75 Years Young

By my reckoning Subbuteo as a brand will be 75 years young in 2022, I’m led to believe that the game was launched in 1947 by Peter Adolph as a rival to the already produced Newfooty, and Subbuteo being the new kid on the block due to good marketing and innovation by Peter Adolph, became not only a rival but the dominant game. If you want to know more about it’s history there are some great sites out there who have done the research, Subbuteo Tribute Website is one, so I’m going to stop there for fear of repeating the hard work that others have put in.

What I would like to do is discuss a few of the many accessories that have come and gone throughout the 75 years that I have had the pleasure of using and some that didn’t quite live up to the hype.

 

May I Introduce

Warren Brookes, or Wazza for short. Wazza was a mate of mine, whose parents were lets say affluent “Middle Class” types, Wazza’s Dad had a Jag, their house had a conservatory, (only “Posh” folk had these in the 70’s in my area), they even had stone lions at the entrance of there 20 meter long driveway. Anyway Wazza and I became mates when we went to secondary school. I had somehow managed to gain access to the local Grammar School so I now rubbed shoulders with more “Posh” folk, well sort of. They weren’t all “How now brown cow”, they were just kids who had the chance because of the 11 plus system, to have a slightly higher education. Now before anyone goes into one saying every kid deserves the same opportunities, just bear in mind that's how it was at that time in England, and I was given that opportunity.

Well anyway Wazza and I became good mates, we shared the same interests (Football), the same taste in girls (Susan Green), and our love of Subbuteo.

Wazza had it all, a Subbuteo World Cup box set, the Test Match Cricket set, and the snooker game, not quite the Holy Trinity but pretty darn close. I on the other hand had a Continental Club edition and a good selection of teams.

Wazza and I played each other frequently, mainly around his, not because he had better stuff but we could play uninterrupted, on a table in the conservatory, unlike around mine where my board had to be set up in my bedroom unless I could get the use of the dining room. So I had the opportunity to see and use most of the accessories on offer at that time.

 

In the following you'll discover about how Walsall Town won the European Cup, The towers of gloom, and the incredibly talented throw in figures.

 

Corner Kicks and Throw Ins

I’m sure you remember the Corner and throw in figures, The corner figures looked like giant footballers. Great fun once you got the hang of them, this giant of a man could chip a ball into the box and hopefully get the little folk to nod or volley one in. Also useful for goal kicks, and according to the 70’s handbook the taking of free kicks, but we never went that far. Can you just imagine if I whipped one of these out at a tournament, I’d get lynched.

The throw in figures on the other hand were lets say so underwhelming we never used them much, they either threw too short or too far and a skill I perfected without even trying was get the ball to spin, and once it hit the baize it would come back and go out of play again, they may have eliminated the foul throw, but my chances of getting the ball back into play were vastly reduced.

Let There Be Light

The set of floodlights Wazza had were the ones with the white girders, looked ruddy amazing at the corners of the pitch but they had two inherent flaws, the first and most noticeable was the amount of light given off made it almost impossible to play a meaningful floodlit game without the aid of night vision goggles, they were dimmer than a black cat in a coal cellar, the second was noticed by chance if you made a decent enough contact with the top of the floodlight whilst moving around the table it could come crashing down onto the pitch. This actually happened and how it missed the players is anyone's guess. Mind you that only happened once because I refused to play with them again, just in case they came crashing down and killed one of my players.

Small Balls and Keeping Score

Yep you guessed it, the humble scoreboard, and I don’t mean any old scoreboard, I’m talking about the brown one. It just looked right in the 70’s, Wazza and I used it to it’s full potential at this time, we played a game of first to nine goals wins, on numerous occasions, as that was the maximum it could record. I was looking out for one to purchase recently and couldn’t find a suitable one so I purchased a mark 3 black one for £5 instead, it does the job but it’s not a patch on the brown version in my opinion, as I wanted a 70’s look for my stadium and the black version just doesn’t seem to cut it for me, ah well I’ll just keep looking.

Small balls were definitely in vogue during my youth, I’m not talking about the FF variety (or something completely different, I can hear the sniggering at the back) I’m talking about the Continental variety. They were round, white and measured about 20mm in diameter, and had a most endearing feature they had black stickers on them as the boffins at Subbuteo tried (Bless ‘em) to replicate the Telstar ball in miniature. The ball itself was great, providing you removed the stickers which did nothing to aid it’s ability to roll. It was larger than the FF but smaller than the F, and most of my mates played with them. To me they seemed a little heavier than the F’s despite their smaller size. I’ve had some happy times with my small balls.

Keep It On The Pitch

Hands up who remembers the old red fence surround, if you do you’ll quickly realise that anything smaller than an F ball would end up on the floor, or under the bed if you were already on the floor, so when the green picket version came out, we all rushed to buy one, never perfect but it did what it said on the tin. Only trouble was that the thing needed to be fixed in place to be 100% effective, but that kind of thing never worried a group of young teenagers, apart from Lee Marsh (known affectionately as “Swampy”), who spent more time rearranging the flippin’ thing than playing the game, even when he was playing away, he’d be straightening someone else’s fence after something went careering into it. Strangely enough he never won many matches. Stuart Matthews (“Stan” I wonder why he was called that), used to wind him up something rotten by poking the fence now and again, Swampy used to tut, put it straight, and carry on.

And For The Winner

In the 70’s there were 3 trophies in the accessory range, and we had all three between us I had the FA Cup, Wazza had the World Cup, and the European Cup, all 3 were decent replicas as well, yes even the European Cup as it was a replica of the original trophy, which Real Madrid won so much they let ‘em keep it. Did you know Walsall Town won it as well, well they did one season when Wazza’s Walsall, beat my Ajax in the final, Ajax supporters still talk about that one to this day.

Finally

I was speaking with Wazza earlier this year, I’d rung him up to wish him Happy Birthday, he still resides in the West Midlands, and we were talking about some of the things we did and people we knew in our youth, as well as our Subbuteo exploits, which is where a little of the inspiration for this post came from. For us the golden age of Subbuteo was the 70’s, and that will never change. The game has changed like all things since then, but will best remembered by the likes of Wazza and I, at a time when most of us lads played, collected, and replayed some of the great games of that time in miniature, (and Walsall Town actually won something), long may that continue. So next year I’ll be raising a glass to Peter Adolph as a way of saying thanks for being a big part of my life.

By the way Wazza married his childhood sweetheart Sue Green, and its their Ruby Wedding Anniversary next year. I often joke with Sue that she married the wrong bloke, I can still see the horror in her face when I say it. Perhaps if Ajax had beat Walsall Town on that fateful day things would have turned out differently, there again I think not.

 

Keep On Flicking

 

Ian