This is the
latest in an occasional series of posts about the days of football-related
board games. These products have been generally consigned to history by the growth
of the computer simulations such as Championship Manager and its successors,
and of course those games such as FIFA which pushed the likes of Subbuteo out
of the do-something-nimble-with-your-fingers-to-get-repetitive-strain-injury niche. The board is a thing of beauty.
The company
name on the box is House of Dubreq, and they seem to be the same company that
launched the Stylophone before a certain Rolf Harris made it more famous. This
Matchday game is one of two products endorsed for Dubreq by Kevin Keegan. The
other was a part-game, part-list of soccer tips called Play Better Soccer,
which in some aspects is similar to Penalty! Matchday itself seems to have had
an unendorsed earlier version from Supagames. As I write (July 2025), there is
a copy of this later version on eBay and the seller is asking £40 for it, but
there are no takers. One source dates the game as from 1976 but it's not clear whether that is for the original or the endorsed version. Maybe an expert in Keegan perms will be able to date it from length and thickness of his hair.
A quick
glance at the rules (in full below) will show that Matchday has a repetitive game cycle with
significant elements of luck. The star players are reminiscent of Ariel’s Wembley,
the need to land on the right squares at the right time is similar to Soccerama.
Kevin is not doing much for the game except lending his fizzog to the
packaging. The eBay site also has several books with his endorsement, so his agent was busy in the late 70s and early 80s for sure. I bet he loved that too.
There are
some quaint aspects to the rules that raise a smile in 2025 – strikers are more
expensive than defenders, only defenders get suspended, a star striker will
cost you £300,000, it’s two points for a win and 56 of them will get you the
title.
So there we
are. Kevin Keegan’s Matchday. My copy (slightly beaten up to be fair as if it
has been in a fight with Billy Bremner) is heading for a charity shop sometime
soon. As for House of Dubreq, it was dissolved in 2021.
Links to
previous football game posts on this blog:
Rules for Kevin Keegan's Matchday:
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