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The Man Of The House looked rather abashed. He glanced over at the Woman Of The House. She was sitting at the head of the dining table, a full complement of guests were happily gorging themselves on the delicious meal she had prepared. But she was ignoring the lamb and potatoes gooily congealing on her plate. Instead, she was consuming the event being shown on the large colour tv placed to the left of her chair. Lowering his voice, the Man Of The House murmured reverentially, "You see, it's football night."

You may think that the Brits take football seriously. Well, Faroese footie fans make us look about as devoted to our national sport as my vegetarian grandmother is to Duck a L'Orange.

Let me explain. First, where ARE the Faroe Islands? If you draw a triangle with Norway, Iceland and the Shetlands at the points, you'll find the eighteen Faroe Islands smack-dab in the middle of that frigid, North Atlantic isosceles. Your basic land of astounding beauty, the Faroes are all wind-swept mountainsides, breathtaking cliffs, sheep, wave-lashed beaches, more sheep, picturesque fishing villages with turf-rooved houses, and 46,000 football-obsessed sheep owners.

Irish monks lived there before - presumably punishing themselves for some terrible sin - but the Faroes were only settled in earnest in 825 AD, by Norsemen on their way west towards Iceland (and, eventually, Newfoundland). The Faroese will tell you that all the smart Norsemen got off in the Faroe Islands, leaving the dumb ones to continue on to Iceland. The Icelanders say that the seasick ones got off in the Faroes, leaving the strong ones to travel on to Iceland. Personally, I think the Faroese-to-be caught sight of a black and white sheep on a wind-swept mountainside, mistook it for a football, and jumped ship immediately.

The Faroese founded their first football club in 1892. One would hope they founded their second one soon after or else matches might have been a bit boring. Faroese football really took off during WWII. Stopped from practicing their traditional livelihood - fishing - by circling Nazi U-boats, the young men found themselves playing endless football games against the British soldiers posted to the Faroes. Rumour has it, they played mostly to keep the soldiers too busy to steal their women. By the end of the war, football was a national obsession.

By the 70s, the Faroes, which have home rule from Denmark, wanted to field a national team. In 1988, it happened. With the support of all the Nordic countries, the Faroe Islands joined FIFA. Their first official match was to be on September 12, 1990, against Austria. Since the Faroes didn't have a proper pitch, the game would be played in a neutral country, Sweden.

The boys trained hard. Not easy since - unlike the professional Austrian players - the Faroese were all amateurs. There was a postman, a baker, a bank clerk, several mechanics, and a quality control expert from the local fish plant. The team was nervous to say the least. But that didn't stop the team captain from recording a football anthem song. It sold well.

The Austrians declared that they would win by ten points. So the Faroese decided that if they lost by anything less than ten goals they could consider the game a success. Fans who traveled to Austria to cheer on their boys (and cousins and nephews etc) joked cheerfully that they were there to help keep count of goals against.

In the days before the Big Game, the Faroese studied the pitch and tried to focus, vaccillating between embarrassment, horror and excitement. The Faroese national press was out in full force, all dozen of them. The entire country tensed for battle. The Austrians were nowhere to be seen.

Then it was game time. The country listened in, cringing. Ten minutes went by. Then twenty. No one scored. It was a miracle. Better than anyone could imagine. Goalkeeper Jens Martin Knudsen, a fork-lift driver in real life, was managing to keep the lackluster Austrians at bay. The Faroese team gained confidence. They started to push their advantage. And then the impossible happened. Torkil Nielsen, a timber merchant, scored for the Faroes.

For the remainder of the game, every Faroese held their breath. The seconds ticked, slowly, slowly. Some couldn't bear the stress and had to look away. At last the clock ran out. The Faroe Islands had beat Austria 1-0 in their first real international match.

It was a 1972 moment. Nation defining. Something no one could ever take away from them. It had given the Faroes credibility on the world stage. They may not have played a glorious role in a big war or hosted peace conferences or produced Bjork, but weren't a fun-flung bit of Denmark anymore, they were FAROESE, a real country with a real football team. The party lasted for days.

Football has been good to the Faroes, and so the Faroese are fanatically devoted to football. They no longer think losing by less than ten goals is good. They now aim to lose by no more than four. For a recent game, 800 Faroese (over 5% of the total population) flew to Scotland to cheer on their boys. They lost to the home team 2-1, a very respectable score. Things are improving. The womens team is coming along well and the training programs now make army training look like a walk with the sheep.

Back at the dinner party, we had moved on to dessert by the time the game was over and the Woman of The House had swtiched off the television and rejoined us for tea and cake. She was in a good mood. The Faroes had played Lithuania. And tied. An excellent result.

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