Subbuteo: Accessories for the modern era

Subbuteo today leads a charmed life. Having peaked in the late-1970's, it dwindled away into virtual obscurity during the next decade or two and looked for a while as though 'flick to kick' had breathed its last. Luckily, despite several clumsy attempts by various companies to try and reinvent the brand, it survives to this day thanks to a loyal legion of fans keen to bring the game up to date in their own inventive ways.

Yet one can't help wondering what Subbuteo would be like today had it continued uninterrupted on its upward curve of the 1970's. The game of football today is different in so many ways to the one we knew back then, but would Subbuteo have changed with it? If so, what would we, the humble consumer, be buying for our collections if the game was as big today?

This is the question I spent almost a full ten minutes trying to find some answers to, and here below are a selection of them accompanied by artistic interpretations to give you a visual reference.

1. The electronic video display screen

Nothing says 'modern football' like a video screen parked in the corner of a stadium. Once upon a time, you'd have expected a brief frisson of excitement to tremble through your veins at the very sight of an old-fashioned scoreboard. It wouldn't cut the mustard now, though, for this is the age of the super-bright jumbo LED screen to show those off-target shots and adverts for local painters and decorators.

So how could such a thing be created for the world of Subbuteo nowadays? By using a humble digital photo frame, of course. It wouldn't need much modification; after all, you could load one up with various home-made JPEG adverts or some make-believe action shots of an actual Subbuteo match in progress - even some video clips if you really wanted to. Granted it wouldn't be able to show live scores but hey, that's where your imagination would take over, right?

2. The touchline 'number display' official

Well why not... He's come to epitomise everything from Sir Alex Ferguson's timekeeping to tactical substitutions these days. The man on the touchline with the digital display board is as much a part of the modern game as Sky Sports or Alan Hansen.

To be brutally frank, it's hardly essential to have a Subbuteo figure that just stands there holding a board (which in real terms would have a painted number on it) but that's all part of the Subbuteo oeuvre, as we've already covered here at The Football Attic. A touchline display man (well what exactly would you call him?) would stand there on the side of your green baize pitch happily minding his own business, passively adding realism and detail to any match more than you would ever realise. You know it makes sense.

3. Handshake centipedes

OK, I'll admit - the name leaves a little to be desired, but you see what I'm getting at. Every Premier League game starts off with both sides shaking hands - even if one member of the away team has said something derogatory about his fellow man among the home team ranks.

It's all a load of overblown nonsense, of course, but it's a part of 'the beautiful game' 2013-style, therefore it would need to be converted into plastic for Subbuteo purposes.

There are several ways this could be done. Either a composite centipede-like team could be created which could be manually moved past another similarly connected-up team, or a stick like device (like an ice lolly stick) could be created that ordinary players would sit on. This would allow one team to shuffle past the other easily as if a succession of handshakes was in progress.

Oh, and let's not forget the branded head-level board that would stand behind both teams too. Vitally important, reinforcing the brand.

4. The sponsor pitch disc

Come on, give me a break - these names don't come easy, you know.

We've all seen them while we've been sitting there in a draughty stadium waiting for the match to start: the rounded plastic sheet that covers the centre circle on the pitch. Usually it says something like 'Carling Cup' or 'Barclays Premier League', but in the imaginative world of Subbuteo it could say whatever you liked.

Come to think of it, it could be made of whatever you liked - cardboard, paper, plastic... Paper would be sufficient as it would allow you to print off your own personally branded discs that could be cut out and placed on your pitch proudly before every game. 

Unfortunately you'd need an army of plastic youths to carry the sheet off for added realism, but we'll save that for Phase Two of our product development campaign. 

5. Mascots

Finally, the ultimate in modern day Subbuteo ephemera - a plastic figure designed especially to mimic that sad bloke in a parrot costume who wastes every other Saturday afternoon trying to enliven the kids at your club's home ground.

Of course when I say 'parrot' it could just as easily be a dog or a bear or a... bumble bee? Well yes, admittedly this one comes courtesy of Spanish club Rayo Vallecano, but the truth is I could have shown anything from Arsenal's Gunnersaurus Rex to West Ham's Herbie the Hammer. Whatever the mascot, I'm sure it could be immortalised in miniature form and sold in its own sub-range as part of the Subbuteo array of paraphernalia.

Go on, say it: you can't believe no-one's ever thought of that before. I know, and that's why I legged it down to the Patent Office before I wrote this article. Genius is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

So what have I missed? What else do you think Subbuteo would be adding to its 2013 accessory catalogue that I haven't included above? Leave us a comment or drop us a line - admin [at] thefootballattic [dot] com.

