Sport Jim White
JIM WHITE
THE OTHER WORLD CUP
At the tail end of the summer, lying on the grass with the sun baking down and a pint of something local to hand, I watched the entire World Cup unfold in front of me. Not the Putin-reinforcing Fifa-fest in Russia, obviously; but the version organised every year in the Pembrokeshire coast village of Porthgain.
Porthgain is an extraordinary place. It was once host to a giant brickworks, turning local rock ripped from the vertiginous sea cliffs into house-building material. Edwardian photographs suggest it resembled Dante’s Inferno, a hideous, broiling, bubbling conflagration of filth, smoke and smell. There was not an inch of the place that wasn’t coated in red dust. When the brickworks went bust in the 1920s, nobody thought to remove the industrial buildings; they were left to crumble. The place fell into an apparently permanent hibernation and slowly merged back into the glorious landscape.
But when tourism came to this part of Wales in the 1970s, Porthgain found a new purpose and prosperity. Now the workers’ cottages are spruced up and rented out to holidaymakers, the pub that once sold ale to lubricate throats parched in brick dust sells gourmet crab sandwiches and, on the patch of land in the middle of the village that used to be the dumping place for slurry and sludge, they host their very own World Cup.
It is a magnificently eccentric affair, growing in scale and depth every year since it began in 2006. Locals and tourists alike enter teams and are given the names of countries to represent, mostly through the medium of fancy dress. This year, the Japan side sported inflatable sumo outfits which, frankly, were not conducive to slick ball control. Scotland were, inevitably, wearing kilts and ginger wigs. The Swedes wore Abba jumpsuits and threatened to spend half-time attempting to construct an item of flatpack furniture.
The tournament was organised to raise funds for the local cricket club, and the rules suggested this is not an elitist affair. Each team of five players had to include at least one over-40, one female and one under-14. Australia, however, fielded a boy of 12 who, like a young Ronaldo, proceeded to jink and fizz his way through opponents as if they were traffic cones. And, intriguingly, as the tournament reached its business end, so the teams seemed more and more to field five fit young lads in their twenties.
Not that anyone appeared to mind. Certainly, there was little official control. The master of ceremonies, perched on top of a dumper truck on the touchline, took the Wogan-at-the-eurovision-songContest approach to commentating. By the end of the afternoon, most of his remarks were about the sobriety or otherwise of the participants. ‘Ah, Jonesy, on his fourth pint there,’ he said, before the centre forward of the Cameroon side headed on to the pitch. ‘Some might insist it’s not the ideal preparation for the semi-final. But Jonesy knows what he’s doing. Oh, he’s fallen over.’
From the sidelines I watched the afternoon reach its climax as, in the final, Uruguay beat a side wearing England shirts but, wisely in this part of Wales, representing the British Isles. As the excitement mounted, it became clear this was an event more inclined to humour, conviviality and companionableness than competition. And like many other individual, localised, annual gatherings, it was a reminder that, when it comes to generating neighbourhood cohesion and fostering identity, there is nothing to touch sport.