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Subbuteo


kwsaint

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I had heard about it on Outnumbered and wondered what it was. Since it was Christmas and my Dad was in a good mood I decided to ask him and, too my supprise, he found his in the loft (which he last used 19 years ago). After an interesting game I lost 6 - 0 playing as Arsenal vs Southampton. I know this isn't strictly saints related but it's Christmas. Was wondering whether anyone else has played it and whether they had good memories of it as a child.

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I remember being massively excited about getting it for Christmas, and then immediately disappointed with how rubbish it was to play. It remains, by quite some distance the worst present I've ever received and the worst game I ever owned.

 

Table football (foosball) - now THAT was a great football-related game..

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I'm 43 so played it a lot as a kid. My son is 7 and I've started him on it as an alternative to staring at the TV playing FIFA 12 or whatever. I think I sold some as a teenager but I have a lot of teams from the 1980s, like the England 1982 World Cup team and all that. I used to play it to death with my dad, I'd win 15 games, then lose one, then throw a tantrum, then get sent to my room with "you're only as good as your last game" ringing in my ears.... I remember getting a sore back playing it but a great game.

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Hours of my childhood were lost playing it, propably the same amount of hours my kids lose on games consoles...

 

Remember i used to have the pitch stuck down to chipboard, also the training set up for skills perfection :)

 

Wonder if my parent still have it in their loft....

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Back in the fifties we used to play it a lot on days when the rain kept us in. The players used to keep breaking and were just printed cut-out card stuck in a slot on the base. You bought a sheet of 'players' in the appropriate kit and then re-used the bases put different players in. Overall, a very poor substitute for the real thing but it kept us amused!

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Subbuteo was the best game ever!! I had loads of teams, floodlights, a stand, fences for the pitch and international goals. Christmas day used to involve a family tournement when we were kids with my dad, two brothers and cousins. We used to do the same as school friends as well in the winter when it was too dark to play football at night after school. Long before the days of FIFA and Football Manager. Kids dont know what they are missing.

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Pah! Bloody kids. Subbuteo was just updated Newfooty. Actually me and my mates spent days with Subbuteo, local league. Trouble was one damn kid always cheated, not using the regulation flick. Still have Saints somewhere in a box, even though some players have lots of Airfix glue round their ankles!!!

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I got a similiar cricket game for Christmas once year - a cloth-like pitch and outfield, fielders with a fixed stance, and batsman and bowlers with push/pull controls!

I'm now going to look for it to see what it was called!!!

 

Test Match? I had to have something to do when Subbuteo was on a summer break...

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We used to play it loads as a teenager, on half terms and holidays my mates and I would get up and go out at the same time as school and go round my mates and play football all day and when we were knackered finish off the day with a competitive knock out comp of subbueto. I used to love the branding of it.

 

Anyone remember the board game Wembley.

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Subbuteo was the best game ever!! I had loads of teams, floodlights, a stand, fences for the pitch and international goals. Christmas day used to involve a family tournement when we were kids with my dad, two brothers and cousins. We used to do the same as school friends as well in the winter when it was too dark to play football at night after school. Long before the days of FIFA and Football Manager. Kids dont know what they are missing.

 

I remember getting the saints team for xmas and nearly getting my 1st boner ( not really obviously) mind you i was equally excited when i got a football game caled target man for xmas, which was pretty naff when i look back.I think there was less choice and we appreciated things more in those days.

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Played it a lot as a kid. Best story, my best mate [ I was with him] took a team he had [of broken players] back to Oswald Bailey [ 1971 ish] in Southampton. He asked to swap it for another team. Fortunately for us,we just managed to get out of the shop in time before they twigged on,in any case we were pretty quick in those days.

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I got a similiar cricket game for Christmas once year - a cloth-like pitch and outfield, fielders with a fixed stance, and batsman and bowlers with push/pull controls!

I'm now going to look for it to see what it was called!!!

 

I preferred that to subbuteo as the over riding memory was trying to iron out the creases of the pitch and failing.