The Scoreboard: A display of practicality

I’m embarrassed to say it, but I used to have a bit of a thing about scoreboards when I was younger. Stadium scoreboards, game show scoreboards, cricket scoreboards… you name it, I loved it.

There was something about those static signs  with changeable numbers that had me transfixed as a kid. If someone scored a point in a football match or on a TV quiz show, I’d wait with eager anticipation to see the scoreboard update the total, be it manually or digitally. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I loved the magisterial sense of purpose that a scoreboard possessed.

This blog doesn’t take TV nostalgia as its subject, else you’d be spending the next 15 minutes reading about It’s a Knockout or Family Fortunes. Instead I shall turn my attention towards the humble football scoreboard, and they don’t come much humbler than the one installed at Wembley Stadium around the time of the 1966 World Cup.

Essentially this was a single-line display showing the two competing teams and the score. Being very much old-tech, the scoreboard was literally just a printed  or painted sign with white characters on a black background along with those all important changeable numbers. And those numbers needed some effort to change as the full set were available as individual tiles that had to be lugged around and slotted into place by a couple of men in white coats whenever anyone scored. It was simple, but it worked.

After a while, Wembley put in place an electronic scoreboard which, compared to its predecessor must have seemed like it had arrived from another planet. Using a vast array of light bulbs switched on and off in distinct configurations, rudimentary characters could shine out from the inky black background to tell the crowd what the score was and also who had scored. Such electrical wizardry can't have been lost on a generation eager to see technological advancements improving their game-viewing experience.

Around the UK, scoreboards of all kinds had appeared at football grounds right from the very early days but they never really had the 'wow' factor, nor did they become a universal feature. Scoreboards (old-fashioned or new) were high-maintenance and often expensive so only the most committed clubs went out of their way to get one.

Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground got an electronic one around the time of the 1966 World Cup, but like so many of their day, it had its faults. Blown bulbs and faulty mechanisms meant text was displayed with letters missing or even shown on a different area of the scoreboard. After a while, fans got used to the garbled messages and even grew to like them as a distraction from the action taking place on the pitch.

Fully digital scoreboards like Wednesday's were slow to make an impact and venues hesitantly looked for a compromise. Despite the 1970's beginning on the crest of a scientific NASA wave, the greatest tournament on the planet was still relying on name cards and a handful of bulbs to tell people what they needed to know. If it wasn't for the opportunity to raise some money from the advertising space it provided, many scoreboards probably wouldn't have even seen the light of day.

In the end, our first sight of a new-age scoreboard didn't arrive in England or South America, but from the one place most people least expected it. Over in the United States, the occasional blown bulb wasn't going to stop NASL clubs making a song and dance about the new-found sport they were purveying.

With players like Franz Beckenbauer, George Best and Pele in town, fans needed to be reminded about the razzmatazz they were witnessing, or at least reminded who it was they were watching.

In addition to the basic electronic scoreboards already resident at some NFL and baseball stadia, bigger, more advanced displays cropped up at a small selection clubs across the country. Many of them not only displayed the score and scorers but also entertained the fans with animated imagery and messages.

With such extravagance creeping into the world game, it was hardly surprising that Subbuteo updated their own scoreboard accessory to a more modern version in 1978. The World Cup that year reinforced the notion (at Buenos Aires at least) that a new technological age had dawned, yet actually the rate of progress was still painfully slow. Even in Spain four years later, the old hand-painted name plates and tiles were still being used.

It would ultimately be up to the major stadia of the world to lead the way where modern scoreboards were concerned. At seemingly every major Cup Final on every continent of the world, scores and scorers were illuminated for ticket-paying supporters with great efficiency and clarity. Huge matrices arrived to give displays better clarity and definition, to say nothing of bigger text. Yet just as soon as they'd reached the peak they were always destined for, traditional scoreboards were starting to see the writing on the wall. (Or should that be 'board'?)

By the mid-1990's, Sony's Jumbrotron system was appearing at some of the world's major musical and sporting events, affording spectators the chance to see real-time video on enormous screens. The ability to provide people not just with text-based information but moving pictures and action replays left the traditional scoreboard looking rather old-fashioned and redundant all of a sudden. Even down-at-heel football clubs across the UK saw the potential to attract fans, even if it meant snapping up cruder, cheaper versions of Sony's big screen.

And so we find ourselves in 2012, an age where virtually every Premier League ground seems to have a big video screen tucked away in at least one corner of the ground. For all that, however, some clubs have remained true to the old virtues, believing that a simple scoreboard should not be a big distraction to the things happening on the pitch. Therein lies hope for the future - a reminder that sometimes we can learn a lot from the things we learned in the past. Video screens are all well and good, but the scoreboards of days gone by told us exactly what we needed to know in a beautifully simple way.