Before the days of the Lottery....The Pools

One 48

One 48

One 48

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Anyone remember that?

My Dad used to do that a lot, so back in the day and after a while he convinced me try it, this is a true story and my very first time doing this and long ... long before the National Lottery started up, there was a guy came round weekly selling these coupons door to door I think it was?
Anyway, there were two company's back then ... at least two? Vernons and Littlewoods? but for some reason my daft old Dad was convinced Vernons paid better and was better option?

So Thats what I tried, Vernons and lo and behold when the numbers were announced It seemed I had a winning match ... asked my Dad to check ... who had never won in his life and here was me on my first attempt with a winning combination of numbers ... he was like a wee kid in excitement, most embarrassing really :)
I only won about £125 back then, but I discovered later that if I had played Littlewoods Pools with same random numbers it would have been in excess of £600 ... I was a bit miffed LOL.

Back in early 80's that would be a good wee decent first time win I guess :)
 
I think my parents won about 10 grand back in the early nineties. Used it to pay off the mortgage back then if I recall correctly.
 
I remember my grandad doing them…I think it was the same guy who collected the ’mark the ball’ cards (picture of a game of football with the ball edited out, had to guess/mark where it was), was only every so often for that though…maybe wasn’t even the pools guy!
 
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My dad won the Lotto as part of a work syndicate just after the recession in the early 90s. £13k was his share which considering the time and economic climate was a lot of money.

I see that as all of the family luck being used up for at least a generation so I don’t partake in the lottery.
 
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My late father did the pools every week until the Lottery became popular. I think he’d did the Littlewoods pools. He also followed the horses and was a regular in the local Ladbrookes.

That sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it wasn’t due to the proper old school financial arrangement in our house. Dad would come home with his pay packet in hand on a Friday and hand it straight over to Mum who’d hand him the money needed to by his cigarettes for the next week and the few £ it cost to play the pools and put a few 20p accumulator bets on Saturday.

He kept a small float of around £5 on the mantle piece in case he a bad week, but he appeared to break even most of the time and had the occasional small pools win and did well on the horses once in a blue moon. Winnings from such went straight into the family’s holiday fund.
 
Another one killed off by the lottery were the charity scratch card booths that were in the entranceway of almost every supermarket. My parents would always buy a couple of the Tenovus Cancer ones when they did their weekly shop. Jackpot prizes were something like £5k cash or a Vauxhall Nova. One time my mum won the car (Would have been about 1989 as it was a ‘G’ reg). It was the absolute most basic model you could buy, 1.0l saloon in flat red but to a family who always had crappy old cars it was a pretty big deal.
 
Feek says numbers and question mark, he'll be right, never was a betting man myself, its how I remember it.

Mention of Spot the ball here, LOL, local guy up here in the North actually won on Motorcycles News version of spot the ball a brand new Kawasaki Z1300, spoke to the guy on day he won it and he was quite calm about it ... 1980 Aberdeen, awesome :)
 
I used to do the Pools before the Lottery came out.
My wife's Uncle won just under £200,000 in the 60s and that set him and his boyfriend up for life.

I used to live in Nigeria and one day my Dad came home from work saying the next time you come out I want you to bring me 5x Rothman's Football books because the Nigerians at work don't believe me.
They did the British Pools in Nigeria and one Saturday somebody like Norwich (at the bottom) beat Liverpool (at the top).
This made the Nigerians angry saying 'These white people making scores up don't know what they are doing' :)
They didn't believe that all those matches took place, my Dad told them that back in Britain all the local schools would have multiple teams playing every Saturday, every Bar would have a team playing at the weekend but they wouldn't believe it.
This is why over the last couple of decades it's been amazing to see Nigerian football making an impression because back in the 70s you couldn't get 22 players on a pitch.
Anyway when I took the books out they still didn't believe all those matches on the Pools happened.

Any old uns remember the Rothman's books, they were excellent at the time?

Some here - https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=r...yIsZIqBJ5zgnsEPqIG8oAY&bih=841&biw=1256&hl=en
 
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I remember my grandparents doing the Pools, with an old guy that used to go door to door. I think they only stopped when the guy died.

Another one he used to do was Spot the ball. I think that was in one of the newspapers. A picture of a football game going on with the ball removed and you had to put an X where you thought the ball was.
 
Does the pools still exist? I’m sure at least until very recently they still put the pool points on the BBC results at the end of Final Score.
 
My Grandad used to collect the pools money.

One chap won big and gave him £1000. He bought a second hand Ford Anglia with it.

It should start again along with spot the ball.
 
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Feek said:
.. claims by telegram
Click to expand...

Was it?
I never won and I don't think my Dad did either.
As soon as the Lottery came out our works Syndicate moved over to that .
We were called T.*.*.*.*. which stood for The Wine and Ale Tippers Society.
 
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