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Post by Craig Herbertson on Nov 21, 2013 8:49:39 GMT
This is like Subbuteo Anonymous.
Me and my best pal played the entire Scottish league (and cups) in ten minute games for three years in a row. I still have the meticulous details of all the games and the final league tables. This was amongst numerous friendlies and internationals. We hand painted all the teams In fact, I'm kind of surprised we had any time to play hundreds of gigs during the time.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 21, 2013 13:05:18 GMT
This is like Subbuteo Anonymous. Me and my best pal played the entire Scottish league (and cups) in ten minute games for three years in a row. I still have the meticulous details of all the games and the final league tables. This was amongst numerous friendlys and internationals. We hand painted all the teams In fact, I'm kind of surprised we had any time to play hundreds of gigs during the time. Man, I am so impressed! Could never get the hang of painting the little blighters, or repairing them when they'd suffered the inevitable double leg-fracture or decapitation under a stray knee, resulting in two teams of short-arsed, lopsided mutants. One of the blue players never stood up properly again, so I stuck him on goal-hanging duties, hoping for a flukey deflection. Did you and your pal stick to the rules. The baby-sitter was a stickler for 'em, which is probably why she won 6-1 won 1-0 won a throw-in, but only because I let her and anyway, it's a stupid game and I don't want to play any more. God, but the The Subbuteo World Cup Song is a bit rough. Even the excellent Jess 'Soccer Superstar' Conrad would have thought twice. Maybe you'd like to cover it? THE SUBBUTEO WORLD CUP SONG They will all come round the mountains when they come, When they win they'll come to Munich - bang the drum! They will dream of fame and glory, from Leeds to Tobermory, They'll all come round the mountain, when they come. Singing Ho, Ho, Ho, Subbuteo, Singing Ho, Ho, Ho, Subbuteo, From each continent and island, from your land and from my land, They're all bound for Munich as they go. Oh, the French boy and the German will be there, The Italian, Dutch and one from Angleterre, They will come from Wales and Norway, they'll be found in every doorway, And Switzerland will come to Munich Fair. Singing Ho, Ho, Ho, Subbuteo, Singing Ho, Ho, Ho, Subbuteo, Denmark, Belgium, Cyprus, China, they will come from Asia Minor, Singing Ho, Ho, Ho, Subbuteo Now John Waddington will send a trophy bold, lt may be made of silver or fine gold, But the boys will come to win it and drink the stuff that's in it, And finish as their fathers did of old. Singing Ho, Ho, Ho, Subbuteo,, Belgium, Brummagen, Belfast and Borneo, With excitement will be bubblin’ from gay Paree to Dublin, Singing HO, HO, HO, SUBBUTEO! Lyric by Frank Burton of Subbuteo Sports Games Limited.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Nov 23, 2013 0:14:49 GMT
We had our own rules. There was continual movement for example, except for goal shots. We'd be flicking men back as the other player was teeing up. Bobby Prentice the winger for Hearts got 4 shots instead of 3 and the infamous Cropley, a legend for Hibs was also given 4. We used a dried pea as the ball for a while and home and away pitches at each others houses in various rooms, including the kitchen table top which was a very fast pitch. We played a ninety minute game once but as it ended something like 32 - 31 we decided it was a bit over the top. We had about five sets of different players from various sets including the zombies of course and one set was an absolute mongrel, Partick Thistle. It was my bogie side - painted hoops in orange and black. I sometimes wonder what else we did except play subutteo.
