It was a Proustian moment the other day when I was reading the business supplement and saw a half-page recruitment ad for a firm called Tennant & Ruttle.
Twenty years ago, I played for a football team of that name, in the fiercely competitive AUL Division 3 D (Sunday). The link with the company was tenuous. One of the lads worked there, as I recall, and since his employers were willing to pay for a set of shirts, we named ourselves after them in gratitude.
The rest of us were never clear what Tennant & Ruttle actually did. So it was with a mixture of fascination and pride that, two decades on, I finally discovered it to be Ireland's "fastest-growing FMCG distributor". I could find out what exactly FMCG stands for, only I don't want to ruin the mystery altogether.
According to the ad, the company's portfolio of brands now includes Ferrero Rocher chocolates, the indigestion remedy Gaviscon, and the popular limescale remover Harpic. That's quite a spectrum. But the range was presumably narrower back in the mid-1980s, because when we signed for the team, all we got by way freebies were Mars bars. I can only envy modern soccer players.
Anyway, for a few seasons, we played every Sunday morning in the killing fields of Crumlin, and Finglas, and Darndale, and other Dublin suburbs where teams were harder and more committed than us. Mostly, there was nobody watching. But occasionally, the opposition would have supporters urging them to "get stuck in" to us - this happened a lot in Finglas - and then we really knew we were in trouble.
We never had supporters, even on our home pitch. Which is probably just as well, because they would have struggled to compose a chant ("Tennant & Ruttle! They're not exactly subtle!"). But at least we had a team, and for a while we took ourselves seriously. We had training sessions, a 16-man panel, and mid-table respectability to show for it.
It would be harsh to say I was our worst player. It's just that my talent was in inverse proportion to my sense of loyalty. So I was the worst player who turned up every week: a situation that was gradually exposed as the numbers declaring themselves available for selection fell.
If 13 lads showed for the game, there would at least be company for me on the bench (not that there was an actual bench - you had to stand). But when there were only 12 players to choose from and you were No. 12, there was no hiding place except philosophy.
An added humiliation for the 12th man was that, while the AUL always had real referees, the arrangement didn't stretch to linesmen. Instead, to preserve the pretence of professionalism, each team would be asked to contribute a linesman from among the subs.
Theoretically, this put the substitute in a position of power. I was potentially more influential as a linesman than as a player, with the ability to ignore blatant offsides by my team while flagging the opposition striker when he was 15 yards on.
But only in theory. In practice, the referee worked on the assumption that you were incapable of objectivity and, when in doubt, overruled you.
During later seasons, I made the first team regularly. Unfortunately, any sense of achievement was diminished by the fact that on such occasions, there tended to be a maximum of 11 players available. Training sessions were also becoming fewer and further between. And soon, inevitably, we were propping up the league table.
Looking back, I can see that our lifestyle and diet were all wrong too. It wasn't just the Mars bars. I remember one Sunday morning having to fetch our star striker out of bed, to which he had retired after a night on the town four hours earlier. He couldn't play without breakfast, he said, so on the way to the game he bought a packet of Denny's sliced ham, which he ate as a sandwich, minus the bread, minutes before kick-off. Only the fact that he was a heavy smoker prevented such eating habits from diminishing his performance.
The team's greatest achievement by far came early on, when our midfield enforcer was signed by his local senior club, then playing in the League of Ireland B. The League of Ireland B was not exactly the Premiership. But from where we were, it was Mount Everest, and back at base camp, we could congratulate ourselves for being part of the expedition that got him there.
I don't know how long he lasted at that dizzy height. I just remember reading that he scored in one of his first games and, as his former team-mate, feeling as proud as if I had personally failed to flag a blatant offside in the build-up. He was also the main link with Tennant & Ruttle. After that, the Mars bars dried up, and not before time. Thanks to the 12-step programme, I haven't touched one in years.
The team continued for a while under a new sponsor. We were now named after a pub, which we felt was more in keeping with our general ethos. But our best years were already behind us by then. What little team discipline we had gradually fell apart. After another season or two, I left on a free transfer to middle age.