Subbuteo, and the all white kit

Link at the bottom...1932..the only ads I can find are from The Asbestos Co in Hull.


https://www.peterberthoud.co.uk/post/a-90-year-old-cricketing-mystery-solved-owzthat

 

Wow, I thought it looked old, but from the 30s!!.

Pencil cricket was so easy to do though, and it neatly passed the time at school. And like some others have said when playing coin and card games, it was free lol.
Sometimes the best ideas, can be the simplest and the cheapest.

 

I'm pretty sure I inherited my set from my Dad which would date it back to the 30s when he was a lad

 

I had World Cup Cricket endorsed by Alec Stewart. Still got it somewhere.

 

I had the subbuteo rugby too but it was a bit rubbish, apart from the special kicker for conversions.
Talking of leagues I had two lots one with Barnsley and other teams (i had over 30 kits) so I had 2 leagues of 8 teams playing home and away...it was still in my bedroom but if there was a kit clash u had near enough the proper away strip.
I also had a comic book league, with Blackport (nipper lawrence), Princes Park (hot shot hamish), Bobby of the blues (was that Everpool) and of course roy of the rovers and melchester!!!

 

Thinking about my Subbuteo set brings on similar feelings to when I think about the record collection I flogged in the 90s. Add in not looking after my teeth as a kid and a couple of marriages and it forms my list of regrets!

I got Subbuteo as a kid and had quite a few teams. Some bought from John Britton’s, most bought at Sharps at the bottom of Racecommon Road, where I also got a lot of my toy soldiers from. They were all secondhand, so it was pot luck as to which teams they had in, but I remember having, along with the Reds and Everton teams that came with the set, England, Brazil, Northern Ireland, West Germany and, just because I liked their kit, Bristol Rovers. I had several others too, but my memory fails me. I also had the stands with supporters, the scoreboard, TV gantry, etc, and even a little royal presentation party with a Queen and FA Cup.

One Christmas I had asked for a Leeds United team, but when I unwrapped it my parents had got me some Scottish away kit. Can’t remember who, Dundee or Ayr or someone. It was all white with just a blue stripe down the side and no yellow one. Presumably it was the nearest Sharps had in to the Leeds one.

As a 10 year old I would write out a full set of fixtures for a 16 team league and play all the matches against myself, unless I could talk my dad into being one of the teams. I can remember a 9-0 win for the Reds away at Crystal Palace. I had the numbers on their backs, so even wrote down the goal scorers.

I can remember playing one game when my Auntie Sandra walked in the room and didn’t look down, standing right on top of a goal and a keeper, leaving the crossbar looking like Wembley 1977. When I got home from school the next day I was overjoyed, as she had bought me the international goals and a set of the keepers that were standing up and had caps on. Far better than the rubbish keepers that curled backwards.

When I moved to Liverpool I took my set round to my girlfriend’s. She still lived with her parents and her little brother, who was around 13, so I used to play it with him. Then with the 1990 World Cup coming up we decided to play the tournament out ourselves, taking turns choosing which team we wanted to be. There was a toy shop just near the bus gyratory that stocked Subbuteo teams, so I must have bought a dozen or so more of the teams from the World Cup, until I just about had them all. Can’t remember who won our World Cup, but it was great fun.

Me and the girlfriend then moved to Brighton, where a short while later we split up. I had packed a van full (and I mean full, I am such a hoarder!) of my stuff when we moved down there. So much so that when we reached the flat I was moving into we found the landlord had fibbed about the size, so I couldn’t physically fit everything in. A hasty trip to A&E ensued - “Hi, I’m the new staff nurse starting on Monday and I’ve moved down today and have nowhere to live. Help!!!” I got fixed up though, but it wasn’t until we split up that I remembered my Subbuteo, as well as other board games, were at her parents’ house in Liverpool. Shortly after the split she said she was going up home for the weekend, so I asked her to fetch it all down for me. “You can go up there and get it yourself” was the response. Her dad didn’t like me at the best of times for a) being a woollyback, and b) doing a ‘woman’s job’, so I passed on that, and never saw my Subbuteo set and the 30 odd teams again.

I am, however, a great problem solver, but with a tendency to solve them far too late for my great idea to be of any use. And so It was that around 10 years ago, some 20 years too late, it occurred to me that I could have just asked my mates Dave or Pete to have gone round and got it for me, being that they still lived in Liverpool and had cars. I can be a ******* idiot at times.

 

I went to the National Football Museum, shortly after it moved from Preston to Manchester. I’d been when it was in Preston, but it’s much better in Manchester, as they have much more room. If you haven’t been they have all sorts of memorabilia and it’s a really good museum. I wondered whether I had security keeping an eye on me the first time I visited though, because with all the great museum pieces they have on display, I spent a long time staring at probably the least valuable thing in there, the 1970s Subbuteo catalogue/poster.

When I was a kid I used to look longingly at some of the weird and wonderful kits on there, most of which I’d never seen in a shop. There were some right odd concoctions of colours. It’s this poster where I identified Bristol Rovers as having the best kit in the league. And it also provided the evidence that Christmas Day when I rumbled that my parents had tried fobbing me off with the away kit of some Scottish lower league team, rather than the Leeds United one I had asked for!

It’s a wonderful poster that brought back so many memories. My original remained in Liverpool with the rest of my Subbuteo set (a few miles from the shops that now were selling what used to be my record collection…sob!), but thanks to eBay a framed copy of the poster now takes pride of place on my dining room wall, next to my giant print of the blood red wall behind the Ponty end.

 

I took the young un a couple of years ago, a bit of BFC memorabilia in it as well.

 

It’s also worth doing the Old Trafford tour and having a look in their museum. Theres almost as much as in the National Football Museum. They even have the letter that Tommy Taylor’s landlady wrote to his parents after his death. I would never have thought of going there, but my son won a competition at one of Brucie’s soccer school and was offered either tickets to see a Man United match or a tour of the stadium. He went for the tour, saying “why would I want to watch a Man United match, I’m a Barnsley fan”. Good lad!

 

My Subby died (or rather, it got put away in the loft!) back in '86.
That's the Christmas when I first properly got into video games. But that of course, is another story/thread altogether.