It's a sad refection of a wasted life when I can still annihilate my son at the game.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 17, 2014 8:18:47 GMT
Gordon Bartlett and his men celebrate a hard-earned championship and promotion to the Conference South (Bromley, Ebbsfleet United, Bath City, Boreham wood psycho marauders, Shitehawks, etc.)!Congratulations and very well done to the players, manager, staff and supporters of Wealdstone FC, who secured the Ryman Isthmian League championship on Tuesday night (15th) with a 1-0 win at Margate. On a similar note, congratulations and very well done to Wealdstone Ladies F.C., unbeaten champions of the Thames Valley Counties Women's Football League! Roy Couch - Wealdstone Football Club: Facts & Figures (2013) The late, much loved Belmont Rattler's last great work, printed and published (?) by Martin Lacey & People for Print, Sheffield. Contains nearly everything you ever need to know about Wealdstone F.C. since the club turned pro in 1971. As indispensable in its own field as The Orgy of Bubastis is in ours.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 16, 2014 10:02:30 GMT
For those who thrilled to the Hondurans "uncompromising" tactics vs France yesterday .... Russ Williams - Football Babylon (Virgin, 1996) Cover design: Slatter-Anderson/ Cover photographs: @ Sporting Pictures; Popperfoto; AllSport blurb: The most ASTONISHING, AMAZING, ABSO-BLOODY-LUTELY ASTOUNDING tales of sex, death, bribery, corruption, violence, rumour and HUMOUR - from all around the world - that you'll ever find about the game of two halves.
Football Babylon isn't just about matters of life and death it's much more important than that. You'll GASP, you'll LAUGH and you might even be AS SICK AS A PARROT, but you'll read it all the same.
It's a funny old game, football. Isn't it. Eh? MARVELLOUS."Football is a post-colonial replacement for knife-fighting. Football is popular because stupidity is popular." - Jose Luis Borges. A trawl through the on-field brawls, related murders, match-fixing, high profile arrests, substance abuse, hooliganism - in short, a sporting Newgate Calendar guaranteed to leave we, the decent football purists shaking our heads in anger and dismay. Whatever happened to the beautiful game? "It is a standing insult to sportsmen to have to play under a rule which assumes that players intend to trip, hack and push their opponents and behave like cads of the most unscrupulous kidney." So wrote C. B. Fry, England cricket captain, Corinthian footballer, and world record long-jumper, lamenting the introduction of the penalty kick during the 1890-91 season. It seems that the great all-rounder was so focused on his his stellar career that he remained entirely oblivious to the thuggery, hooliganism, and gamesmanship going on all around him. As early as 1860, when the fine art of hacking - kicking an opponent on the shin with a hobnail boot - was officially outlawed, Blackheath F.C.'s response was to disband and relaunch themselves as a manly rugby team instead. You hardly need this book to tell you that they really needn't have bothered. Football Babylon is far from comprehensive - for example, you will search in vain for any reference to the riot masquerading as a sporting contest that was the first leg of Celtic's 1975 European cup semi-final versus Athletico Madrid, but no disputing Mr. Williams knows a terrible titbit when he hears one ("Chelsea fan Tom Whattle ... was fined £10 in 1976 for sticking a hot-dog up the anus of a police horse called Eileen."). When it comes to violent on-field lunacy, it seems nobody does it better than the South Americans. At International level, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile and Columbia have kept SWAT teams on their toes for over a century, while the antics of various incarnations of Racing Club, Nacional, Independiente, and Estudiantes de la Plata warrant an entire volume to themselves.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 10, 2016 17:10:52 GMT
Roy Race with Giles Smith - Roy of the Rovers: The Official Autobiography (Arrow, 2014) Blurb As Captain and later player-manager of Melchester Rovers, in a career of unprecedented majesty and extraordinary length, he scored 481 goals and knew the glory of ten league titles, eleven FA Cup victories and three European Cup wins. He also survived an assassination attempt, a helicopter crash, a terrorist car-bomb attack, two earthquakes and a surprisingly high number of kidnappings.
