Little Plastic Men

For those of a certain age you’ll remember when challenging one of your school pals to a game of football in the house on a rainy day consisted of borrowing ya ma’s iron first. The kids of today “don’t know there born”, as my granddad used to say… oh dear I’m getting old.

Nowadays the Xbox and Playstation generation have got it easy, switch it on, throw the disc in, plug in your 14 controllers, select a team, pick your kit and weather conditions, even put yourself in the side and after about 700 goals 48 winners medals later it all can get a little boring.

Well this year the classic football tabletop game Subbuteo returns for a new generation with the help of our own John Barnes at London Toy Fair this year. It was originally dreamt up way back in the late 1940s by Peter Adolph, and it’s invariably the best representation of football that you’ll ever play. They had everything there, from teams and basic sets through to trophies, stands, supporters, scoreboards… if you had the money you could create a field of dreams, but you’d still have a great game even with an entry level package.

Our legendary manager Bill Shankly was big fan of Subbuteo and would use the game in his pre match tactical talks, often removing the oppositions star player and putting him in his pocket telling his players “don’t worry about him he wont get a kick of the ball”. Shanks later became the Subbuteo Club President. A player who won his local table football league would be sent a signed certificate from our great manager.

 The set up is of the game is very simple. Two players control a team of eleven players each and have a set amount of time (ten minutes each way in this case) to score more goals than the other. Players are moved by flicking them about – hence the old advertising tagline “flick to kick” – to get an oversized ball into the goal… and that’s really about it. There’s a few other little rules to consider; you’re only allowed to shoot within a certain area, movement of players is limited, but in general Subbuteo is a gloriously simple game to play.

The game seeped its way into the British public’s consciousness in so many ways. Songs have even been written about it’s majesty including the Merseyside band Half Man Half Biscuit-- more commonly known as HMHB-- wrote a nostalgic tribute to Subbuteo in one of their albums called "All I Want For Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit, but the game faded into near-obscurity in the late nineties. The licence was picked up by Hasbro and seemed to be pretty much a dead horse which was gloriously flogged. No more little plastic guys; we had to put up with ‘photorealistic’ images instead, playing in tiny Urban Arenas. The game as we knew it was gone.

The new Subbuteo has a few improvements. While previously it was quite easy to break an arm or head off your players (50m for a headless center-forward), they’re now made of a more flexible plastic so can withstand a hefty flick. The goals in the new set are nice and sturdy, but the best thing about the new version is the pitch.

Where before you had to devote a fair bit of time ironing out creases on the pitch – not an easy job for a kid – the new pitches are printed up on non-creasing fabric, meaning that getting a game together is the work of moments. This simple change is great; where before it could be a pain to get ready to play, now it’s so much easier. All you need is the space to play, which is admittedly sizable, but I can see plenty of kitchen tables in the future getting repurposed as cup final stadiums.

The new set comes with two full teams, a generic reds versus blues set up, but there’s also a limited range of teams available. Liverpool (including our number 7 in dashing pair of orange boots), the Manc’s, Chavski as well as other sets in various colours, but there’s also a small selection of international sides too. If you fancy enhancing your experience, you can pick up referees, fences (very useful for stopping the ball falling off the table), even different coloured balls. While it’s a limited range of accessories, if the relaunch is successful you can bet that there’ll be more stuff released in future.

Of course, everything is compatible with the older gear – there’s plenty of sites out there that sell old teams for relatively reasonable prices such as the splendid subbuteoworld.co.uk. However, you’ll get everything you need in the Club Edition with no need for any extra outlay – I guarantee you though, after a few plays you’ll be thinking how nice it’d be to have your favourite teams lining up.

It’s a great little game and I’m delighted to see it come back in a proper fashion. It’s such a big part of so many people’s childhoods; even if they’re not the biggest gamers now they’ll have fond memories of playing Subbuteo as a child. Here’s hoping the reissue brings in a whole new generation of players who’ll be able to pull off stuff like this…

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