FESTIVE!MEMORIES
SIMON SHELDON LOOKS BACK AT WHAT SANTA USED FAN… TO BRING A YOUNG FOOTBALL
What Santa used to bring...
GROWING up in the 70s and early 80s, any football-obsessed kid looking forward to Christmas would be hoping to receive lots of presents to do with the beautiful game.
There were the obvious gifts like a replica kit from Admiral featuring the England home kit - or the Wales shirt that was so good it was worn by kids who weren’t even Welsh!
Or you went for a club shirt - with Leeds and Manchester United being the biggest sellers at the time.
Over at Umbro, they produced the kits for Arsenal, Liverpool and Scotland. Kids loved them, and they didn’t cost a fortune, unlike now, or have to have players’ names on the back.
Other clothing merchandise included woolly hats - not baseball caps - scarves, gloves and, if you were very fortunate, a coat.
Then there was the chance of getting a new pair of boots – black, of course. You didn’t have a choice of all the fancy colours that are around now - the only decision was boots with moulded/fixed studs or ones that could have the studs replaced.
If you were a goalkeeper, then you might get a pair of gloves and then we come to the ball itself.
A new football was always exciting, and I remember the Christmas after the ’78 World Cup in Argentina that I got the World Cup official ball, an Adidas Tango. Brilliant!
Next there was the Annual! These were an essential item for any Xmas present list. What better way to get your footie fix over the festive period (this was before Sky or BT would be broadcasting dozens of matches over Christmas) than to enjoy a ‘best of’ your favourite comic/ magazine.
Although, to be honest, they were just a random selection of articles thrown together with some festive puzzles and pictures that had been compiled long before Christmas and, in some cases, were out of date.
But we still loved them and among my favourites that I still have now in my collection are many various Roy of the Rovers and Tiger editions, the Match of the Day Annuals 1979 to 1982 and a
Kevin Keegan Soccer Annual from 1977. They’re still vitally important to keep for research purposes, of course!
Other football books were also available, including the history of clubs and how to improve your skills. Player autobiographies were always popular, too.
Moving on to football games to play, of course the biggest, most successful and still the best to this day was Subbuteo. Anyone who remembers playing it, I’m sure would agree with that statement. Writing a few words about the game here wouldn’t be able to do it justice (so that’s my next article sorted out!).
But there were many other football games available, like Casdon Soccer which began life promoted by Bobby Charlton then Kenny Dalglish and in the 80s by the whole England squad.
It had a sturdy plastic pitch that had indentations in front of the goals and two teams of figures that would rotate when the knobs on the side were turned to kick the ball.
STRIKER, made by Palitoy, was a popular game for a while. It would have a pitch, goals, scoreboard and, in some
editions, floodlights. There would be two five-aside teams in which you would press the player’s head down and it would kick the ball, so you could try and pass to another player or shoot at goal.
They even produced extra teams that you could buy. The problem was if you pressed down too hard you tended to break the head off!
Then there was the Kevin Keegan - Grandstand Electronic Soccer game that was a hand-held box of plastic that lit up where the ball was supposed to be and had player control and shoot buttons, plus realistic action sound effects. It looked great but was a let-down when trying to play it. Another gift I received one year was the Peter Barnes Football Trainer. It was a ball tied to your shorts by an elasticated string that allowed you to try and improve your football skills. It didn’t work for me as I always seemed to get caught up in the string and fall over! For a few years, Top Trumps were hugely popular. These were packs of cards with various pieces of information about players etc. You would divide the cards up and then call out something like Goals Scored or International Caps and the other players would look at their cards and whoever had the most of whatever was called would win all the cards. There were loads of different versions, including international stars and the best players from a particular season. The top clubs would have their own set with past and present players. These are still produced now and are available at most club shops. In fact, some of the older sets are quite collectable. There were also loads of board games over the years with various titles like Cup Final, Wembley, The Manager or Quiz Ball. They tried to be a sort of football management game, usually associated with whichever player/manager was well known at the time to make them sound better than they were. Now, of course, we have various video games to play on games consoles. As I got older, I tended to receive videos like your club’s season’s highlights, classic matches or some celebrity introducing clips of own goals and mishaps on the pitch. The sort of thing that is watched once and never opened again… Finally, I would say that my best-ever Christmas present was when I was about seven. I came down on Christmas morning and was told to look outside - there was a full-sized goal erected at the bottom of our garden! I couldn’t wait to go out there and soon started smashing the many footballs I owned at my Dad. He was acting as goalkeeper with a mug of coffee in one hand and a cigar in the other trying to keep warm. Great memories, and Merry Christmas.