Comedian Karl Spain tells Seán Kennyabout playing soccer in his early days in Limerick and remembers why he wanted to represent Arsenal

"I'M GLAD to see that the Summerville Rovers under-10 B team from 1982 are finally getting the recognition they deserve. We won the league that year."

Comedian Karl Spain's career peaked early in the white heat of the Limerick underage football scene. The game is a passion he has carried from early childhood until today. So devoted is he that he recently attended the Uefa Cup final between Rangers and Zenit St Petersburg in Manchester, as a neutral.

So how would he describe his playing style during his schoolboy days with Summerville Rovers? "I'd describe my playing style as Eric Cantona trapped in the body of David Batty. A more realistic one, with mature recollection, was that I played like Lionel Messi trapped in the body of Stephen Hawking. I had the basics; I could pass, I could play. I wasn't someone who stepped on the ball, but I was never quick, which is always the thing. And I had something which I fixed later in life playing football, but when I was younger I had no aggression. Growing up reading about football - I still have all those magazines at home, Roy of the Rovers, Tiger, all those football stories - I kind of bought into this idea of 'play the game properly and don't foul people'. If I thought there was actually a chance I mightn't win a tackle, I wouldn't go in for it."

If there was a football match to be had, if there was a ball and a yard of grass to hand, he was usually there. The playing environs of the underage game in Limerick in the late 1970s and early 1980s were not always salubrious. "I remember some matches being played on a local pitch just down the road where you'd have to clear off stray horses. I know that's an awful image of Limerick to be giving but there'd be horse shit on the pitch.

"We had football goals in our garden at home too. Myself and my brother Gary would play there, until as late as it took for Gary to be on the winning side."

He harboured the usual schoolboy dreams of becoming a professional one day. His rationale for who he wanted to play for in those reveries was rather idiosyncratic, however. "One of the first big laughs I ever got was telling my grandfather that when I grew up I was going to play for Arsenal. And he said: 'Why, do you like Arsenal?' I said: 'No, no, no. But when we lose then I won't be upset.' So he thought that was very funny."

During his primary school years attending St Patrick's NS on the Dublin Road in Limerick he also moonlighted as a mascot for Limerick City. His involvement coincided with Limerick's League of Ireland title win in 1980. The old-style European Cup format threw up Real Madrid as Limerick's opponents.

The starry-eyed young Karl Spain found himself sharing a pitch with legendary virtuosos of the game. And some Real Madrid players.

"I got my picture in Shootas a mascot. I went to the home leg against Madrid, which was played up in Dublin. We had two goals disallowed and lost 2-1. Then we lost 5-1 in Madrid. The guy who scored both goals for Limerick was called Des Kennedy.

"Real Madrid only conceded two more goals in the whole tournament. Alan Kennedy scored for Liverpool against them in the final. So it was like, 'our Kennedy scored two against them and Liverpool's only scored one'."

He played a little himself for Limerick City at underage level, for, he insists, largely mathematical reasons. "I played for the youth team a few times but it was really just to make up the numbers. They'd play me on the wing where I'd use my pace to slow down the game.

"That season they actually played Rockmount from Cork and Roy Keane was playing. My father did the programme for that match and mentioned all these great Rockmount players that could make it. He mentioned four or five of them, but not Keane. I think he was the only one of that team who made it across the channel."

While his domestic allegiance lay with Limerick, he found himself drawn to Manchester United. "I'm a Manchester United fan since 1982, when they came over to play a testimonial match and I met the team. I didn't want to be a Man United or a Liverpool fan because everyone else seemed to be. They lost the League Cup final in '82/83 and I remember being really upset for two reasons: first because they lost, and second because I now realised I was a fan. Then they won the FA Cup in 1983. Bryan Robson would have been a bit of a hero at that stage."

At CBS Sexton St, his secondary school, there was organised Gaelic football and hurling. He recalls attending a Harty Cup final in Charleville, which the school won. He played the odd game of hurling and Gaelic football and rugby here and there. Nothing else came close to sparking his interest like his first sporting love, though.

Sexton St has since become a national force in schools soccer, but during his time there the game was only played internally. One tournament during his first year provided him with a playing highlight to rival that coveted under-10 B league title with Summerville Rovers.

"There were six classes in the year. I was in the top class. So we'd have been expected to be the worst football team. Our first match was against the bottom class.

"But we beat them 3-2 and I scored twice, good goals."

He was subsequently banned from the next game by a teacher for perceived misbehaviour.

"So they lost their next match narrowly without me. My team came up to me and started giving out to me, saying we'd have won the game if I'd been playing. It was the best thing I ever heard in my life. I just thought: 'I must never play in front of them again'."