Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Tuesday 25 June 2013
25 June 2013
"The pack consists of 44 Soccer players, each in the colours of a famous club." So begin the rules for the second edition of the Pepys card game 'Goal'. The pack has cards for Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, and powers of the pre- and post-war game: Portsmouth, Wolves, Huddersfield. Alongside them, officially a famous club, are Grimsby Town.
'Goal' was first issued in 1960 and the second edition, in 1964, updated the team colours but not the teams themselves. A site about old card games, Nigel's web space, suggests the selection was based on the 44 teams from the top two divisions of the Football League in 1958-59. However, to allow room for four Scottish teams (Celtic and Rangers, Hearts and Hibs), four teams from England (Not Wales; Cardiff City and Swansea Town both feature) had to make way. Rather than leave out the two sides relegated from the second division – the Mariners and Barnsley – the teams omitted from the ranks of the famous were the four who finished above them: Leyton Orient, Rotherham, Lincoln and Scunthorpe. Pepys's timing as well as taste was admirable: Hull took Grimsby's place in the second flight but, by a year, were denied their place among the famous.
Middle-Aged Diary had a 'Goal' pack at home as a boy. They were the fuel for fantasy tournaments, the Mariners winning cross-Britain cups against bigger, more muscular teams. It is tempting to imagine that the positions shown on the cards reflect the style and traditions of the clubs they portray. Grimsby's slight inside right evokes memories of Jackie Bestall and the Wolves player, a centre-half, is thwacking a clearance. Tempting, but almost certainly wrong. The Preston player is no Tom Finney but another centre-half, and neither the Blackpool card – a rather robust looking inside left – nor the Stoke one – a free kick card – suggest Stanley Matthews.
The cards felt dated in the early 1970s. Even in the 1960s, they must have aimed for nostalgic appeal. None of the cards suggest that the players are being watched. Usually, the horizon is an off-focus fade, only the player sharply delineated. Now and again you can make out a distant townscape, while the Celtic player passes with the outside of his left foot against a backdrop of hills. The Nottingham Forest card suggests someone running through the long evening shadows of a tree-lined park. There is never a hint of a grandstand. The players' faces, with their quiet smiles, suggest inward concentration and enjoyment; it is the game itself that is the thing, rather than the entertainment of a paying public. The cards hark after an amateur ethos, when football was just a game, and playing for money was still the object of snobbery.
Just a game, and only one game amongst many. The rules say "Soccer": that is no Americanism but a reflection that rugby also is a football code. No doubt sports did aim for global domination, even then, but they didn't have mission statements about it. The president of FIFA in 1960 was Arthur Drewry, a former Town director. Perhaps that explains why Grimsby made the "famous" 44 and Lincoln did not.
As a boy, I rarely played the actual game, set out in the rules. Now, having bought a pack on eBay, my son and I play a few hands. We take it in turns to play cards in formations that allow us to shoot, often knowing that our opponent has already assembled a defensive formation or played a goalkeeper card to prevent a score. My son is less sentimental than me. The inside forward cards, featuring in slightly fewer shooting formations than the others, are the least valuable. But I can't bring myself to discard Jackie Bestall (as I persist in thinking of him): my son has no qualms in getting rid of the cards of his teams, Man City and Brighton. Sometimes he wins, sometimes the game is drawn, and devising a penalty shoot-out is more fun than following the rules.
Never mind. If the 'Goal' cards suggest playing for the love of the game, I enjoy what they stand for. Forty years ago, I used the cards to imagine a gallant future for Grimsby. Now I look at them to remind me that Grimsby Town were once a famous team. Nothing can take away our place in history.
Whether Patrick McLaughlin played with 'Goal' cards as a boy I don't know. But the York midfielder is certainly happy to be quoted saying that Blundell Park is a place both with a past and a future.