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I got a similiar cricket game for Christmas once year - a cloth-like pitch and outfield, fielders with a fixed stance, and batsman and bowlers with push/pull controls!

I'm now going to look for it to see what it was called!!!

 

Never mind that - I used to play whole test series, ball by ball, with a game that involved just 5 dice!

 

 

On my own of course.

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Me and my big briber had our own little league. I had 3 teams; gillingham, arsenal and Ayr united. My brother had a team called Mamod United, after his favourite present.

 

I played bar football with my nephew today, if I told him once I told him a hundred times, NO SPINNING. Bloody cheat.

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Never mind that - I used to play whole test series, ball by ball, with a game that involved just 5 dice!

 

 

On my own of course.

 

Owzat....

 

Two hexagonal metal dice that you rolled.

 

Spent many a boring Chemistry lesson playing that.

 

Had the Subbutteo, used to spend ages saving up pocket money to get a new team.

 

Vaguely recall once getting a set of players you could paint yourself.

 

Down side was I was always rubbish at it

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Play it with my son who's 11.

the only issue being that it gives me back ache, that was until we found out the pitch just about fits on his small pool/snooker table.

Have Saints, Man City, West Ham, Chelsea, England, West Germany and Brazil.

Mine as the 1974 World Cup edition, had floodlights, referee figurines and a few other things.

As you all say, lots of glue around the ankles.

Don't have the floodlights anymore, or the original goals.

I believe the current version has a pitch that has a tensioned frame that keeps the pitch flat and that the figurines have now returned to the original card cut outs. The plastic moulded ones were always better.

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played it loads as a kid. There was always some piece of kit you wanted, but as long as you had the basics there was a game to be played.

Used to love things like the "world cup" goals etc.

things they also had:

goalies with springs in the stick ! no improvement on the basic.

 

apart from football there were

cricket.... pretty good fun

Rugby. Bit pointless.

five a side football. also good fun, but not a replacement for the 11 a side.

 

i also remember the Wembley board game. That was certainly useful for whiling away a cold winters evening.not a bad game at all.

 

To be fair, back in the early 70's, we were pretty football starved with almost no live football on telly (Cup Final , England vScotland and the odd big England game), so almost anything football related was welcome.

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I used to love Subbuteo, though probably played my own rules than the official rules. had loads of accesories for it as all my relatives just bought whatever was out there as it was an easy present to get. I even had some football hooligans for the stand, and remember my mum not being happy with whoever had got them.

 

Still, as with many of my toys, I tired of it in the end and melted many of the players, or crushed them. Them & the star wars figures I destroyed in 'the final battle' would be worth a mint now.

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I loved playing Subbuteo as a kid. One of my best memories of Christmas was getting the 5-a-side version as a presnt. The advantage of this over the 11-a-side was that there was no need to iron the pitch. I had loads of accossories for the 11-a-side version: score board, thrown and corner kick players, refs, fencing, etc, as well as more than 20 teams. My mate had the cricket version which we would play in the summer. Happy days!!!

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Subbuteo used to be played all the time in our house until I was bought Super Striker one Christmas, this was an excellent game pretty much on the lines of subbuteo but the players were bigger and you would hit down there heads to kick the ball, the keepers were able to throw the ball out when you span them around, we got this down to a fine art being able to score with the keeper leading to many a fight with my brother on wether it counted or not.

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I had heard about it on Outnumbered and wondered what it was.

 

That one comment made me feel very old......

 

As for Owzat - what a brilliantly simple game. I used to play that all through school and it was so much more fun than revision. A friend & I had some epic series as adults, too.

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Fond memories! Mine was the basic set. It came with a red team and a blue team. The red team soon had white stripes and black shorts. From Eric Martin at the back to Big Ron up front. Funnily enough my first regular opponent, Mick "Smudger" Smith, was a Crystal Palace supporter. Too long ago to remember the scores though! Happy days.

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Loved it as a kid, was in a league playing Saturday mornings round friends houses. Can still name my side with Bruce Oakes at centre back and Dave Handley at no 10 scored loads he did. The only problem being Greenstone winning the league every year and me coming 2nd......Jonny Harris wot a player!

