Subbuteo club makes members feel like teenagers again

A football fan is reliving his youth after reviving a Subbuteo club he started almost four decades ago.

The South Norfolk club is one of 41 in the English Subbuteo Association. Members meet every three weeks at the Queen's Head pub in Long Stratton.

Steve Race, chair of the club, started a version of the group in a school classroom in the 1980s and now takes part in league games.

"The beauty of Subbuteo is the social side," he said. "You're playing and talking round a pitch. The youngsters now, when playing on their screens and on video games, they don't have that."

Subbuteo involves using the index finger to flick miniature football player figurines around a tabletop-sized pitch. It was invented in 1946 by former RAF serviceman Peter Adolph in Kent.

Early versions of the game saw pitches with wire goalposts, paper nets, a ball and flat cardboard figures with a button base weighed down by lead washers.

Cardboard figures were replaced by plastic in 1961, and made more lightweight about 20 years later, evolving into the familiar figures used today.

Race's love for the game started when he received it as a Christmas present in the 1980s.

"The roots of the club started just down the road at Long Stratton High School in 1986," he explained. "Me and a few friends asked one of the teachers if we could use a classroom - we pushed the tables together, brought our pitches in and it snowballed from there.

"Word spread. The next thing we knew, we had three divisions, promotion, relegation - we had 30 players turn up every lunchtime."

After he left school, the Subbuteo set went into the loft gathering dust until a year ago, when he wondered about getting the club back up and running.

Now the group has 20 players competing in one league division.

He said: "It tends to be men of a certain age, for nostalgia - so they come in for a pint, they play, then they're hooked and feel just like they are teenagers again."

Race is also chair of real-life football team Long Stratton FC and says the miniature game mirrors the full-sized version.

"It replicates real football," he said. "You're passing, the speed, the defence, the shape of your team, formations - that was really where myself and so many of us fell in love in the 80s.

"It fell off a little bit in the 90s with the advent of video games but it's definitely having a revival now."

Despite now sets being harder to find on the high street, nearly 40 clubs from 10 countries competed in the Subbuteo Champions Leagues and Europa League in Kent last year.

Club member Adam Neckcrews said sets and add-ons - including floodlights - are commonly bought from private sellers.

"I love it," said Neckcrews. "I grew up with it when I was five or six years old and have been playing it ever since. Life happens... I saw an advert for Norfolk Subbuteo and got in touch with Steve [Race] and it has been brilliant."

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