F is for Football - 1 - C is for The Champions of Soccer

Back to board-games as an opener to the mini-season on footballers . . . a mini-season that's just started here at Small Scale World!

The box, that's it, it's the box . . . I went a bit mad on the imagery with this one, only because it's been in edit for some time and I kept getting them out again and adding images because I rather like them, the fact that they are the Airfix poses might have something to do with the OTT'edness of this post.

Back of the box - ditto! Published by Mike Orchard Enterprises in 1984.

The contents laid-out and ready to be looked at in detail, which we are about to do to the N^th degree! As you can see it's for 'up to' six players, with 2 as a minimum requirement.

The Figures! Basically six of the seven player poses from the Airfix footballer set, not including the [2'ish] goal-keeper pose/s, but including the substitute?

Stuff for the recycling bin! Actually I think I used them as fire-lighters back in the autumn, however; I kept the balls, although; for what reason, I have no idea!

Team-building trays; I'm not sure if the team shown is at all realistic of actual play, I just filled the tray with random pieces, correctly numbered 1-11, for the sake of a photograph!

The board, it's a complicated system which combines a round-the-board processionary mechanism (like Monopoly) for which you have the figures as counters, and matches; played on the centre of the board as quick Ludo-like races, while team-building (on the green trays) affects the other two elements of play, this - third element - being a collection/points mechanism.

Humm . . . "United", that'll be Mad'chester then! Sorted! Got any Vera's? Going through the rainbow in the correct order . . .

. . . the lupine origins of this orange made-up-team will not be last on the Midland's reader!

North-of-the-boarder's not been left out, yellow Rangers can't be mistaken for many teams!

Albion? At this point my lack of knowledge of the football leagues (read no interest whatsoever!) fails me . . . there are one or two Albion's I think, but which popular one might be represented by green is beyond my limited capacities (read complete lack of interest!).

Safer ground here, we're back to Manchester and looking at derby-game possibilities!

Rovers; and I'm lost again! Roy's were orange? Don't all correct me at once! The made-up team labels as well as seeming to represent real teams come as a sticker-sheet for the purchaser to apply to the green vac-form trays.

More shots of the players, this is a figure-Blog after all! There are six versions of the game to track-down if you want the whole lot, as all six poses were moulded in each colour, therefore there are six different game piece combinations to find.

The advertising hoardings round the 'pitches' make for a nostalgic journey back to the 1980's. with various consumer goods (some long gone) in their prime, or previous, long-replaced logographics! Unipart - "Supercover: keeps the gremlins grovlin'" The gremlins being actually dinosaurs!

The long-sides get three per hording - Vosene . . . looked like treacle and stank like a tanker's hold!

A comparison between the unmarked Champions of Soccer and the occasionally-found common'ish Hong Kong Airfix clones, the HK one is a far poorer sculpt and considerably smaller.

While the games figures themselves are slightly smaller than the Airfix originals they too are cloned-from.

They weren't easy to shoot against a dark background, so here are three images which between them show at least one good version of each figure! That's The Champions of Soccer board game from Mike Orchard Enterprises . . . more footballers to come.

Right - there's a problem with the coding which I can't fix until tomorrow (Virgin fail again, Library again, slow broadband AGAIN! so I'll have to close all the gaps later! Done