But only now has he told the tale in his own words - the greatest football story of them all.Great fun, even if you have to trawl through several decades of SUCCESS *spit* before you get to the real meat, because the multiple tragedies that blighted Racey's later playing days and managerial career more than compensate for all the cheery stuff. Cases in point. The sniper's bullet that left him hovering on the brink of death over the 1981 Christmas Holiday. Don't ask him what it's like to be in a coma because he doesn't remember). The suicide car-bomb attack on the team coach in war torn Basran that claimed the lives of eight of his team-mates. The loss of his beloved wife, Penny, horribly mangled in a car smash, and the subsequent falling-out with his son, Rocky. The helicopter crash in 1993 that cost Roy his legendary left foot and even forced him to consider retirement. The serial traumatic kidnappings on pre-season tours of South America. And, of course, the curse of 'eighties hooliganism. Contrary to popular belief, Melchester's fans were no angels, and the 34, 569 arrests at their grudge match with Westbury Town provided excuse enough for the chairman to install an electrified fence along the perimeter of Mel Park. In the course of 320 precious pages, Racey lifts the lid on every aspect of the beautiful game, fair and foul. We learn the secret of his diet (mum's carrots and lard concoctions), and early training regime -which included the strapping of concrete slabs to either thigh to increase muscle strength - as devised by his misery-guts father, who had a terminal groin strain and eloped to Spain with the Sexton's eldest daughter, Bethany, in 1967. R.I.P. the Basran eight.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 4, 2016 13:27:00 GMT
Derek Dougan - The Footballer (Allison & Busby, 1974). Jacket Illustration: Alan SaundersBlurb: THE FOOTBALLER is Danny Stone, one of the superstars of today's high-pressure game, key striker for Branton United. He has risen from the poverty and grime of his childhood backstreets to become an international hero, as rich as he needs to be, owner of fast cars and captivator of beautiful women. Danny Stone has everything.
But it takes a losing streak for his great club, and a real dressing-room bust-up between him and manager Fred Jarman, for the reality to strike home. Life is not as Danny expected it to be. Somehow, something is missing...
Derek Dougan's first novel is a book that only a professional footballer could have written. It gives us a vivid and intimate picture of what life is really like behind the scenes, beyond the action replay. He shows us how youthful skills are developed (or sometimes killed off) by our educational institutions; how the big clubs scout and bribe their way into parents' confidences so as to sign up young players; how regimental training methods can flatten the skills of a natural ball player-, how young players, on their own for the first time in digs, can reject all sensible advice and become so seduced by their nearness to stardom that the birds and the booze and the quick buck from a signed newspaper article become all that life's worth living for. The big-match nerves, the money, the prima donnas, the dictators, the nervous breakdowns and the huffs, the shattered private lives, the bullying, the bookings and the relentless struggle for victory — all are exposed in this truer-than-life story.Football in the 'seventies. REAL football, mate, not like what you get these days, bloody pampered, overpaid nancy boys, spitting their dummies out if the trainer says boo to them and threatening to quit for a bigger club the minute they've strung together a few mediocre appearances for the under three's. Wankers the lot of 'em, not like you got back in "the good old days", when men were men, women were up for a laugh and a proper seeing to (either that, or they were lezzers) and sideburns were mandatory. Take DANNY STONE as just one legendary example. No bling, Baby Bentley's, WAGS, Alice bands, fluorescent boots, hippy crack and falling down drunk in nightclubs for HIM. The plot, such as it is. First division Branton United have been beaten 5-0 at home by lowly Alverton Athletic, continuing a dismal run of form which has seen them lose seven of their last nine matches. The team are booed off the pitch - even Danny Stone, idolised by the fans, if not his team-mates, cops an earful as he skulks towards the dressing room to face the wrath of Fred Jarman, the new-ish manager. Red-face Fred