If you hear people talking about "predator", they are not referring to tiger or lion. Instead, they are talking about adidas football boots! If you find a pair of 80% new football boots in a garbage bin of a changing room, don't be surprise. People have to change the model twice a season, because Beckham does.
Dogs used to play with "White-Rice-Fish (白飯魚)". It is the most powerful football boot you might find in ancient China. Not only its cutting edge design provides you the extra power on shooting, its advance technological thin surface also ensures your absolute control over the ball.
Besides, depending on the condition of the pitch and weather, you might have different choice of bottoms to cope with. Black-bottom (see below middle) is for hard ground (and hot ground in summer) and green-bottom (see below left) is for soft ground (and wet ground when raining). With all these advance technologies and cool design, it only costs you HK$20 a pair. What a deal!
Before hanging-out in Shatin, Dogs used to play on stone ground, which is only available here in Hong Kong. And stone ground, for instance, is perfectly matched with White-Rice-Fish. Or to put it this way, White-Rice-Fish was designed for, and only for, stone ground. That's why you can never be able to buy a pair in UK.
It happened that real grass pitches are available in CUHK. Before that, 5 out of the 7 Dogs never play football on a real grass pitch. The problem is you can never perform properly with White-Rice-Fish on a grass pitch. Dogs started to find themselves over-run by opponents and never been able to do any dribble. Besides, it became very difficult to stand firm and, in turn, reduced the power of shooting. It was totally unacceptable!
"工欲善其事, 必先利其器. That's right. We can never achieve our full potential if we don't have a pair of proper football boots." Dogs just love to find themselves some excuse ...
Yes, you are right! After the football shirts, here comes the football boots - to make them looks more attractive ... as they thought ...
On 16 January, 1995, Fai, Winkins and Wong Pan (1st generation hire-gun) took the first step.
Without any surprise, they went to Hing Fat. Back then, there were no official adidas shop or things like Giga Sports in Hong Kong. Like it or not, you have to go to Hing Fat. They provide the widest range of choices, though in a higher-than-reasonable prices. No matter what, the shop was always full.
As you might know, both Fai and Winkins hate nike. There remain few options. The first is the always-popular-but-always-expensive adidas, the second is the not-so-popular-but-not-so-expensive umbro and the last is the no-one-know-but-very cheap lotto.
From the very beginning, they limited their choices on not considering stud boots (they should if they want to play on real grass pitch). Since they could not afford buying more than one pair of boots, they decided to buy a pair of indoor boots (so-called stone-ground) so that they can use it in grass pitch AND stone pitch. Poor little boys!
Those were the days that all football boots were black in colour, with very little difference between brands. As a result, the only relevant factor would be the price. No doubt adidas boots were the most expensive. And no doubt they decided to buy the cheapest one. Yes, lotto, all 3 of them, same model!
If my memory serves me well, a pair was cost HK$199. Ten times a pair of White-Rice-Fish. A big deal indeed!
In 2006, only the top model stud boots were made with real animal skin. It was a real bargain that this cheap lotto stone-ground boots was made with real skin.
These 3 Dogs then took the train back to their shelter along with their first ever pair of football boots. What happened next would be staying in their hearts for the rest of their lives (and may be some of the passengers as well): inside a very crowd KCRC cart, sitting face to face with each others, they took the boots out and started putting on the shoe laces ... one of them even stepping around the train cart with the new boots on ... OH MY GOD !!