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I got a similiar cricket game for Christmas once year - a cloth-like pitch and outfield, fielders with a fixed stance, and batsman and bowlers with push/pull controls!

I'm now going to look for it to see what it was called!!!

 

Yeah I had the cricket one as well as normal Subbuteo. Like Turkish, I had all the floodlights, spectators and a couple of stands etc. Think I had about 5 or 6 different teams, then when it got passed on to my little brother, he added some more teams. Tempted to get it all back out my parents' loft now!

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I fondly remember the early 70's as a teenager we had a whole street league, playing home and away fixtures. Referees were appojnted. Even some dads were involved.

 

It used to get really competitive, with fights breakignn out over various rule infringements.

 

As a puny grammar school kid I could play on an equal footing with those rough secondary school boys like I never could in the real version.

 

For some reason I was always Everton and my best player (why one should be better than the others I've no idea!) was Mick Buckley who was top goal scorer in our league for two seasons running.

 

Happy days.

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I remember the world cup goals and the two sizes of football. The beginner's ball was about 6ft diameter in scale to the players. Very quickly graduated onto the small ball about half the size that you could really get some power behind. Before the 'spring' goalies, there were two types of static goalies: the standard 'diving' one and a 'crouching' one that I think was a better shot stopper.

 

There was also a pocket football game similar to Owzat, with hexagonal metal dice, played on a small green plastic pitch about half the size of a handkerchief.

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Did anyone else spend absolutely ages applying Letraset transfer numbers to the backs of players shirts (1-11 of course)? So fiddly, but made the individual players more, well individual. I had a Celtic team and that was even worse, trying to apply the numbers to their shorts. In hindsight, thank goodness it was before the days of players names on shirts.

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Did anyone else spend absolutely ages applying Letraset transfer numbers to the backs of players shirts (1-11 of course)? So fiddly, but made the individual players more, well individual. I had a Celtic team and that was even worse, trying to apply the numbers to their shorts. In hindsight, thank goodness it was before the days of players names on shirts.

Yep - absolute nightmare. I did the Celtic shorts thing as well..

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I got a similiar cricket game for Christmas once year - a cloth-like pitch and outfield, fielders with a fixed stance, and batsman and bowlers with push/pull controls!

I'm now going to look for it to see what it was called!!!

I used to have that and i stuck the cloth down to a board. It wasnt bad for a cricket game, but i don't know what it was called either.
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Great game, I'm 58 now and still have my original pitch and teams I bought when I was about 13/14 in the mid sixties including Saints of course of which I have various strip variations. Also have many other teams from the sixties in the strips they wore back then. You may be interested to know that the original "heavyweight" teams can make a lot of money on ebay - check out the Saints blue away strip from the 80's/9o's and any short term strip variations are much sought after by collectors. There is an active group of top players meeting regularly just around the corner from me here in Worthing, some of whom represent England I believe - and yes it really is played at international level so the game is still very much alive and kicking and can be very skilful. I live in hope that our recent one-off anniversary strip will be produced by the company that makes the game - I have an international Peru team that is similar.

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Played subbuteo for hours as a kid both the football and cricket versions (mate had the rugby version but that wasn't as good). Used to use the "shoot" league ladders and I guess it was the FL Manager of it's day (with live action). Once managed to take Dartford from non-league to European Champions. No cheating, honest!!!

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Loved the game, had the whole set up with stands, crowds, floodlights, and the giant trophies!!

 

Me and my dad used to play it all the time, but used to get great pleasure in just setting it all up, then having a riot, or used the plant spray bottle to make the game called off through a waterlogged pitch.... I had a difficult childhood!! Ha ha ha

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We played it for years as kids. Originally on a pitch that resembled your doormat to the cloth pitch with diving keepers. As said earlier, corner kicks, floodlights, stands, but who remembers the sticky tape put on the back of goals to "stop those arguments about was it or wasnt?" You couldnt get the ball off and destroyed the net trying.

 

The rugby was cr ap apart from the place kicker that would score from the next room, let alone the pitch.

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