from liverpoolfc.tv

AGONIES AND ECSTASIES IN MANILA
Graham Dwyer 05 October 2006

Graham Dwyer explains how he keeps in touch with his favourite team from a part of the world which hasn't yet fallen in love with the beautiful game in this week's 'LFC Letter From...' column.

It is first light on the morning of 26 May 2005 in a scruffy side street in Manila’s central business district. With the tropical sun already baking the potholed roadside, a group of bleary eyed supporters of Liverpool FC are celebrating one of the Reds’ most famous victories of all time after a very long night.

No doubt a similar scene was being played out among many of the 73 million viewers of this game around world. But for me, the sight of Steve Gerrard hauling aloft the European Cup live from Istanbul was special - an ecstatic release after 20 years of occasional jubilation, sometimes frustration, and moments of tragedy and heartbreak – most of it watched from afar.

With the strains of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” still ringing in my ears, I staggered out of the bar into the blinding sunlight deliriously happy and proud. It had been a long night in Manila, which at that time of year is seven hours ahead of UK (so live European football plays on cable TV at around 3 a.m.).

Passing locals would have wondered what all the fuss was about. Liverpool FC – and Premiership football in general – enjoys a small but dedicated fan base among expats in Manila. But to the wider local population, it has about as much relevance as Peruvian tiddlywinks.

Unlike the rest of Southeast Asia (in Bangkok, taxi drivers, when they know I am from Liverpool, ask if they can have Steve Gerrard’s phone number) the Philippines is largely indifferent to “soccer,” as it is known in local parlance. I could be covered head to toe in red and decked out in enough Liver bird insignias to start a small street stall, and they would still ask me what sport a team called “Carlsberg” plays.

There are various reasons for this, most of them rooted in the unique colonial/cultural heritage of the country. “Four hundred years in a convent and 50 years in Hollywood,” the old cliche goes about the Philippines.

From centuries of Spanish rule, the country picked up Catholicism, surnames that would not sound out of place in the Argentinean second eleven, and a taste for a sport that would send the British animal rights lobby into apoplexy - live cockfighting.

On any given Sunday, throughout the country, you will find the local cockpits packed to the gunnels as two cocks, their feet strapped with vicious strap on blades that look like they fell off a velociraptor, slug it out for place of honour as the Sunday roast. A fluttering of the feathers, a few squawks and it is usually over mercifully quickly, at least for the loser. Perhaps if the Premiership tried out those blades, the game would be more popular over here!

From the turn of last century to before World War II, the almost 50 years of American rule also had a decisive influence, leaving the country spiritually an adjunct of Hollywood, complete with its fast food culture, supersized SUVs, an unhealthy love of small firearms, and – of all things – playing basketball. This last obsession I have always found ironic in a country where Craig Bellamy would look positively lanky.

Few other sports (except perhaps boxing) get a serious look in on the local TV. Anyway, the few local football matches I have caught on the box looked like they were being played in a dustbowl by people wearing clogs.

British football, meanwhile, is mostly the preserve of the eccentric British and European expats who watch at their homes or beamed live into a few specialized bars or clubs.

These days, of course, you can follow games and scores no matter where you are living around the world, whether on cable or satellite TV, the Internet through web casts, or even cell phone updates.

It is all a far cry from 1992, when I first found myself in Manila during a crucial match. That year, of course, Liverpool were up against Sunderland in the FA Cup Final and I was desperate to watch the game.

Information was not easy to come by and I remember scooting from bar to bar in the city looking for somewhere the game might be on. I received a tip off that a luxury hotel was showing it, so headed across town and dashed around inside as the kickoff time came and went, frantically asking where the game was on. Of course, the local staff, thinking I was a couple of defenders short of a full squad, could not have been more uncomprehending had I been describing the theory of quantum physics in fluent Norwegian. Needless to say, I never did get to see the match.

By the time of the 1996 FA Cup, I had got my act together (slightly) and bought a tiny portable shortwave radio that could (on a good night) tune into the BBC World Service. On a bad night, it would leave me listening to a mass of white noise, punctuated by the occasional snatch of Hindi. I ended up listening to the game perched in the black of night on the pavement outside Guam airport. Of course, given the result, I might have wished I had not bothered. But you have to take the rough with the smooth with any team, and that was certainly the case with the ‘90s Reds.

Which all brings us to this season’s prospects? Well, as of time of writing, the Reds have made their trademark shaky start and a satisfying team balance has yet to emerge. But with their main Premiership rivals looking more vulnerable then previous years and a squad that on paper looks the most exciting in the league, I believe there is some hope for more serious success in the coming year.

And whatever the triumphs or tribulations to come, I will be here, cheering the Reds on with a few other hardy souls, who share in their agonies and ecstasies from a 7,000 mile away perch in self imposed exile.

how sad how football is so underrated in this country. I still stand by my belief that Filipinos would make better football players than basketball players. And please, we have more fields than asphalt (well, not in Metro Manila anyway), so football would be more accessible to everyone else. And you don't even need shoes to play it!