Sub-what?

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A couple of weeks ago I did something unusual with my blog: I posted Wrong Number, which was just text and an image, with absolutely no music videos. It was well received, so I thought I’d try doing it again. Like that one, today’s piece is a response to a prompt from John Holton in the Writer’s Workshop. You can read all about it in his post here. I have chosen to go with his suggestion of telling you about a favourite childhood toy, at the risk of causing waves of nostalgia amongst those who knew and loved it like I did, or waves of bemusement amongst just about everybody else. Let me enlighten you.

As you may have seen from the header picture, I am talking about a game called Subbuteo. This was a football game (that’s soccer, for American readers), which involved the ‘flick to kick’ approach, as it was described at the time (and still is). This should give you an idea of what it was like:

I was given my first Subbuteo set when I was around 8, and fell instantly in love with the game, to the exclusion of just about every other toy that I had. It was like real football, the idea being to flick little figures at a ball and try to score goals to win games. My Dad kindly pinned the green baize playing pitch onto a piece of hardboard, and we either played with that on the dining room table or, much more frequently, I played games against myself with the pitch on my bedroom floor. I wouldn’t say that the game was an obsession, but for little boys of my age you were left out of playground chats if you didn’t play it: everyone who was anyone was a fan, even me.

Subbuteo was invented by a chap called Peter Adolph (not THAT Adolph) in 1946, and was patented in 1947. Generations of small boys owe Mr Adolph an enormous debt. As the game’s  Wikipedia page tells you, he actually took the idea from an existing game which he improved, but even if we had known that at the time (we didn’t) none of us would have minded. I said I wouldn’t be playing any music videos in this, but here’s a talking one –  a brief clip from the BBC tv show QI (which stands for Quite Interesting) in which Stephen Fry explains how Subbuteo got its name:

The benefits of an education in Latin! To be honest, I don’t think I ever knew that until I looked the game up, but it was clever, I think.

As well as the basic set – two teams of players, a pitch, goals and a ball – we were encouraged to collect extras, particularly teams in other kits than the basic red and blue ones. These were made in the colours of just about every team in the UK and in many other countries, which meant that you could be creating games which looked like the real thing. Many of us played leagues on our own, in which we played both teams, and much to my great surprise my team always seemed to win the league – in reality they have only done that once in my lifetime, just before I got my first Subbuteo set, but it was fun to dream. And that was what the game was all about: dreams of being a real footballer. I used to go to all of the home games of my local team, and would have loved to play for them, but that never was even a remote possibility so the dreams of a little schoolboy had to suffice.

We also played against our friends, either as one offs or in leagues: six of us even managed to persuade our school to let us play a league in the weekly free period for ‘activities.’ They sent a prefect in to keep an eye on us, and he was useful for deciding on disputes: a kind of very early version of VAR really. That’s Video Assistant Referee, for the uninitiated, which is a system whereby people in a little room miles away from the game they are watching take ages to decide on goals, penalties, red cards and the like, and usually come to the wrong conclusion.

The game has gone through various incarnations and is still being marketed today. In the age of video games that is quite remarkable, I think. They even have their own website which tells you more than you could ever wish to know about the game. It looks an expensive hobby (sorry, Buteo) today, though: you can expect to pay over £30 for the basic game, and additional teams can cost up to £15 or more, a far cry from my younger days when they were around 10s (50p) each!

The game has also lived on in the days of the internet, in meme form. In 2012, after the Olympic Games, the then Mayor of London – a certain Boris Johnson – engaged in one of his earlier forms of cronyism and corruption when he gave the Olympic Stadium to West Ham United football club, at a ridiculously low annual rental and with hugely favourable commercial terms. Never ones to fail to live down to their reputation as whiners, their fans were very vocal in complaining about how far away they were from the pitch in that vast expanse, leading someone to provide a visual comment:

I absolutely loved that, and shared it on my own Instagram page at the time. I missed this next one, though, which I found yesterday. Liverpool are currently top of our Premier League, and one of their best players is Mo Salah. He does, however, have quite a reputation for diving to win free kicks and penalties. Cue the internet:

The Subbuteo company also made versions of other sports, including cricket and rugby union. I had the cricket game too, but it didn’t feel as good as the football version – not so easy to play against yourself when you were trying to bat and bowl at the same time! Judging by the way things are currently going in India I think the England cricket team is having difficulty doing either of those in real life.

I believe I grew out of my obsession with the game by the time I was around 15 or 16, when other, more adult, pursuits opened up. But for some it carries on through their lives: there are several YouTube pages for it, in which people post videos of games they have played, and there is even Subbuteo World Cup. But it doesn’t feel like a spectator sport to me: you had to be in it to win it, as the saying goes.

Has this sparked childhood memories for you? What did you enjoying playing – apart from doctors and nurses, of course?

38 thoughts on “Sub-what?”

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  4. I had no brothers so Doctors and Nurse it was-smile- the first I knew about subeuteo was when I had boys myself my boys loved it and would still be on it if anyone had a table I don’t think you lose your love for the game of subeuteo xx

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  5. I was a big Subbuteo fan. I had a few teams, a stand and floodlights to go with the pitch. I stopped playing it around 17 ….. but then started again when I was 24 when a mate set up a great pitch in his loft. I have tried to explain the game to my grandkids in the hope they will want one but they don’t seem very impressed.

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    • That’s taking it seriously! I just invested in more teams and a match timer, to avoid arguments.

      Kids today, eh! Heads in their phones and tablets, missing out on the fun we had at their age 🤣

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  7. Amazing what kids got up to before PlayStation and Vexbox. We never had Sub being in a rugby mad country but I conned an old Scalextric set out of my parents. Came with a Vanwall and a shark nosed Ferrari, both heavy as a brick. (Those two would be worth half a days worth of Mo Salah’s wages these days, but they went in the bin at some stage, I’d imagine by Mum reclaiming her sewing room.)
    I was surprised that Spurs only had the one title. I’d imagined they might have had more back in the pre wars days.
    I’d also have though Luis Suarez would have had a figure of his very own, all eyes wild and teeth flashing- make a nice matching set to go with stumbling tumbling Salah.

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    • I tried the Rugby Union version of the game in our local toy shop, but it didn’t grab my attention: too complicated for a 9yo! I had Scalextric too, with the same two starter cars, but never enjoyed it as much as Subbuteo.

      Spurs did have another title, back in 1951 before I was born. Barely a sniff since the 60/61 double season, though.

      Suarez would have made a good model, as would Diego Costa.

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  8. Don’t know why this thought came into my head, but maybe the reason I grew ip so fast was because I never had toys to play with. My older brothers had broken all their toys, so my sperm donor decided I didn’t need any because I would just break them too. (My sisters never got dolls either!)
    Growing up too early is no fun for anyone, though I do think I created a vivid imagination to compensate.
    Parents, grandparents, shower your kids with toys (well, mske sure they have some at least). Children need to be children!

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    • Variants on a theme, depending on what was most popular in that area, I guess. We had a table football game here that worked like your table hockey. The big difference I can see in these is the finger flick of Subbuteo.

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      • Crokinole involved finger flicking. (This was considered a game, not a toy.) So we had a family Crokinole board. I broke many a fingernail flicking the playing pieces…

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      • I stand corrected. But in my defence the website description I saw said that the game was played with sticks, rather like cues in pool and snooker. I hope your fingernails have recovered 😊

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      • In 60 plus years, they may have changed the game. In thosr days, they didn’t care if the players got hurt. It would not surprise me they got sued for something.
        I was wondering where the “hockey” reference came from. At the time it was closer to darts/marbles than hockey.

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