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Subbuteo

Why the new Subbuteo re-launch is an abomination

Subbuteo is back (again).

Every few years, some disconnected company somewhere manages to get licence to the name, and each time seemingly makes an absolute pigs ear in trying to re-launch the Subbuteo brand in a modern era.

The Subbuteo community is bustling. It’s better than it’s ever been in my lifetime. Yet this community finds itself stuck in a glass box, unheard and unseen.

While a “table football” fan and collector, my Subbuteo collection is limited to official, Subbuteo branded products. That is largely the La Leggenda series (just seven teams to go until I have the full set!), Premier League branded Hasbro teams and as many of the modern Paul Lamond Games/Netcam teams as possible. Plus a handful of Leggenda Vintage.

Unfortunately, the attitude and ignorance of the official Subbuteo brand makes it painful to be a collector.

The state of this video, released on a Saturday night to signify yet another “re-launch”, says it all:

https://twitter.com/SubbuteoOficial/status/1353027527472787456

There are so many people in the community doing much better things than this. The feedback below the tweet says it all.

There was no information on where we could buy the “new” sets, and if you go on the official Subbuteo website, it’s a drab site with barely any information listed.

That was followed up this week with a video detailing “new” teams.

The trouble is, these look exactly like teams that were released since 2012. I’ve already got virtually identical versions of these times.

Such has been the disjointed efforts of Subbuteo, particularly to the UK audience, there is just no real catalogue or logical way of monitoring just what is released.

Would it have been so hard to use reference numbers?

The La Leggenda and other collections in Italy have been superb. 150 teams, all clearly marked and labelled. I know exactly where I am.

Yet with the modern day Subbuteo, I’ve got multiple licensed teams (which I can semi-understand due to sponsorship and kit changes), but I don’t want another bloody green and white team.

Give me something different. A Croatia. A Motherwell. A Boca Juniors. Anything. Something.

My excitement at seeing a Subbuteo set on sale in Tesco was dampened by the fact it looked so boring – a relatively plain green box, with a small window to show a few players. That’s not going to engage my son.

Make it attractive. Get a photo on the front of people playing and enjoying the game. Get individual team sets released in the pocket money section – heck, you could even start doing 5-a-side teams in “blind bags” to make them cheap and then people might combine two 5-a-side teams to make a full one.

With the latest “re-launch”, now is the time for someone to get a grip of it. People WILL buy them if they are done right. Give proper reference numbers to released items.

And stop embarrassing stuff like this happening – where people order VAR sets and don’t get them!

The way Subbuteo currently operates is like a football club that completely ignores its fans – and then wonders why no one buys a ticket.

News

How to play EA Sports Rugby 08 on Mac

It’s one of the greatest rugby games of all time – and people are still playing Rugby 08 to this day.

You can dust off your PS2 and still get the original game, or play on PC, and now we’ve got the game working on Mac too.

This post will provide a walk through to setting it up, especially for the guys on the the Rugby 08 Enthusiasts Club page on Facebook.

For reference, I’m using a MacBook Pro with macOS version High Sierra (10.13.6) and CrossOver version 15.1

1. Download Rugby o8 PC version – via this link

2. You may also need to Download the Unarchiver App to unzip the above download.

3. Download CrossOver for Mac – this is a programme that enables you to run PC software on your Mac. There is a free trial available to get you started, but it’s well worth the money once you’ve got things working!

4. Install CrossOver and then open it.

5. Click on the Install a Windows Application button

6. You can type anything in the select an application to install section, as it’s an unlisted application. Click on the blue result and press Continue.

7. Select an installer source – this is where the Rugby 08 download from earlier comes in. You’re looking for the rugby08.exe file that’s within the unzipped folder.

8. You may have a bottle already created, if not, simply just follow the steps to create one (I recommend creating a Windows XP bottle) and press continue.

9. After pressing Install, you’ll see the game try and install. Once successful, you will see this screen.

10. If you hit any snags, then there may be a few things to tweak. Firstly, click “Wine Configuration” inside the Bottle you’ve installed the game.

11. Set the Windows Version to XP. Under Graphics, tick the “Emulate a virtual desktop” box.

12. Another solution to some problems is to right click the Bottle name, go to Settings, and ensure the “Use Legacy X window system” is checked.

Frequently Asked Questions

As questions appear, I will try to add them to this post to help anyone with problems.

Q. How do you change the screen size?

A. This is done in game and not via CrossOver. Load the game and go to: My Rugby > System Settings > Display Options. Change resolution to 1024×768.

Q. How do you use a PS4 controller on a Mac?

A. This is done via Bluetooth. On your Mac, go to Settings > Bluetooth and ensure Bluetooth is switched on. Then get your PS4 controller, and hold the PS and Options button until the controller starts flashing blue. Then on the Bluetooth screen on your Mac, press Connect to sync. PS. Make sure you do this before you load up the game on CrossOver, otherwise it won’t work.

