Great Subbuteo matches of our time: England 5 Hearts 1 (abandoned after 60 mins)

With the end of the season now in sight, the thoughts of supporters of clubs with little to play for are elsewhere - anywhere but on the football field.

But the premature end to the season for some (and as a Hearts fan, that’s me) brought to mind the days when I was a lad (no, not the war years) in the early 1970s when Hearts often struggled in an 18-team First Division (the top flight in those days) and an early exit from the Scottish Cup meant tedious end-of-season fixtures against the likes of Arbroath and East Fife with nothing to play for.

In order to relieve such turgid fare, my cousin George and I would arrange our annual Subbuteo Challenge Cup match, a game that would take on unhealthy significance for us both (he was an Aberdeen fan and in the early 1970s their season tended to end at the same time as Hearts). Subbuteo was then, and probably still is, the world’s best table football game and was the saviour in the Smith household on many a Saturday evening after a Hearts defeat.
 
It says much for my nerdiness that I still recall a 1974 game that was to become not so much the Battle of Santiago (younger readers ask your grandfather about the 1962 World Cup) as the Battle of South Aberdeen, where I was living at the time.

The build-up to the game was my first experience of the class war that still exists in today’s society. While I had just two Subbuteo teams, a set of two goalposts and a brown ball, cousin George had a dozen teams – one of which was Ajax of Amsterdam – a green baize pitch with markings, a dugout, manager and an assistant and, the piece de resistance – floodlights.