Viva Brighton Issue #28 June 2015

the lowdown on...
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Table football
No spinning allowed
Table football was invented and patented by
the Englishman Harold Seares Thornton, in
1922, after he’d been to a Tottenham game and
wanted to replicate the experience at home.
He started off using a matchbox and matchsticks,
and developed it from there. Like with
real football the game took off in the rest of the
world and now the Brits are trailing well behind
their counterparts in countries such as the USA,
France and Italy.
The game, however, is enjoying something
of a renaissance in this country, after
hipster-types started playing it ten years or so
ago in Bar Kick in Shoreditch and Café Kick in
Clerkenwell.
The trend was pushed along by the fact that
those bars chose cool retro-style Bonzini
tables, made in France in a similar style to the
classic B60, designed in 1959. Bonzini are based
in Paris, and were formed in 1923. Their UK
operation is run from Brighton.
The game is usually played by one or two
players per side, operating the four bars. The
formation, of course, is fixed, with a goalkeeper,
two defenders, five midfielders, and three
forwards. The object, like in real football, is to
score more goals than your opponent.
As you get better at the game, you can learn
various trick shots, such as the tic-tac, the
push shot and the pull shot.
The game is more about skill than power, so
women can and do compete at the same level
as men.
Table football (called Foosball in Germany,
and Baby-foot in France) is not an official
sport, but it does have a governing body, the
ITSF, the International Table Soccer Federation,
who organise a World Cup, a World
Championship Series, and international player
rankings, as well as national competitions. In
the latest World Cup, in Turin this April, Luxembourg
beat the USA in the final. The ITSF
uses Bonzini, Roberto Sport, Garlando and
Leonhart tables.
At Babyfoot in Brighton we supply bars
as well as companies and individuals with
Bonzini tables. Pubs in Brighton with tables
include the Fortune of War, the King and
Queen, the Fishbowl and the Gladstone. We
supply a table to the Albion at the Amex, in
which we repaint the players’ shirts every year
to match the current style. Customers have included
One Direction – who wanted a supersize
3.5-metre table – and Jackie Stewart, who had
his lime-oak clad, to match the other furnishings
in the room.
Standard Bonzini tables start at £1,895, so
it’s not the sort of thing you’d have in your
average open-plan kitchen, Joey and Chandlerstyle.
They are popular as 40th or 50th birthday
presents. 5,000 or so are made each year; we sell
around 125 in the UK.
The most popular two team kits chosen in
the UK are England and Brazil - we’re ever
hopeful, aren’t we! We can supply kit colours,
hair colour and even skin tone to order, but we
can’t put players’ names or club emblems on
the players’ shirts, as that would be infringing
copyright.
Spinning is not allowed, unless in exceptional
circumstances. Larry Barnett spoke to Alex Leith
Babyfoot Ltd, 01273 811 099
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