does his pieces. How could a Jarman team lose to Alverton, "a crummy lot, who've never won a fucking thing in their lives, not a tin sausage!" Danny Stone, singled out for particular abuse, ignores him. Jarman is forever telling Stone that he's not as crucial to the team's success as he likes to believe, so the man is clearly certifiable and his opinion doesn't count. If the old fool doesn't like it, there are several top teams jostling for Danny's signature. It was all so different when Fergus McIntyre was boss. Proper football man. No mock-Tudor mansion in Warwickshire or any of that hi falutin crap. Knew where you stood with old Fergus, especially if you were Danny, whose goal-scoring exploits were rewarded with preferential treatment, even if he was a disruptive influence in the dressing room and ran snitching to the press should any bastard dare upset him. Fergus got Branton into the top six and kept them there season after season, only for the stupid board to unfairly sack him after he pleaded guilty to a drink driving charge! Danny's had enough of Jarman, Branton, and the toffy-nosed FA (the latter have had the temerity to hit him with a disrepute charge over his controversial sending off in the Longton game for retaliatory assault on "professional clogger" Dicky Dawes, a total nobody who got exactly what he deserved). Minted for life and always welcome on Brian Poole's chat show, The Rising Generation even if he does have to share the spotlight with poofy scruffy pop musicians, maybe he'll jack the game in altogether. So Danny goes AWOL in London for a week to not have sex with Jill/ Sylvia, the Soho stripper, and ponder his woeful lot. Possibly the most dreadful football book to feature on this forum. Less a novel, more an embittered auto-hagiography. Recommended.
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Post by helrunar on Jul 4, 2016 16:54:50 GMT
Dear Dem Bones, are you a professional screenwriter? Just lurve your way with a phrase and how you bash our much-beleaguered language about.
I'm afraid I was on the verge of laughing during much of that. I'm not sure it's the appropriate reaction, but it's the one I had.
I hope the author found his way to some semblance of a happy life, but it seems unlikely.
cheers, Hella roona (rhymes with RAMBOONA nevah fails!)
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Post by dem bones on Jul 4, 2016 21:59:42 GMT
I'm afraid I was on the verge of laughing during much of that. I'm not sure it's the appropriate reaction, but it's the one I had. I'm not sure the late Mr Dougan would appreciate your laughter. If there's one thing that sets The Footballer apart from most of the titles covered in this section, it is a complete absence of humour. The credit runs: "My thanks to Ray Seaton who has worked as hard as me in creating Danny Stone" so it's likely Mr. Seaton pieced it all together from interviews with "The Doog", who was never found wanting for an opinion (Alwyn Turner of Trash Fiction informs me that, long after hanging up his boots, The Doog appeared on political debate show Question Time - representing UKIP). Ironically, Ray Seaton's other co-authored books include Good Morning Boys - Will Hay: Master of Comedy (1978). Finding this came as a bit of a shock. Wolverhampton Wanderers legend Derek Dougan 'caused Cup Final death crash' says Aston Villa hero Might explain "Danny Boy"s worryingly liberal views toward drunken drivers.
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Post by jamesdoig on Oct 18, 2016 8:45:20 GMT
Looks intriguing - a sleuthful Gordon Banks:
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Post by pulphack on Oct 18, 2016 10:39:30 GMT
Sounds good but you can tell it was via an American publisher - what's that on the back about a 'test match' with West Germany? The ghost of Sir Alf shudders (in a genteel way)...
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Post by dem bones on Oct 18, 2016 12:42:14 GMT
Sounds good but you can tell it was via an American publisher - what's that on the back about a 'test match' with West Germany? The ghost of Sir Alf shudders (in a genteel way)... Too right, Mr. Hack. England versus West Germany was ever a keenly fought fixture, but not once did it degenerate into a game of (I shudder as I type) .... cricket. Not sure I like the cut of this Ian Chapel character's gib. Never mind the soppy LA Ravens. If old cyclops-features had a patriotic bone in his body, he'd have remained back home tackling corruption in proper football.