Q. The Options button doesn’t seem to work on the PS4 controller?

A. Not resolved this problem yet! However, if you press Esc on your keyboard, this replicates the Options button (the start button to those old enough!) functionality.

Q. When I install the game, it gets stuck on the Rugby 08 title screen?

A. You need to change the settings in your CrossOver bottle via the Wine Configuration screen (as described in point 11 above).

Football Manager, News

Football Manager sees 43% rise in users in March

Online gaming and eSports saw users peak in March, with Football Manager seeing record playing figures in the absence of live football, according to new research.

March saw a massive rise in people playing games during lockdown, with online platform Steam seeing a 22% spike in people playing their top 20 games in the past month when compared to figures from February.

Research by OLBG’s Gaming Habits study breaks down the data behind Steam’s top six games, studying their average player statistics at any one time in previous months when compared to March 2020, the rise and fall of the figures in those months and the peak number of players during that time – something which went through the roof in March.

Football Manager was one game in particular that saw a massive spike in people playing, with an average of 102,388 people playing across all versions of the popular management simulation game in March.

That represented a 43.8% increase on February, which saw an average of 71,186 people playing at any one time, meaning Steam experienced a rise of 31,202 playing just on Football Manager alone.

The was also a record high of 240,363 people playing across any of the Football Manager games at one point in March (almost twice the previous record which stood at 126,501 in November 2019) with Football Manager 20 smashing the previous best for a single game, with 189,230 users online at 5pm on Sunday, 30 March.

Users have dropped slightly in April – partly due to Sport Interactive’s offer of a free trial coming to an end – but there remain daily peaks of well over 100,000.

The popularity of eSports has almost never been higher, with Counter-Striker: Global Offensive posting record figures across any game on Steam for players online at once.

On Saturday, 18 April at 8pm, there were 1,305,714 players online to make it the biggest peak recorded by Steam.

These figures are matched by traffic to OLBG’s eSports betting tips page, which saw an increase of 943% along with a 146% rise in tips placed across all games on the site.

Across the three major games available to place tips on on the OLBG site, they saw the following rises in March from February:

League of Legends – 69%
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – 151%
DOTA 2 – 245%
Other – 290%

For more detailed analysis and visual representations of the trends in online gaming, visit: https://www.olbg.com/blogs/growth-esports-popularity

CM01/02, News

Champ Man at 12 project

After being furloughed from work, I had the idea to stream me playing Championship Manager 01/02 each day at noon.

Part of the reason was to give me a focus, but the other was to have a look at how streaming worked.

With CM 01/02 set up on my Android tablet, I wanted to stream via Twitch, and to do that needed to make use of a go between app – Omlet Arcade.

After getting the technology sorted, it was time to play.

I had a few options in mind to play – I was using the ODB with the 3.68 patch installed – and so put a Twitter poll up to get my first team.

So Queen’s Park it was.

The opening day went OK. I had a 250k bid for one of my centre halves, a massive amount of money for the Scottish Third Division, but ended up rejecting it off the advice of one of the few viewers of the stream, who just happens to be my best mate.

Struggled a little bit results wise, and also had a problem where I was unable to make substitutes due to the restrictions of playing on Android. I had selected Helium and not Cuprum through the emulator, so that needed rectifying for the following day.

The headline act of day one was Scotland international Kevin Kyle signing for one of my league rivals on loan!

Day two brought an encouraging start to the season, and some movement in the transfer market. A hat-trick for Dave Menelaws the highlight, especially as it came against Kevin Kyle’s East Fife.

But it quickly went downhill. A horrendous day three had me on the back foot, conceding early goals left right and centre, and really struggling to make any progress.

One drawback of using Android is the inability to draw arrows on the tactics screen, which of course can be quite useful when you’re in a bit of a slump.

Now don’t get me wrong, in my 20+ years of playing Champ Man, Football Manager and before that Premier Manager, I’ve had slumps. I’ve had dreadful sessions. In fact, dreadful sessions are quite common.

The trouble was, I just didn’t know where to turn next.

Part of me wondered whether the goalkeeper was the issue, but we were conceding that few goals, it surely wasn’t that. It was surely a lack of goals a the other end?

I did at least manage to start shaping my squad a bit better, shipping out some deadwood, and also attracting decent fees for players that weren’t getting in my team.

Despite that, the costs of playing at Hampden Park were already taking their toll. I had, somewhat ambitiously, picked Queen’s Park as an option thinking the stadium would enable me to compete with Rangers and Celtic in the future.

What I hadn’t thought of, was how difficult it was going to be to get there in the first place!

