GIVE them a ball and a yard of grass and they’ll set you up for the perfect pass - the Sultans of Ping FC are miraculously with us once again.

Following an epic break on the subs bench, Cork’s finest are ready to remind us why they were the dogs danglies the first time around.

With them it was always a victory of style over substance, a raw belief in three chords, quirky lyrics and a truckload of charisma to get them by. It’s a formula they’ve clearly not forgotten.

Several gigs in Essex and Ireland at the back end of last year prove they are still up for the fight, though frontman Niall appears a little cautious about making any grand gestures. It seems he can’t quite believe their unlikely resurgence, however fleeting it proves.

"It’s been really great fun, we couldn’t get over what happened with the gigs in Ireland. People were singing all the songs back to us which was a big shock. We’re just going to play things by ear," he reflected in his calm manner that’s a million miles from his often famously screamed vocal style.

"We’ve done this now as we thought that we’re getting on a bit and wouldn’t be able to do it so well in a couple of years. But it took a lot of convincing from Morty that people had interest in seeing us. I think that some people might be thinking that that’s it, they’ve already had had their day."

While he bemoans the fact that the only thing he receives from anyone in the mail these days is final demand bills, it seems life has been far from dull for the leader of the 90s punk pack.

Since the band hit the self-destruct button, he’s produced and written an album for cult Japanese act Mika Bomb which has kept him pretty well occupied. Then there’s the curious episode of him becoming a student again, though he considers this "not very rock n roll".

Strangely, there’s some sense of the amiable Irishman having creatively come full circle as it was his school days alongside Sultans guitarist Pat which first ignited their interest in music.

Their home city, whose only other real musician of note had been folk star Rory Gallagher seemed an unlikely breeding ground for rock talent. As Niall, now 34, recalls, there were some pretty odd groups out there but his love of the Ramones was to serve him well. He was not going to miss out on what scant musical action there was and began putting together the fledgling Ping.

With some hilarity he remembers some of their earliest gigs which included an acoustic side project which they named Sexy Shop - perhaps born of the singer’s childhood interest in the anti-establishment strum alongs of Bob Dylan. "We wont be doing that again, we got booed off stage!"

Fortunately for them, the real band were taken to much more readily by late 1980s teenagers eager for a musical breath of fresh air. Armed with sublimely off-the-wall songs about Turnip fishes, shiny Armitage Shanks loos and Riots at the Sheepdog trials, how could they possibly fail?

"It was quite haphazard back then. For some reason punters seemed to like us pretty quickly which gave us encouragement. At that time there was shoegazing around and indie music had taken over quite a bit.

"I remember that Therapy were on the same bill as us the night we were signed - that was a great feeling, we just went over to London for a couple months after that and didn’t care about sleeping on people’s floors."

While in Blighty they put the finishing touches on their debut album that was to trouble the top 30 album charts. In their own typically irony-laden words, the record’s lead single Where’s Me Jumper made them 'no-hit wonders' as it limped into the mainstream charts at 67.

"That was a real jumper of mine, and I was obviously peed off that I never got it back," says the singer on the sweater that started their journey off. In a poll on Ian Dempsey's Today FM show it was recently voted as Ireland's second best song.

Unfortunately, it was the novelty of such tracks that he concedes was to later work against them. Certainly this was the case with the ever-fickle media. Many blinkered hacks mercilessly dismissed them as mere cartoon punks and queued up to slate them.

The band’s second LP, Teenage Drug may not have fared so well, yet still produced some great tracks including the superb ballad Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache, Teenage Punks and Michiko. The latter revisited his appreciation of Japanese girls, who have loomed large at gigs and littered Ping album sleeves. They are not up for discussion by the otherwise refreshingly open singer.

"The music press all hated us. How much so we found with our third album which actually got quite a good review in Melody Maker that we were amazed at. The next week NME reviewed it and gave it 0/10. That was just malicious."

Sticking two fingers up at critical indifference, they fought on with their leaner, meaner direction. Adding an extra guitarist tightened their often willfully loose sets that remain famed for the level of sweat seeping from the walls. High spots of touring with the Ramones and a gig with original anarchists, The Sex Pistols in France were to follow. But by 1998 the tanks were running on empty.

"When you climb the ladder from having played small venues to doing medium and bigger size venues it’s a great feeling, but five or six years later and you're doing the same places you start out in it’s pretty soul destroying," he adds with understandable dismay.

The writing appeared to be on the wall shortly after and that could well have been the end of their story.

However, you can’t keep a good band down forever and it’s some testament to their popularity that the Shimmy Shammy Sultans fan forum continues to post a large number of hits from a devoted fanbase.

"I have seen the site - there’s a weird bunch on there, laughs Niall. It gets a bit heated on there and the one thing on it I thought was pretty funny was one subject called did (guitarist) Sammy ruin the band."

Though offering affectionate praise of his group, there are no solid promises as for their future. There has however been some talk of recording fresh material, but he explains writing new songs has not exactly been topping his priority list, though he wouldn’t rule it out for the right deal.

For now the London-based Ping leader is focusing on the task in hand, a whirlwind mini-tour of UK venues.

"We are looking forward to the London gig big time and are going to do a couple of warm up shows with one in Manchester. We’ve been playing for about one and a half hours with the latest gigs. I don’t think we get paid enough for that!" he laughs loudly.

Throughout the thrills and spills of their eventful career there have been some highly memorable moments, many of which are doubtless too surreal to mention or perhaps didn’t ever really happen the way folks remember them. Does Niall have a favourite?

"Going to tour Japan was sweet. There were so many great memories, one was definitely someone calling me up and telling me we were in the charts."

He’s in no danger of getting too dewy eyed over the past as there’s plenty to contend with in the here an now. As he relates he’s just taking a day at a time - but you wouldn’t put it past them to have at least one last trick up their sleeves. Raise a pint of Rasa to the rock stars for all eternity.

* The Sultans of Ping play The Garage in London on Saturday, March 18. See www.meanfiddler.com and www.redpenguin.net for details.