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Post by jamesdoig on Oct 19, 2016 0:34:59 GMT
Too right, Mr. Hack. England versus West Germany was ever a keenly fought fixture, but not once did it degenerate into a game of (I shudder as I type) .... cricket. Just for that, here's a nice cricket cover (and I mean it to sting):
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Post by ripper on Oct 27, 2016 12:45:08 GMT
The Doog was practically worshiped in Wolverhampton in the early 70s, and even in my school, a dozen miles at least from the Wolves ground, he was a popular figure and most kids' favourite team player, so I wouldn't be surprised if his book sold a fair few copies in the area.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jun 6, 2017 8:10:42 GMT
Apologies if it's been covered elsewhere, but did Jackie Collins' never novelise her epic football/rock pop crossover classic, Yesterday's Hero? Thanks to the wonderful (?) Talking Pictures channel I had the privilege of watching the film version yesterday (ho ho!) and ...
Yesterday’s Hero (1979) Talking Pictures is really dredging 'em up. Jackie Collins' idea of the exciting world of football and 'rock'. Seeing as the 'rock star' who takes over third division The Saints is Paul Nicholas - OK, he did some good work with Ken Russell, and is rather engaging but the likes of Dancing With The Captain and Grandma's Party somewhat soil his hard rockin' rep, and as the music is in the hands of Bugatti and Musker (with Stanley Myers), we're in trouble. The football comes courtesy of washed-up boozer Ian McShane, who used to be a contender but is now reduced to slogging through mud baths for 'Windsor Town FC'. Yes! My cup runneth over! It's another Windsor film, joining The Omen (1976), Carry On Loving, On The Beat and No Sex Please, We're British in the Royal Borough's hall of shame. The Saints are heading for the FA Cup final but need a striker. Clint Simon (Nicholas) wants to take a chance on Rod Turner (McShane), but tough sheepskin-coated manager Jake Marsh (Adam Faith, no relation) is convinced Rod is too attached to White Horse whisky to make a comeback. Things are complicated by Clint's female duettist, the unlikely monickered (until you think Jackie Collins) Cloudy Martin (Suzanne Somers)who is one of Rod's old flames – and he already has the hapless Susan (an almost unrecognisable Glynis Barber) on the go despite being permanently pissed. You know what's going to happen, and if you're nostalgic for dreary late 1970s Britain in washed out colour failing to be enlivened by Joanie's sister's idea of the jet-set high-life (a shite disco playing Anita Ward's Ring My Bell in which Faith and McShane have a classic handbags confrontation )and can take The Saints making the final, going in 2-1 down at half-time, with a previously suspended McShane on the subs bench, and his dad (Sam Kydd) and an underprivileged half-caste child who idolises Rod in the crowd etc.etc. Highlights are few and far between but include a few views of Windsor, a montage of McShane getting back into shape as Nicholas and Somers tour the world by appearing on the same lousy sound stage and shouting the likes of 'Hello Stockholm!' or 'Good Evening Amsterdam!', plus good old Motty not only providing commentary and managing not to piss himself when announcing 'Leicester Forest' (there’s a Birmingham Rovers mentioned as well) but appearing in person. A time capsule of tack, originally released as an A certificate, but upgraded to an 18 by TP, presumably for McShane flashing his arse, Somers her drawers, the word 'bastard' and McShane unforgettably sinking a double scotch before driving a minibus full of kids out for a kickabout. Plus ca change. Incidentally, Frank McLintock was Football Consultant and Alan Lake has an excruciating cameo as an ex-footballer who's selling the beautiful game to America, complete with two birds, awful Transatlantic accent, gold-plated telephone in a swish hotel suite, you know - those signs of empty glamour that Jackie adored so much - his character name? Georgie Moore. I'm assuming Bobby Best sounded too much like a Northern Comedian. ‘The Saints’ and ‘Leicester Forest’ were apparently concocted so footage of the actual 1979 Football League Cup Final between Southampton and Nottingham Forest could be used (no CGI hereabouts). Yet another in the relatively tiny battalion of football (as opposed to football hooligan) films. And I’ve still never seen The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, Escape To Victory and/or When Saturday Comes.
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