By day five, I was losing the will to play. My woe on the pitch was compounded when Richard Sinclair, the £20k valued centre half who I had rejected £250k off Palace for, agreed to leave on a Bosman to Sheffield United, gifting me a paltry £20k in compensation.

So what have I learned from the experience?

  • Huge admiration for streamers and YouTubers, and how they build their audience (I barely managed to get one person watching over the five days)
  • I’m useless at CM
  • As much as the Android tablet play is fantastic for being on the move, the restrictions relating to tactics raise questions over whether you can truly manage a save well on it (a solution to this could be to pre-load a tactic via PC and then transfer it to your tablet for game play)

Will I stream again? Who knows. I thoroughly enjoy doing it, but without an audience, it just isn’t the same.

Subbuteo

The Subbuteo Cup 2020

The lockdown has seen a plethora of new tournaments come to the fore – nonemoreso than the Subbuteo Cup.

Run by the brilliant Subbuteo Online, and featuring a live video draw from the terrific Subbuteo Collector, the tournament brought together Subbuteo players and enthusiasts alike to play games solo in the form of competition.

Here are some of my highlights from the tournament so far:

Never one to shy away from innovation, this Subbuteo host provides a novel way of introducing the players to the theatre.

To kick off the tournament, it had to be the man that’s helped bring together the online Subbuteo community with his passion, enthusiasm and consistency.

I just want one of those Fergies.

Absolute finish this, and a nice match ball to boot.

I wish I could do all parts of this video – the filming, the editing, the playing.

https://twitter.com/SubbuteoOnline/status/1248538809362534401

What a set up. I’ll whisper it quietly, always felt the traditional Subbuteo pitch was too big.

Football Manager

119% rise in football gaming since leagues were postponed

With a lack of live sport to watch on TV, games such as Football Manager 20 have experienced record playing numbers this weekend, new research shows.

With people advised to stay indoors due to the coronavirus outbreak, thousands of sports fans were left with nothing to do which has led to football fans looking elsewhere to watch live sport, resulting in huge spikes in sports games.

Fans of the EPL last week revealed how the National League experienced a surge in attendance figures before being postponed, and now all football fans trapped behind closed doors have taken to playing the management simulation game – with a massive increase of 119% in peak concurrent players in the last 30 days according to new research from OLBG.

Fans would normally be tuning in to watch Super Sunday at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, but with no live matches in the UK, Football Manager 20 experienced a surge in users, with 180,838 people registered as playing online at that time.

With live football still on TV in February, there was a peak of 82,413 players online at once but since the advice has come to shut down the professional leagues and stay inside, people have been getting their weekend sporting fix from playing Football Manager through Steam.

In the last 30 days, the game has seen an average of 57,627 players online at any one time – a gain of 10,075 people from the average taken from February 2020 and a 21% increase.

When compared to previous years’ editions of the game, Football Manager 20 is far and away the best performing. FM19 saw a peak player count of 75,666 in August 2019, while FM18 peaked at 71,279 in January 2018, proving that the coronavirus has had an unprecedented effect on online sports gaming in the UK.

OLBG’s Fans of the EPL study looks at trends behind how football fans watch live football, from attendance figures to their preferred watching habits.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, it has been a priority to look at what fans are doing in the absence of live football, whether it’s attending local football matches or streaming games online. To view the original study, please visit https://www.olbg.com/storage/pr-pages/insights/fans-of-the-epl/how-do-fans-watch/.

CM01/02

How to play CM 01/02 on an Android tablet

Thanks to the legendary community at ChampMan0102.co.uk, Championship Manager 01/02 is still alive.

In a previous post, we explained how you can update to the current season.

Within that, there was some instructions on how to install in a tablet; however due to the discontinuation of Exagear, people have been having problems. ExaGear is the PC simulator that enables a PC game to be played on Android tablets.

But fear not – thanks to Nick+Co on the ChampMan0102 forum, there appears to be a solution!

  1. First of all, download the Exagear apk here
    1. That has the apk that needs installing and also the obb file
    2. The obb file needs to be copied to directory: /Android/obb/com.eltechs.es (you may need to create this directory yourself!)
    3. After installing the .apk and running Exagear it should say unpacking data. If it says can’t find game data or similar it means you haven’t copied the .obb file properly.

2. Now you need to connect your tablet to your PC/laptop.

3. If you haven’t already, download (from here) and install CM 01/02 on your PC/laptop

4. Copy across your Championship Manager 01-02 folder from your Program Files to the ExaGear folder on your phone.

5. Launch ExaGear on your phone and select CM 01/02.exe

Here’s a video to show it working on an Android tablet (I’ve had it installed for a while, so sorry I couldn’t do a step by step video guide!)

CM01/02

How to play Championship Manager 01/02 with current season database

If you’re stuck in self-isolation fear not – because there is a way that you can play the greatest football management game of all time, Championship Manager 01/02.

