IMAGINE THAT…

Although I managed the best team at school I played in front of some woeful crowds. Ten thousand. Pitiful. Our league rules dictated that each person represented five thousand fans. Any subsequent people, such as parents or siblings, would be an extra quota, multiplied every time they walked back into the vicinity of play. Pets carried an additional value. Andrew Whittard, the manager of frequent league runners-up Tottenham Hotspur had his pitch in an open plan dining room. With a menagerie of animals too he regularly drew crowds of over one hundred thousand! Even with that home advantage Notts never lost at White Hart Lane! I never imagined losing.

Then a magical event occurred, and my dad flipped my pitch, mounted on chipboard, and built me a speedway track on the other side! Although Subbuteo had finished producing this variation, he wrote to the head office and received some bases and cardboard inserts. With four riders in each heat, I had only red, blue, white, and yellow bases. Each race contained the same four pieces, propelled around one lap by a ball bearing rolled down a steel tube which, as an engineer, dad had modified