Subbuteo Table Rugby

‘Complete with scrummer and live action fullback’

SUBBUTEO Table Rugby reviewed by Mike Hyde [part 1]

It promises ‘all the skills and excitement of real games’, and the last time I played this in 1971, it ended in the match being abandoned due to a fight breaking out and three players suffering breakages amid accusations of cheating in the scrum. So I guess that claim is at least partly true.

SUBBUTEO [the word means hobby, a species of falcon] football was big, very big in a halcyon time before computer games, before even space invader machines. We drank dandelion and burdock rather than coke, and fish’n’chips cost a shilling and three pence. And in Yorkshire we really did have brass bands playing like in the Hovis advert, even if that was filmed in Dorset, not Grimethorpe.

Lads like me played football in back passages, and when we stayed in we played Subbuteo football [or a short lived rival by Waddingtons, often called tiddlywink football.]

The football game was Subbuteo’s first, early versions appearing in 1947 and even though it faded from fashion and stopped being produced in 1990, it was resurrected again in 2012, and again, and again, in new packaging.

Indeed a recent iteration was a John Lewis exclusive, showing its credentials as a nostalgia gift for its former players.

It retains a cult following, ladsy, nerdish, anoraky, and its figures with their wobbly bases appear on keyrings, t-shirts and mugs, which places it among the ranks of the ‘iconic’.

It even featured in a song ‘my perfect cousin’ by the Undertones in 1980, but Subbuteo football itself had a cousin, not so perfect. That cousin was Subbuteo Rugby Union and League, immediately hinting at fudged imperfection.

The set I have isn’t my own original from the 70s but one I bought on Ebay for just £12.50 a few years ago. They can still be bought second hand, as can a host of team sets including many Rugby League teams.

The box is wonderfully reminiscent of a long gone era, and opening it we see what delights it has in store.

There are two teams of 15 players, which for us means two substitutes, which may well be needed due to the tendency of players to break their legs. Those in this ‘international edition’ will be familiar to Subbuteo football fans, and comprise a green team and a red team- Wales v Ireland? Who knows, but real aficionados will want to buy Wigan, Leeds, Doncaster [my home town] or even the occasional less fancied team such as Halifax, or even defunct sides such as Blackpool or Huyton.  [No Coventry Bears I’m afraid, so will need to do something about that during my stay indoors, and that will be in part 2.]

There are goalposts, obviously, and the ones in this set have been broken at some stage, but they still serve the purpose.

And then, drum roll, there are the two exciting features on the box, the ‘live action fullback’ and the fabulous ‘scrummer’.

The fullback is at least twice the size of the other players, an absolute giant, and he has a real kicking leg. He is brought on, NFL style, for special moments in a match such as kicking off or taking a conversion.

For other kicks using normal players, theres a green ramp!

But my favourite feature is the scrummer, which resembles a flat ball into which the little match ball is dropped to simulate a scrum. It can come out of any one of six holes. It is meant to be dropped in from a certain height and should be random, but there is a knack to feeding your own side.

Finally there is the pitch, with markings that are neither Union nor League, then or now, and after a couple of decades in a box will certainly benefit from ironing.

In a couple of weeks time there will be another report on setting up the game and getting into training, stay safe…........