The glorious day when I led England to the cup

WE'RE HAVING a clear-out. We're finally getting rid of the G-Plan sideboard we were given five years ago as a temporary stop-gap in a household filling exponentially with plastic nappy buckets, Barbie dolls, boxes of not-quite-dry felt-tip pens, nasty letters from the bank, old suits that fitted only old me, detached book covers that could be Sellotaped back to their pages once those pages had been located, ancient bottles of Quink ink, plastic bags full of almost all the pieces of jigsaws, typewriters that didn't work but might, given a specialist's painstaking attention.

In short, all the essentials of modern life. Plus my football trophies.

"Sad" my wife called them when they resurfaced this week. She had a point. They looked self-important, with all their mock-silver wreaths and flourishes. Fine for the under-10s - but for grown men?

She had a point, but not a conclusive one. Because as I studied the little wooden shield I had acquired in 1987, it resonated with the memory of an absurdly good weekend.

As a tactical ploy, the idea of fielding 10 men in an 11-a-side football tournament left something to be desired. One man, to be precise. However, that man, no longer in the first flush of youth, was a spent force - a martyr to his dodgy knee and a pair of lungs in oxygen overdraft. It was our own fault for reaching the knock-out stages.

But let us go back a little. Let us go back to the time before my team... that is, the team on whose behalf I put in enough telephone calls to warrant sponsorship by British Telecom, not that we ever received such sponsorship, although it would have been a good idea. But there you go, not enough initiative. Or drive, I suppose. Imagination, ultimately.

Where was I?... Yes, let us go back to the time before my team was invited to compete in an international press tournament in Amsterdam.

OK, a bit dull. Let us go forward, then, to the moment when the team received that invitation.

Right. We thought it would be a good idea to go. Some of the lads, in fact, thought it would be a very good idea to go when I got to the bit about it being a press tournament. I think it was that bit.

When we left Heathrow we had a full team - but no more. Pressure for places was not going to be an operating factor.

"I could go a McDonald's, as it happens," our right winger announced shortly after we had arrived at our city centre hotel. And sooner than you could say haute cuisine, he and his mate, the centre-forward, were off.

Perhaps they had trouble finding a McDonald's. Certainly they were gone a very long time.

Some of the other boys went out too, but they didn't find them, even though they said they had looked until the early hours.

By the time everyone returned to base camp, there was little of the night remaining before our scheduled morning kick-off. As we set out on the coach for the tournament's suburban venue - a beautifully appointed amateur club with baize-smooth pitches and a luxurious club-house - the rain began to drive down. And our hopes of success, I'll be honest, were tilted in a similar direction.

A strange thing happened. Before our opening game our right-back, Peter, pointed out that as the only non-Belgian or Dutch representatives, we were effectively playing for our country. As far as everybody outside our dressing-room door was concerned, we were England.

Three matches later, England were into the quarter-finals - and down to 10 men.

As we pondered on our fortune during the lunch break, eating sandwiches in newly arrived sunshine, one of our number - a keen rock climber - amused himself by scaling the outside of the club-house and finishing his meal on the balcony.

Ah, new perspectives. Our right wing/centre-forward combination soon provided us with another view on our situation when they announced that Tony the waiter, whom they had met on their walkabout the previous night, had honoured his promise to be present with his boots as soon as he got off work. Here he was.

Back to a full complement, England - with Dutch winger - reached the final and won on a penalty shoot-out. At the presentation ceremony we each received a gift. A recording of Etudes d'execution transcendante (by Franz Liszt) not quite what the boys were expecting. If this was a cryptic suggestion, however, it was taken up with enthusiasm. As we drank, we pondered on our important truth; if you want to win the secret is in the preparation...

The suits can go but the little wooden shield stays.