Top Ten: Retro Football Hobbies
Jonny Abrams
Posted on: 27 October 2009 - 16:39
Football
Do you remember the days when the first you knew of any new signing was when they were holding up your club’s scarf on the back page of a local paper? Those days of old, when knights were bold, and tedious internet warriors weren’t invented? The internet has brought an almost suffocating scrutiny upon the game of football, which got Sport.co.uk yearning for simpler times. And whenever Sport.co.uk yearns, harks back, or reminisces, a new Top Ten is born. This? Why, it’s only Sport.co.uk’s Top Ten Retro Football Hobbies…
1. Subbuteo
Peter Adolph, the game’s creator, originally wanted to call the game ‘Hobby’ but had to settle for Subbuteo, which is derived from the neo-Latin scientific name Falco subbuteo (a bird of prey commonly known as the Eurasian hobby) when he wasn’t granted a trademark. Flicking a team of little plastic men on half-shell platforms into disproportionately large balls (er…) across a sheet of green cloth may or may not sound like your idea of a good time, but such was the game’s popularity that lyrical references to it cropped up in three cast-iron classics of popular music: ‘My Perfect Cousin’ by The Undertones and ‘All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away Kit’ by Half Man Half Biscuit and ‘Five Man Army’ by Massive Attack. Three cheers for goalkeepers with long, green paddles emerging from their backsides!
2. Merlin/Panini football stickers
“Got…got…got…got…got…got…got…got…got…got…got…got…got…got…need!!” At which point, you traded all of the ‘swapsies’ from the back of your handheld stash in for David Rennie of Coventry City and, thusly, completed filling in the 1994/95 Merlin Premier League sticker album. We all did that right? Maybe you kept a little scrap book of ‘shinies’ going on the side. You know, the ones with a club’s logo on top of a dazzling silver-patterned backdrop. Merlin stickers are quite possibly the number one reason for people remembering Eddie McGoldrick, Dane Whitehouse and Micky Hazard.
3. Top Trumps
Not just limited to football, of course, Top Trumps provided hours of mild amusement with its blind, skill-eschewing pitting together of, depending on what themed Trumps you were playing with, ratings for horse power, magic weapons and, in this place, total career goals. A great way for kids to learn about Red Start Belgrade, or how Nottingham Forest used to win the European Cup.
4. Corinthians football figurines
Presumably, the designers of these miniature models didn’t intend for them to become the subject of ridicule – but how can you not find this funny?
Or this?
Or, for that matter, this?
If you were lucky enough to be a collector during the fad’s mid-90s heyday, then you might, like yours truly, still have David Unsworth in an England kit sitting on your bedroom shelf, surely increasing in value at a rate of knots, like a Tamagotchi that’s still alive, or Van Gogh’s perfectly preserved ear, signed by the man himself.
5. Football Manager games
...where you had to start in the Conference (*cough* Premier Manager 3 *cough*) – The success of Championship Manager – now Football Manager – owes itself in part to the blindingly simple idea of letting you manage whichever team you want. Before that, you had to serve your apprenticeship at Telford United, Gateshead or Halifax Town before you got the chance to take over at a league club, by which time most of the really exciting players had left, or even retired to be replaced by computer-simulated works of fiction such as Andreas Doll, who scored 60 goals in one season for my Everton side some time around 2020. There was also a rather handy cheat involving a telephone, but I’ll leave that one there to sound enigmatic and mysterious.
6. Striker on the SNES
It’s hard to imagine nowadays, as the likes of Pro Evo and FIFA power ever closer towards a picture perfect simulation of real life, but ‘Striker’ looked the business when it was released some time in the early-to-mid nineties. Yes, this...
...was the future of gaming. Faceless players who could run at warp speed and slide tackle perpetually, a waving clown that appeared on the scoreboard whenever there was a goal, a bells of Nostradamus-like ‘clang!’ whenever the woodwork was hit, an A4 view of the pitch on which it was far easier to score when playing downwards than upwards, the facility to bend the ball pretty much as far as you wanted even after it had been kicked, the bizarre muddling up of skin colour (of which a black Lee Dixon and a white Ian Wright were only two of many examples on the game), hilariously triumphant, digital brass-led title music…‘Striker’ had it all.
7. Reading Roy of the Rovers comics
Oh look, Roy Race has scored a last-minute hat-trick. Again. Lawks a mercy, what will he do next? And oh what a world it would be if the players really could hear everything that every single fan says during a game, and respond with comments like, “The fans are right – we need to work harder!” Even at a young age, you may have found yourself struggling to suppress the odd impassioned cry of, “Come on, Melchester – these are sh*te!” Since then, though, the Rovers have been replaced as Everybody’s Favourite Fictional Football Team by Harchester United of Sky One’s ‘Dream Team’. The people have spoken and it turns out that what they want is to see players perishing in a coach crash every other week, rather than spending their time trying to figure out how two different supporters can respectively manage to say “Racey’s had a shot!” and “The keeper won’t make it!” in the time it takes between the ball leaving Roy’s foot and reaching the goal.
8. Autograph hunting
Because life just tastes better once your manky shinpad has been daubed with the indecipherable signature of an overpaid scally.
9. Slavishly buying shoddy merchandise
In my life, I have owned at least one of each of the following:
An Everton towel
An Everton pencil case
An Everton CD wallet
An Everton towel
An Everton rug
An Everton duvet set
An Everton mug
A fake £20 note with Wayne Rooney on it (which I do believe Jose Baxter tried to pay for a McFlurry with)
A succession of dodgy Everton shirts
A blow-up doll of Phil Neville
(* One of the above is a lie. Can you guess which one?)
10. Jumpers for goalposts
Small boys, in the park, isn’t it? Marvellous. Hmmm. Jumpers for goalposts, that’s all you needed. Nowadays it’s all iPhones, Nintendo Wiis and rocket launchers. Where’s the innocence? Where are all the kids in the street, kicking a ball against a wall until they develop Brazilian close control? Where have all the cowboys gone? Isn’t it? Marvellous.