Doing the pools

Many years ago when I was a kid there was a Saturday tradition in the Ugarte household involving a teleprinter, a pen and the back page of a Saturday newspaper for doing the pools.

 

Dad would do Littlewoods pools every week on the off chance of a win but it was always small wins never the jackpot, sounds familiar with today’s pools, the lottery.

A bloke Dad worked with was a collector for Littlewoods pools. Every Friday dad would hand over his entry form with two or three lines of eight from ten. Score draws was dads chosen pleasure later I would become hooked on doing ten home wins. I remember there were all kinds of permutations you could use to have more chances of winning. Mum would do Spot-the-Ball, and she didn’t like football.

 

My job would come on a Saturday if I were home not out having fun to write down the scores as they came in on the teleprinter. I would sit down with BBC Grandstand waiting for the results to write them down

for dad to check later. Once the earlier games were over and enough results in it was time for the classified results. There was always the late kick-offs to hang around for as I am talking about the 70s, pitch invasion and hooliganism the main reason for delaying the final whistle.

 

I may not do the pools anymore but I still to this day insist on watching the football results come in via the BBC. Grandstand may have long gone but the results service is still going strong but I miss the teleprinter.