Product Description

Mark Adolph was the envy of his schoolmates - he never had any problem getting rare Subbuteo teams because his Dad invented the game and owned the factory that made it. Mark tells the story of Subbuteo from the very early days when his father Peter had thousands of orders but no games with which to supply them. He recounts his father's adventures in football as a director of Tonbridge FC and supporter of Queens Park Rangers, as an avid collector of luxury cars and as "a bit of a rogue". Did you know why the game is called 'Subbuteo'? It's because Peter Adolph wanted to call it 'The Hobby' but was persuaded this was not specific enough. Peter was an ornithologist and Falco Subbueto Subbueto is the Latin name for the bird of prey The Hobby Hawk. Peter began his adventure with an advertisement in "Boys Own" magazine in 1947 offering a new table top football game for 7/6d (37.5p in new money). At that time the idea was just that, an idea, and Peter went off to New York to value a birds' egg collection. Once there, he got a telegram from his mother asking what she should do with GBP 7,500 worth of 7/6d postal orders, worth about GBP 750,000 in present terms. Then began the frantic process of making the game and suggesting it should be played on a pitch made from an old Army blanket!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47977 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Andrew Baker, Daily Telegraph
Peter Adolph was a James Bond-like figure, a hard-drinking womansier with a penchant for fast British sports cars.

Mark Hodkinson, The Times
It is some story, framing the rich and restless life of an enigmatic man, part-international play-boy and part homespun local businessman.

FourFourTwo magazine
The story of the game is fascinating, particularly as Adolph, a serial womaniser and heavy drinker, seems to have a remarkable knack for getting into scrapes, once being challenged to a duel after some ill-advised flirting at a trade fair in Belgium. ... there is a great story here, and some moments of high comedy.

Customer Reviews

A very pleasant read
In this book Mark Adolph accomplished a difficult task, when he succeeds in humanising the myth of Peter Adolph, which to most Subbuteo fans always represented a kind of infallible, almost aseptic, figure.
Peter's penchants and, indeed, weaknesses are described in a very honest way, so that the man as well as the entrepreneur are brought closer to and for the reader.
A difficult, like many, father/son relationship is highlighted by a trip to Old Trafford, which is an amusing and at the same time little sad anecdote.
It is refreshing to read that Peter Adolph would not behave much differently to any other Subbuteo enthusiast when playing, i.e. with a bit of gamesmanship.
This is Subbuteo from a totally new perspective and, frankly, I did not miss one bit the technical aspects of the game, which are rightly overlooked in what is, after all, a man's story.

the people behind subbuteo ....
of course there is more to tell about subbuteo than what you will read in Mark's book. Subbuteo has become a little universe of itself with clones in Italy and world and other federations trying to create a sport out of a toy. There is the obvious link to New Footy and the accounting and marketing strategies of Hasbro. There is so much to tell that you wonder if it would all fit in one book? Maybe more people should put their own Subbuteo-story on paper, enough fanatics to buy and read. In his book Mark is giving us a glimps of the people behind the product. Untill recent day, all I read was about the little plastic men themselves (e.g. a flick to kick), I kind of forgot that you needed the initiative and hard work of people to come to something so popular and big as Subbuteo. Reading Mark's book brought back fond memories of my own childhood days, when I was playing subbuteo with my friends, the closest thing to playing the F.A. cup myself. The book helped me to complete my image of the complex Subbuteo story, I am happy to have it in my collection and will gladly lend it to my friends. The book is not written by an experienced writer, but is fun to read.