Not only that, but thanks to the incredible work of the champman0102.co.uk website, you can play it using a database from the current season.

Installing CM 01/02 on Windows

  1. Download the game from here

  2. Save to your computer (it will be a compressed .zip file)

  3. You will need a virtual drive to run the game (such as Slysoft). Download and install.

  4. Now return to the cm0102.zip file, extract the files to your desktop

  5. Right click the cm0102.iso file and mount to drive

  6. Double click to install and then this will create the game shortcut on your desktop

  7. You will need to mount the .iso file every time you want to play (this basically tells the PC that the game is in your virtual disc drive)

  8. You may also want to download the official SI games patch for the original game, available here

Video available via champman0102 below:

Installing CM 01/02 on Mac

Installing on a Mac is more difficult, as you need to get an emulator. I have managed to run the game successfully on my MacBook Pro using CrossOver

Updating to the current season

Follow the update guide on the champman0102.co.uk here

Playing on a tablet

If getting it on a laptop isn’t enough, you can even get it on tablet (Android only).

Video tutorial below:

If you have any queries or problems, visit champman0102.co.uk or leave a comment below and I’ll try my best to help – I have successfully installed the game on all three different platforms.

Stickers / Cards

Rugby World Cup Top Trumps

WHO IS THE TOP RUGBY STAR IN THE WORLD?

WHO HAS SCORED THE MOST TRIES?

WHO HAS THE BIGGEST TACKLE? 

FIND OUT WITH WORLD RUGBY STARS TOP TRUMPS!

The UK’s favourite card game, Top Trumps, compares all your favourite rugby stars ahead of the Rugby World Cup

  • Beauden Barrett is the ‘Top Trump’

  • Could one of George North, Maro Itoje or Michael Hooper be the ‘Top Trump’ by the time the World Cup is over?

  • Compare Stuart Hogg and Johnny Sexton ahead of Ireland v. Scotland on Sunday

Top Trumps has been rating every topic for over 40 years, from Sports Cars to Dinosaurs and Skyscrapers to Harry Potter characters, they’ve covered it all.

They have now launched ‘World Rugby Stars Top Trumps’ ahead of The Rugby World Cup. The pack contains 30 rugby players from across the world and includes categories such as ‘height’, ‘caps’, ‘tries’, ‘year born’ and ‘Top Trumps tackle rating’, as well as a biog on each player – it is the perfect way to compare players in this year’s Rugby World Cup which starts on Friday.

New Zealand’s Beauden Barrett is the ‘Top Trump’ of the pack, beating the other players in almost every category. The pack features players such as Wales’ George North, England’s Maro Itoje and New Zealand’s Michael Hooper… will any of them take the title of ‘Top Trump’ by the time the World Cup is over?

 

 

Sunday’s game sees Scotland take on Ireland; who will trump who out of Scotland’s Stuart Hogg and Ireland’s Johnny Sexton?

 

 

World Rugby Stars Top Trumps is available from Champion Toys on Amazon.co.uk, RRP £5.99

News

Film depicting Diego Maradona to be released in June

The multi BAFTA and Academy Award-winning team behind ‘Senna’ and ‘Amy’ have announced that the highly-anticipated film depicting iconic Argentinian footballer ‘Diego Maradona’ will be released this June. 

The film features exclusive interviews with Diego Maradona and has been constructed from over 500 hours of never-before-seen footage from his personal archive.

It has been directed by BAFTA winning director Asif Kapadia will be released in cinemas across the UK on June 14 2019.

On the announcement, Kapadia said: “Diego Maradona is about an uneducated streetwise kid from a shantytown, thrust into the height of worldwide fame, earning huge amounts of money, given a Godlike status, all because of his magical left foot.

“I wanted to try to understand this charismatic genius, to show all sides of his personality, focussing on his time in Naples, when he became the greatest player in the world, but also where his problems began to spiral out of control.

“It was vital to make a film about Diego which appeals to people who love football but also those who have little interest in sport or who see Maradona as a cheat.

“I wanted to challenge these preconceptions and to understand this complex, brilliant character – enabling him to tell his story in his own words, revealing his struggles for success but also the devastating effects of fame and fortune.”

 

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Recent Posts

Why the new Subbuteo re-launch is an abomination

Why the new Subbuteo re-launch is an abo

January 29, 2021
How to play EA Sports Rugby 08 on Mac

How to play EA Sports Rugby 08 on Mac

December 24, 2020
Football Manager sees 43% rise in users in March

Football Manager sees 43% rise in users

April 22, 2020

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Taking your love for sport off the pitch, Sporting Loft has news, features, reviews and more on a variety of sports related pastimes, hobbies and retro items, with gift ideas and competitions too. Read more…