While her female schoolmates trade smelly rubbers and fancy notepaper, independent Suzi mopes about the playing fields watching the lads stand around a football.

Her presence does not go unnoticed or uncommented on. All those long, solitary hours spent leaning against a wall with her hands thrust firmly in pockets may have paid off.

Or not…¹

While this brutal rebuff isn't quite shocking enough to make Suzi withdraw her empocketed hands (before pressing them to tear-stained eyes), it does cause her to despair of her gender entrapment.

Refusing to surrender to this sense of hopelessness Suzi proceeds to (optimistically and desperately) follow the boys hither and yon – earning the following savage put-down.

Ouch. "If only they'd understand how much I want to play football", she thinks, gazing straight into the camera (and straight into the soul of the moved reader).

A short while later and the (relatively) kindly and sensitive Dave spies our heroine displaying some silky ball skills – hands (once again) glued to pocket interiors.²

As astute observers will have noticed, Dave is male and (by the look of him) in his early teens. Given these facts, we should treat the literalness of the words "Suzi's pretty good with that football" with several pinches of salt. A more accurate translation of that thought bubble might be – "I'd very much like to vigorously kiss and cuddle Suzi".

Says he to her, "Where did you learn to play like that?". Says she in reply, "Oh just by watching you boys play, and I sometimes practise here alone". And why, in case we need reminding, is she forced into this lonely activity?

Yowsers. Just when you're beginning to think that the story's punchline will involve gender reassignment surgery, in steps Dave to offer something pitched halfway between reassurance and condescension.

Skip forward to the day of the big match. Disaster strikes! At the playing field Derek breaks the bad news to distraught teammates – "Jimmy can't come. He's ill in bed". Who will take his place? Dave provides the (obvious) answer – self-loathing Suzi!

In spite of the lads' hostile incredulity (and the absence of pockets in her shorts), Suzi leads the team to glory.

Not a thing of beauty. A goal-mouth scramble; a static (Zombie-like) defence; an unorthodox, straight-legged toe-poke – but (as the fella says) they all count.

Final score? 3-2. "Suzi's the champ!", cries a fickle youngster. The socially constructed barriers that separate and segragate the sexes have been triumphantly demolished. The world is forever changed.

Except, of course, it isn't. Reactionary editorial forces at Debbie HQ have baulked at the possible implications and pressed the reset button.

Phew! With her silly, tom-boyish flirtation out of the way Suzi is free to let her hair down and allow her true self to shine forth. Gone is the "rebellious" leather jacket and out of the pockets (at last) come the hands. The mystical fathers of patriarchy smirk down from their kingdom in the clouds. All is right with the world. Let's boogie.

1. Her brother Derek, it would appear, is an enthusiastic advocate of the "Girls are twittery simpering idiots" school of thought. [back]
2. Recurring motif this. [back]

One of the most enjoyable (if exhausting) blogging side projects I've taken on since this site's inception was the alliterative World of World Cup Wonders – a solid month of daily thoughts and reflections on the planet's greatest sporting event.

Two years on and another major footy competition begins to appear over the horizon. I'd idly toyed with the idea of hosting a "blog within a blog" on fustar.info to mark the event, but the thought of another sustained period of solitary toil made me feel a bit sleepy.

At just that moment, however, in stepped the lovely Fergal Crehan (of Tuppenceworth fame) to give the project the kick up the hole it so sorely (ow!) needed. "Let's do it together", says he, "Turning what might be a lonely (masturbatory) act into a giant explosion of group fun".¹

And so, I hereby happily announce the birth of Super Euro Soccer Party – a Euro 2008 group blog that will (we hope) be chock full of whimsical and frivolous football fun. Hoorah!²

Join us.

P.S: I'm currently trying to pad out our small squad by drafting in some crack enthusiasts from around the 'blogosphere' (and beyond). Expect new names and faces as we go merrily along.

P.P.S: To access the blog from the any fustar.info page just click "Euro 2008″ in "Categories" (see sidebar).

1. I should add that these were not his exact words. [back]
2. Many, many thanks to my darling wife Jess for her invaluable help. [back]

Pictured above is one of Irish sport's most enduring images: Packie Bonner in the act of palming away poor old Daniel Timofte's penalty (Genoa, June 25th, 1990). Not pictured anywhere on this page is the moment (4 years later) when Packie haplessly flapped Wim Jonk's speculative long ranger into his own net (Orlando, June 4th, 1994).

Never mind. Even despite that rare lapse (in the dying moments of his international career) Bonner remains an Irish sporting colossus. The fact that his lively agility between the sticks wasn't matched by his remarkably stiff and rigid TV presentation style is a fact that need not detain us. We'll always have Genoa.

"Dave F" appears (I think) to share our affection for the big fella, if this graffito (spotted on Harvey's Quay) is anything to go by:

The indefinite article does, however, confuse the issue somewhat. It may not be the aforementioned "Bonner" that Dave actually "has" (all the time). It could well be North Carolina general assembly member Bonner Lee Stiller, or 'Russian' human rights activist Yelena Georgevna Bonner, or even the late American bluesman Juke Boy Bonner. The graffito remains elusively non-committal…

Even if we remove the additional 'n' in "Bonner", and get closer to what was (I suspect) the creator's intended message, it's hard to tell if the claim is intended to be pejorative or complimentary. Is priapism something to be hidden or flaunted?