Oh, what a story this could have been
Looked at as a biography, this book is a pleasant but shallow read, lacking detail and witness (other than the author's). It's written almost entirely from the casual memory of Mark Adolph, with a meandering structure and little insight or even comment. Yes, it could be argued that P. A. Adolph is an important person in that he developed a game which became one of the most recognised in the western world. However, what this book inadvertently shows is that this was really his only achievement, and even then the original idea was stolen by him. This doesn't have to matter - Adolph had the drive and vision to make the most of a great original idea; but the book tries to paint him as something much more creative in general, also as having a beneficial effect upon others' lives. This stretching of the basic truth about the man means we never see into the real character of Adolph; we have to read between the largely sympathetic lines. So, despite the author's 'explanations', we see, for example, that Adolph beat his wife and had many affairs; was the role model for 'competitive dad'; spent his money on luxury cruises, booze, endless holidays; stole the idea for Subbuteo from Newfooty; and while described as an inventor, never succeeded with anything but table football (Subbuteo angling, speedway, cricket, rugby anyone?); knew all his employees' names, yet would sack anyone who disagreed with him and then sold the company to Waddingtons for a huge wad when it suited him anyway.

For me, a long time player of the game (England international for many years; several European finals; English champion, etc), this book reflects the dichotomy between the company and the players, one which eventually spoilt the game and the business. And Subbuteo was always a business to Adolph, and his successors, far above it being a game in its own right. In this respect it's not surprising to me that there is not a single mention in this book of anyone who played the game seriously. The author constantly refers to his own playing, as if he really loved the game. But apart from the fact he never played in a real table football league, he gives away his actual lack of playing experience when he describes, at one point, how his father was able to score direct from corners, with an 'inswinging' shot. Well, let's just say that no one in the history of Subbuteo/table soccer has been able to make a ball's flight bend laterally. It's impossible. Top-spin, yes; but you can't make it inswing. In the same section, he goes on to say that, in his desire to beat his father, he got hold of Subbuteo's range of practice equipment and used it to improve his skills. Again, they were all useless, mainly because they were based on miniaturising soccer practice techniques, which are icompatible with table soccer techniques. One of these pieces was the shooting practice device, which was a plastic card with holes in, to put in front of the goal. The idea is that you were supposed to shoot through the holes. What Subbuteo's designers failed to appreciate is that shots in table soccer do not travel in a straight plane - the vast majority move in an arc, and enter the goal on the down slope of that arc. In other words, you can't shoot through the damn holes because the angle is too steep to allow it.

This designer arrogance of the company extended to the Subbuteo re-launch of 2005 which Mark Adolph describes as 'keeping to the integrity and format of my dad's original concept'. Well, what happened was that, yet again, the company didn't consult the players on design and a new playing figure was produced which couldn't be used effectively because it's centre of gravity was too high, so it kept falling over. But it didn't really matter anyway because the main gimmick this time was to combine table soccer with Pokkemon cards - make the kids keep shelling out on bags of random figures until by chance they got a complete team. Needless to say, the whole thing was a dismal failure. Integrity indeed.

Not surprisingly, Mark makes no reference to the battle that raged between Subbuteo and the players in the late 1970s. By this time, the playing side was big - thousands of competitors throughout Europe; televised games; taken seriously as a sport. The problem for Subbuteo was two-fold: 1) these were people playing table football, not a miniature version of 'the real thing', e.g. they didn't dress up in soccer outfits or pretend to be Manchester United, and 2) worse still, they were using playing figures that Subbuteo no longer made (flats), or making their own figures and other equipment. The so-called 00 scale figures could not be made to spin accurately (despite Subbuteo still including pamphlets on How to Spin in its sets), so were useless for competition. Worried they were losing their grip on the game, Subbuteo flew the European secretaries to Holland for a meeting. With no preamble, their director offered the eight or so of us a huge sum of money (about £8 million in today's money), in return for which we would call the game 'Subbuteo' (not just 'table soccer') and we would use their latest equipment. Some wanted to do this but a stirring speech was made by the England secretary, about how none of our members wanted to play with Subbuteo's crap equipment and equally crap approach to the game, and the offer was turned down. Now, that would make a fascinating book.

Since then, the playing side has diversified too much, in terms of different types of playing figures, but it still thrives throughout the world. And even though some competitions still use the word 'Subbuteo' in their title, the company and its products have little to do with the game any more.