Music and football have never been a successful combination. One of the proverbial exceptions were the British punk band Half Man Half Biscuit. These Britains, who cancelled tv gigs when Tranmere Rovers played at home, reached their fame because of a 1986 song called All I want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague away shirt.
Although this finest study of adolescent rivalry, frustration, obsession, violence and table football ever to have graced the wrong side of a bit of vinyl was just on the B-side of The Trumpton Riots, the track had amazing effects. Czechoslovakian football team Dukla Prague became a cult club in Britain and the song caused sports shops to be beleaguered. Everyone wanted a Dukla Prague away shirt, an utterly ugly kit, but of course no single shop known to the civilized world actually sold the shirt. (By the way, now there really is a shop selling the historical Dukla Prague away shirt: The Old Fashioned Football Shirt Company).
The lyrics of the punk song:
All I want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague away shirt
There was one in the gang who had Scalextric
And because of that he thought he was better than you
Everyday after school you would go round there to play it
Hoping to compete for some kind of championship
But it always took about fifteen billion hours to set the track up
And even when you did the thing never seemed to work
It was a dodgy transformer again and again
A dodgy transformer again and again
It was a dodgy transformer again and again
A dodgy transformer that cost three pound ten
So he'd send his doting mother up the stairs with the stepladders
To get the Subbuteo out of the loft
He had all the accessories required for that big match atmosphere
The crowd and the dugout and the floodlights too
You'd always get palmed off with a headless centre forward
And a goalkeeper with no arms and a face like his
And he'd managed to get hold of a Dukla Prague away kit
'cause his uncle owned a sports shop and he'd kept it to one side
And after only five minutes you'd be down to ten men
'cause he'd sent off your right back for taking the base from under his left winger
And come to half time you were losing four-nil
Each and every goal a hotly disputed penalty
So you'd smash up the floodlights and the match was abandoned
And the dog would bark and you'd be banned from his house
And your travelling army of synthetic supporters
Would be taken away from you and thrown in the bin
Now he's working in a job with a future
He hands me my giro every two weeks
And me I'm on the lookout for a proper transformer
A merci beaucoup goes out to football magazine Johan and lyrics website The House of Phespirit.