Sport and the local pub have long been a winning combination

There's an old pub joke about a bloke who's telling an old mate he bumps into about a new pub football team he's joined. 'Oh really,' says his mate. 'What happens when you win? Do you all go back to the pub for free drinks and a knee's up?' 'I don't know', says the bloke, 'I've only played for them for two years.'

It's enough to make you groan, but it dem-onstrates how the rubbish pub football team has become a deeply-rooted part of popular culture - and as much a part of the fabric of the British pub as real ale and horse brasses.

When the writers of the 1995 movie When Saturday Comes set Sean Bean's character Jimmy Muir on the path to stardom with, ahem, Sheffield United, they didn't start him off playing for the local branch of Starbuck's, but the local pub.

Chris Waddle followed the same path to fame, playing for a pub side in the park before joining non-league Tow Law Town, and eventually playing for Newcastle and Spurs and winning 62 England caps. Nothing really encapsulates the every-person nature of a pub as the make-up of its football team.

When what was then the Brewers & Licensed Retailers Association commissioned the Social Issue Research Centre to produce a tourist guide to the industry called Passport to the Pub in 1996, its author, Kate Fox, concluded that 'you will find a wide cross-section of the British population in most pubs'. And she adds that the composition of pub football teams in Oxford provided a 'graphic example', ie: the head of an Oxford University department, a bricklayer, two solicitors, a postman, a financial consultant, two self-employed builders, a biochemist, a maths teacher, a factory worker, a computer programmer, a salesman, three unemployed, an accountant, a roofer, a tiler, a town-planner and a shop assistant.

Reaching out into real life

In short, pub football teams - and those for darts, skittles, cricket, hockey, rugby and dozens of other sports - help pubs to embrace the community of which they are a part. Footy teams become an integral part of the fabric of the pub and reach out into real life.

When London bomb victim Paul Glennerster lost a leg, the lads from the football team at the Horse & Jockey in High Wycombe were high on his thank you list for helping him through his ordeal. When regulars at the George in Bloxwich in the West Midlands held a fundraiser for charity, half the money went to cancer victim Stuart Lawley, who is captain of the football team.

The Nine Elms in Swindon kicked off the 2004/5 season with a fundraising day at the pub that raised £900 for new equipment for the pub team. What the team meant to the regulars and the local community was demonstrated by the fact that almost 300 people turned up for an event that saw two local bands perform free of charge.

Licensee Andre Dus, licensee of the pub, which also has two pool teams and a darts team, says: 'We did get an awful lot of local support. It was very good publicity for the pub and we do have a very good team, which helps.'

Of course, the presence of the team has a positive impact on business after games on a Sunday morning. 'They'll all come back and then stay for most of the day,' says Dus.

Saturdays are more the domain of the hockey teams. 'There are up to five teams playing here from between noon and 6pm so Saturdays are very busy because of that. There can be any- thing up to 40 hockey players drinking in the pub at a time.'

The Nine Elms darts team plays its fixtures on Monday nights. Are they as good as the foot- ball team? 'No', says Dus, 'although this year they are doing better than last year. It's pretty good because it brings people in on what would be a quiet night.'

Giving pubs a sense of history

Martin Grady, licensee of the Redoubt in Wakefield, says sport helps to give a pub a sense of history. Grady says: 'The football team here was founded back in 1967, when it was a founder member of what was then the Tetley's League.

'In those days, breweries used to contribute a lot more to local sport because they were selling their beer through their own pubs, but they're not any more.

'We have pictures on the walls of teams from the 1970s with all the strange haircuts - the only things missing are the platform shoes and the big collars. It's a 200-year-old pub and it's steeped in sport really.'

The Redoubt has a casual cricket team in the summer, and more organised darts and dominoes teams. At one time it even had its own rugby league team. 'They became so successful that they moved to their own premises,' says Grady, 'but they still carry the pub's name. They've got their own clubhouse, so there's no point in them drinking here any more, but a lot of people still associate the team with the pub.'

There's also a thriving Redoubt golf society, whose membership is limited to 28, and which has a waiting list with 12 names on it.

Grady says: 'We have 10 fixtures a year at home and we go abroad as a group as well. There are 16 of us going to play in Majorca next May. Apart from being good for trade it's brought a lot of people together who wouldn't otherwise have met. It's an ever-increasing circle of friends.'

But in number of followers, the football team - which has won the Wakefield Sunday Premier League six years on the trot - is still the big sporting focus at the pub.

To meet the ground requirements for its first round match in the Carlsberg-sponsored FA Sunday Cup this year, Grady had to hire the Atlantic Solutions Stadium, home of local pro-fessional rugby league side Wakefield Trinity Wildcats.

'The team is well-supported in the pub,' says Grady. 'There were probably 300 to 400 people in the ground and 150 of them were from here.'

After regular Sunday morning games, the team and its supporters drift back to the pub.

Grady says: 'Times have changed. I used to think you always had a better atmosphere in the old days when the pub was only open from 12 until 2pm and people had to rush back from the match to the pub because they only had a couple of hours to drink. We're a throwback to how pubs were a long time ago.'

TV sport: it's a live wire

Football, of course, is not only a participation sport for the on-trade.

Thousands of pubs and bars generate business through showing live televised sport. Others go all the way to Planet Football and beyond by becoming themed bars.

Cafe Kick in London's Exmouth market is owned by the grandson of an Arsenal manager from the early part of the 20th century, and is decked out with football memorabilia and table football games.

Sister venue Bar Kick, in Shoreditch, has an ongoing table football tournament through the season.

The venues do show televised sport but it's all the better because it comes in small doses, according to Cafe Kick assistant manager Yuri Goncalves. 'Cafe Kick is about vintage football and memorabilia, but we don't even have Sky,' he says.

'Football is massive but we had cricket on for the Ashes and the bar was full every afternoon.

'For the World Cup (2006 Germany) we'll show every match, but we don't show Premiership matches every week because we don't want to scare the women away.

'If you go to a bar and see women who feel comfortable to sit by themselves, that, to me, is a definition of a good bar.

'If you show all the matches you'll bring lots of people in and sell a lot of beer but you'll limit yourself on the other nights.'

No boundaries for the 'beautiful game'

Not all pubs are happy to content themselves with the local park players for their football teams.

The Engineers Arms, at Henlow in Bedfordshire, once signed George Best on forms for Engineers Henlow, its team that plays in the Hitchin Sunday league. Yes, the George Best.

Host Kevin Machin recalls: 'We've got Henlow Grange health farm, which is now Champney's, just up the road, and he used make an appearance in the pub when he was staying there.

'He actually registered for us as a player, but he never turned up to play, but then again he sometimes didn't turn up for Manchester United or Fulham,' Machin jokes. 'But i