Found stuck to the bottom of a folder....

Tons of Crap (Retd.)

‘Once up on a time.’ When we were growing up didn’t all good stories start like that?

Aye! And didn’t most end ‘and they all lived happily never after’? It’s hard to find a story like that nowadays.

Once up on a time I worked for a large international airline, you know the one I mean, Yea that’s it. It was a good place to work in then: good management, good staff, good pals and after work a good social life, and fun like the Inter Departmental Competitions.

Once when our section was training some staff from another airline, Air Lanka, here in Dublin, we would have won the Inter D hockey competition, except some smart ass discovered that two of the players we had successfully petitioned the ALSAA council to allow play with us were Sri Lankian hockey internationals.

One was the goalkeeper, the other an attacking forward. That was one story that didn’t end ‘and they all lived happily ever after’.

One of the teams in the soccer tournament for a couple of years was The Tons of Crap team. Their mission was never to win a match and never to have a man or woman booked for tackling another player. The goalkeeper would be dropped if he stopped a shot and any forward who failed to shoot over the bar at an open goal, would be transferred to a better team: and a transfer payment would be made to that team if they took him.

For a few years the team played badly enough and lost all their matches, then disaster struck. Late in injury time in a nil all match the other team scored an own-goal and the referee blew up before the Tons of Crap team could pay back the favour. They had won a match and despite their appeal and protests to the Fair Play Committee the result was a win for Tons of Crap.

The following year the team did not play in any competitions in protest and to my knowledge have not participated in any Inter D to this day. Another unhappy ending.

If they made a comeback today how would they line up? Who would be recruited to play with them? What strategy would they adopt to loose all their matches?

As it so happens, this reporter has been contacted, by their old manager Snitchy and that is just what he is now proposing: the All Old Tons of Crap (Retd.) Team. He even has a wish list of the type of players he wants to attract if you feel you can fill any of there positions contact snitchy@tonsofcrapagain.com.

For the goalkeepers he wants someone who once guided large aircraft to their stand on the ramp. Snitchy told me. “I want men who when they see a ball approach will confuse it with the nose cone of a large jet. I want them to put their right hand to their ear and scream, LEFT LEFT LEFT YA SO'NSO and then jump out of the way and run along the end line with both hands over their head”.

He is looking to appoint a Team captain who would once have been a manager or director of a division. He will play in the midfield position, a kind of Roy Keane role. When he gets the ball, Snitchy says, “I’m hoping he will fall back towards defence and pass the ball to the vice-captain, also midfield, who will run with it, while the captain shouts CARRY IT, CARRY IT, DON’T LET US DOWN, KEEP WITH THE PLAN. MAKE SURE IT’S IN THE BUDGET!”

He says he might have a bit of a problem if he messes up the rest of midfield. The players he need to attract will once have been sales or marketing managers who will bring with them two forwards that have previously worked with. “My master plan, depends on them regressing back into their work role. When they get the ball they will only pass it to their man, the sales or marketing forward, with instructions to do their best and report back. The best men for that job would be ex-cargo, they could run at the opposing team roaring NETT NETT, FIVE PLUS FIFTEEN. This would be real confusing in that the NETT NETT would confuse the other team: they would think we were serious about having a real go. I don’t know what the FIVE PLUS FIFTEEN means, as what it was all about, was a secret.”

That’s his plan for the one-four-two roles. The backs he says will be a real problem. He needs stoppers who will fall over when challenged. Retired Business Development Analysts looked promising but when he put the case to them they said it would take three months before they could get together to discuss it. He met a few retired systems programmers but when he said Good Morning at the meeting they replied SIX MAN MONTHS. So he gave up on them as well.

He asked the pilots, if they could supply two centre backs, but they were all working for other outfits and had to look at the roster to see if they would organise a gash day so that they could meet him.

In the end they appointed a committee and two outside advisors to discuss the issue and report back. Then they propose to have discussions and ballot their members to see if they will participate, they also proposed that if they did take part all their members would have to be trained at Old Trafford so that they could rotate players in case of work commitments. If a potential player had not been called on for a certain time they indicated that would need a Soccer Skills Simulator at base in Dublin for refreshers. Snitchy says he is waiting , but not with much hope of a result, for their representative, “TO GET BACK TO HIM.”

He says he rang Reservations three weeks ago and he is still listening to The Jingle, and sometimes he even gets up at night, just in case he is off hold. He considered going in and establishing contact in one of the booking offices but he can’t find any in town. He asked a travel agent to help, get him in contact, but they asked him for a commission. He says he went out to the HOB but he couldn’t get into the car park.

So then he fell back on the old reliable and went looking for the Personnel Department to ask for advice but the PCB is now a Lap Dancing Club. For some reason he said that didn’t surprise him. I advised him to put an advert in Aer Sceala: he said it was gone too. He went up to the Dublin Passenger Terminal but couldn’t find the front door and when eventually he got in all he could see were Ryanair desks.

In the end he fell back on an old reliable; he went to ALSAA on a Friday evening around five, but it was empty; a fellow called Tommy said he hadn’t seen a face he knew in ages.

Snitchy has given up. He says he never thought putting another Tons of Crap Team (Retd,) together for a few Sunday morning games would be such a difficult thing.

All I could say to comfort him was, “Maybe they all lived happily ever after.”