This team, along with ‘number 2’, was included in the Subbuteo Club Edition which I owned in my pre-teen years. Part of a set that enabled you to play a game of ‘Reds v Blues’ it was one of the most versatile teams you could own.
Looking at the index on the poster, this red-shirted team represented 13 clubs and three countries. Going through them in order, it’s not easy to establish the exact kits they wore back in the 1978-79 season - so much so that I could only illustrate three of them for this article.
First of all, there’s Malta and here you can see that the Subbuteo version of this kit was fairly similar. Were it not for the white ring neckline and the three-stripe Adidas branding you’d essentially have the exact same kit. Not bad.
Then there’s Nottingham Forest, very much at their peak when this Subbuteo poster was made. Like Malta, their kit was also made by Adidas, but Forest’s version featured a v-neck and a large version of the Adidas trefoil logo on the shirt. A classic kit from the Clough era and yes, I did use my No.1 kit as Forest when I played Subbuteo as a young boy.
Finally, there’s Perugia of Italy. As with Nottingham Forest, they were historically at the top of their game forty years ago, finishing as runners-up in Serie A in the 1978-79 season. It happened to be the first campaign when Perugia were allowed to display manufacturer logos on their kit, and in this case they modestly decided to show an Umbro logo only on the shorts.
In general, however, the kit differed little from that of the previous season and is the most markedly distinct from the Subbuteo original. A multi-stripe winged collar, cuffs and Umbro’s diamond outline taping on the shorts makes for a kit that looked nice but nowhere near the Subbuteo edition.
So what about the other teams listed as No.1 on the poster index? Well it’s a long story...
Firstly, there’s AGOVV of the Netherlands. My research shows that they’re a team that traditionally wore blue shirts, not red. Surely a mistake on the part of Subbuteo, there? Maybe they were supposed to be associated with kit 2 on the poster? Either way, not the best of starts...
Next, there’s Royal Antwerp. No worries here about whether the Belgian side wore red or not, but I couldn’t find any pictures of the 1978-79 home kit. This, however, is the following season’s kit, and here you’ll notice it’s all red with an unavoidable white winged collar.
Next up, we have Cliftonville from Belfast, and once again there’s a paucity of photographic evidence to plunder, but there is this tiny picture from the 1979-80 season. It shows a double stripe down one side of the shirt and a winged collar which, like the previous kit, is very different from the Subbuteo equivalent.
After that, there’s ‘GAK’, alternatively known as Grazer AK of Austria. Guess what? No photos or video showing what they wore in 1979. Dutch side Groningen come next, a team that traditionally wears a home kit of white and green. Great. They wore an away shirt of red in 1984-85, but the poster suggests this is a home kit. Another error of judgement on the part of Subbuteo, one would have to say.
If North Korea’s kit from the 1966 World Cup is anything to go by, Subbuteo were probably justified as listing them at number 1. Sadly there appears to be no photographic evidence of their kit in 1979, so we’ll never know for sure.
We then find a team listed as ‘Olympic’ of Belgium, but here we really enter a black hole as there’s never been a Belgian club team called Olympic in recent history, and certainly not one that wore red shirts.
Portadown of Northern Ireland come next, and all I could find for them is a shirt worn (supposedly, at least) in the 1978-79 Irish Cup Final. It looks just like the Malta shirt and may well have been worn during the 78-79 season, but video footage on YouTube shows that Portadown wore their away shirts of white in the Final, so there another mystery remains.
Two further Irish teams, Shelbourne and Sligo Rovers, offer up nothing by way of resource material from 1979, and the same can be said of Standard Liege and KSV Waregem of Belgium and the national team of Tunisia.
So out of 13 teams, I only managed to confirm the details of three - partly due to cock-ups on the part of Subbuteo themselves and partly because the teams have faded into a degree of obscurity. Not the best average, it’s fair to say, but perhaps I’d have better luck with the second kit on Subbuteo’s 1979 poster...
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