players arrived, apparently having decided that when reporters promised something at 11, that meant 12 at the earliest. And finally the game got under way.

I'm proud to say that all the major genders were represented on our team, something that couldn't be said for the subs. But they had a secret weapon, in that their goalkeeper had brought his kids along to watch: a cynical performance-enhancing ploy which will be banned next year.

For the space of 60 minutes, he was the hero his children believe him to be. And in the course of a series of improbable saves, the ball broke - I can't remember how - to their centre forward, sports sub and racing tipster John Kelly, who galloped clear of our defence and beat the 'keeper by half a length.

A goal down at half time, we were in crisis. I had started the game in the "anchor" role - in the sense of "something heavy which doesn't move much". But as the second half wore on with no sign of an equaliser, I moved forward, drawing excited cheers from the crowd of voices in my head. My plan was to score, or if I couldn't score, to fall on their goalkeeper. But no sooner had I ensconced myself in the penalty area than glory beckoned. A through ball, probably the only one of the game, found me with my back to goal. The 'keeper parried my flick-on but - it's like slow motion now, and everyone assures me that was about the speed of it at the time too - I swung at the rebound, and the ball rolled over the line.

All I remember then was a vague feeling of being bathed in glory, accepting the congratulations of my admiring team-mates, with the theme from Chariots of Fire playing in the background.

OUR team was growing in confidence now, building moves of increasing syntactical complexity, complete with fancy punctuation marks: sometimes in the wrong place, admittedly. While the subs' defence resorted cynically to lopping our adjectives off and imposing full stops. Willy-nilly. To break up our rhythm.

Not that there was much rhythm, really. The game operated under a system of "rolling substitutes" which, in theory, meant that players would voluntarily go off from time to time and allow others on but, in practice, meant that nobody volunteered to go off and people just kept coming on until the game was 14-a-side and the pitch was so crowded that if one person tripped, there would have been a domino effect and everybody else would have gone down as well.

In these circumstances, a draw seemed inevitable and had this been chess or cricket, we would have just shook hands and gone to the pub. But late in the game, the match-ball somehow squirted clear of the melee, like the sixth ball in the lottery draw. And when it did, it was the subs' who were holding the winning ticket. The chance fell again to Kelly (nap), and he beat the keeper, this time by a short head. After that, the reporters threw all 14 men and women forward in a desperate attempt to avert 12 months of subs' desk supremacy. But the remainder of the match seemed to pass in no time - which, considering that it was the subs' team manager who was in control of the official stopwatch - is probably what it did pass in.

Defeat tasted bitter - although, in retrospect, that might have been the sparkling wine which was passed around at the end.

And seeing how relaxed about the result some of our younger players were - cigarettes in one hand and glasses of champagne in the other - one couldn't help but think that the corinthian spirit is not yet dead among reporters.

The challenge is to kill it before next year's game.

Frank McNally can be contacted at fmcnally@irish-times.ie