Temple Fortune Football Club

After TFFC had been formed, the Club's founders and some friends began playing the popular table football game 'Subbuteo', under the auspices of the newly-formed TFSA (Temple Fortune Subbuteo Association).
In the late sixties, interest in football was considerable in all aspects – whether it was watching Arsenal (the Kyte brothers and Michael Rook), Tottenham (Robert Silverstone) or QPR (Brian Melzack), or playing for Temple Fortune (founded in December 1968) or kicking about in Princes Park (which was still going on regularly even with the Club formed) or playing Subbuteo!

But Subbuteo wasn't the first table football game played by the Kytes at that time. Nigel created a form of four-a-side table football on a chalked board called 'Rolykins' (the brand name of the little metal and plastic figures with ball-bearings underneath) using 'Lego' goalkeepers on wires! A bizarre game which provided competition for the Kyte brothers before the more refined Subbuteo table football game was introduced as a regular past-time.

With TFSA up and running, all the participants owned their sets of Subbuteo teams and various tournaments were held regularly at the homes of Jeremy Lobl, Robert Silverstone and the Kyte brothers. Competitions were split into major and minor categories, the major ones usually consisting of more participants. Each player had his own set of teams and the leading competitions were the Clifton Gardens League Championship (named after the location of Jeremy Lobl's home), the League Challenge Cup and the European Challenge Cup. The European & League Cup Winners' Cup (or Champions' Cup as it became known) was the prestigious equivalent of the FA Community Shield.

The League Challenge Cup was mainly played using the World Cup format of groups followed by knock-out. The European Challenge Cup mirrored the proper European competitions with most ties being played over two legs. Other minor competitions included the British Entry Shield, the Leeds Shield and the British Invitation League Cup. There was an 'unofficial' experimental competition named the Summer Tour Cup which allowed TFSA to tamper with rules and try different things (such as offside only inside the shooting area). Later competitions were introduced – the Union League and Cup and Rams Cup being very minor competitions – whilst eventually the last remaining competition was effectively the Anglo-European League Championship inwhich the Kyte brothers competed.

The Arsenal and Leeds United teams – two of the most successful sides at the time, both in the Football League First Division (now the FA Premier League) and in TFSA!

The two most successful players were undoubtedly Nigel and Peter Kyte, who dominated the silverware, apart from very rare successes elsewhere. Peter's main team was Arsenal with Stoke City as his secondary side. Nigel took Leeds United to frequent success and also had Sheffield United vying for the honours. Peter's lesser team were Peterborough United (of course!) whilst Nigel's was Northern Irish club Glentoran (whom he had seen at Highbury against Arsenal in the European Fairs Cup in 1970). Co-founder Michael Rook played mainly as Wolverhampton Wanderers and Birmingham City, Brian Melzack as Queen's Park Rangers and Robert Silverstone as Tottenham Hotspur and Luton Town.

TFSA had a set of small trophies to award to the winners. Most matches were refereed and there was a suspension system for players sent off, using a coded method to denote the number of players 'suspended', the number of flicks permitted (3 was the norm per player in Subbuteo before another player had to play the ball), and the length of the suspension in matches. For example, 3-1-1 would mean 3 players permitted 1 flick for 1 match! Common disciplinary action included 1-1-3 which represented a 3-match penalty for 1 player. This system was considered the best because forcing a team to play with 9 or 10 men was considered unrealistic (suspended players get replaced in real football!)

The honours lists below have been split up into the major and minor competitions. The competitions listed were played in the order shown. In between the major competitions the minor ones were being played as well. Where a player had two teams of his own competing in a final, another person would take one of the teams. So although the overall win was recorded to the teams' owner, it wasn't always the desired team which won! An example of this was Stoke beating Peter's main team, Arsenal, in the third Champions' Cup Final!

Subbuteo continued to be played competitively until the mid-seventies afterwhich it tailed off and remained predominantly a past-time for the Kyte brothers to enjoy more than the others.

Picture at the top: Subbuteo players representing TFSA's four most successful trophy-winning teams, namely from left to right, Sheffield United, Arsenal, Leeds United and Stoke City.

TFSA trophies: From left to right, the European Challenge Cup, the League Challenge Cup (still carrying a paper sash carrying the last winning team's name) and the Champions' Cup. The tallest trophy shown here is approximately 120mm high!