World Football Tennis Championships - Irish Team

Xavi6 · 17-11-2010 2:00pm #1

This is awesome -

http://boob.ie/2010/11/we-can-do-it/

Ever wanted to represent your country at the highest level on a world stage? Maybe not, but it sounds pretty cool. This day next week I will be doing just that. Here’s how it came about:

One drunken e-mail to the president of the Federation International Football Tennis (FIFTA) and we were on our way. The world championships would be held in Istanbul on the 25th November till the 29th with free hospitality for the competing teams; free accommodation and 3 meals a day.

Nice.

One of the lads had sent the email, obviously not expecting anything back, and said we were part of Football Tennis Ireland and were looking to compete in the forthcoming championships, which was a load of rubbish. He was just pig drunk!

“Yes we would love for Ireland to be represented at our world championships”, came the reply. We couldn’t believe it.

I had to tell my local soccer club that I would be unavailable for selection next week as I would be away on international duty. I’ve always wanted to say that…

All we had to do was register our new “organisation” as part of their federation so we could compete. It only cost €60 each for 8 of us. Now we’re the governing body of Football Tennis in Ireland and will be competing in the World Championships in Turkey.

It seemed nobody else in Ireland was arsed about entering a team, or even anybody else in western Europe, apart from France. Most of the teams are eastern European; Moldova, North Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey and now India have entered as well. So they were delighted to hear a western European team wanted to enter. In all, about 13 different countries have entered.

It was time to start playing the game.

We had the rules emailed to us from our new president friend. It must have been the first time they were translated into English because it’s worded cuntishly. A lack of good quality videos on Youtube and the fact there are videos with the old rules up made it confusing there for a good while.

“How the fuck do ya play this game”…

The team consists of 7 players, a Coach, and a Chief Delegate. So two of the lads will be wearing suits with Ireland-flag ties basically. We don’t have a clue what else they’ll be doing.

“Time to learn some Turkish”…

Luckily we stumbled on to a Turkish site with some videos about Football Tennis on it

http://www.futboltenisi.com.tr/video-fotograf.htm

The first video though, has the President of Turkey talking about Football Tennis and everything looking as if they just got a bid for the World Cup accepted. It’s all in Turkish so we don’t know what they’re talking about. Looks important though…

“What have we got ourselves into”…

But fuck it, we said, we’d wing it. We’ve gotten our jerseys made by O’Neills, flights booked, accommodation and food sorted. We’ve put in the practise, albeit for about two weeks, now it was time to put on the green jersey and represent the country on a world stage. And if, in all probability, we make complete tits of ourselves, it won’t be the last time; the next World Championships are in Las Vegas…

P.S. If any kind soul out there would like to sponsor us in any way that would be great. Since this whole thing has been such a last minute job we haven’t had much luck sponsorship wise. We are international athletes after all, representing the country on a world stage. It’ll be televised in the Czech Republic to hundreds of thousands of people. So what a chance to advertise a business eh?!

And we know what your thinking but if we got Boob.ie written across the front of our jerseys it might be taking the piss a bit too much. Although if people started throwing money at us to do it we might be tempted…