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Anyone still do the Pools?

Watching the classifieds tonight and all the postponements I thought what happened to the Pools Panel? Then I realised they were not even showing the pools points next to each result like 3 for a score draw etc. I think the Pools are still going in some form but obviously were hit massively in the mid 90's by the National Lottery. I really used enjoy doing them. Seems weird now filling in your coupon and having it collected by some stranger along with your 22 1/2p for your Eight from Ten full perm etc. 
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Comments

  • Stig
    Stig Posts: 29,021
    I haven't done it since the guy in our office stopped doing collections - getting on for 30 years now. It wasn't that important to me personally, but I always have fond memories of my dad doing it. Woe betide anyone who talked over the football results - two big things on a Saturday evening: How did Charlton get on? How did the pools go?
  • Riviera
    Riviera Posts: 8,167
    Stig said:
    I haven't done it since the guy in our office stopped doing collections - getting on for 30 years now. It wasn't that important to me personally, but I always have fond memories of my dad doing it. Woe betide anyone who talked over the football results - two big things on a Saturday evening: How did Charlton get on? How did the pools go?
    Telegram claims are required for 23 1/2 or 24 points....  Happy days! 
  • oohaahmortimer
    oohaahmortimer Posts: 34,145
    I was speaking with my wife about it the other day she’s 12 years younger than me so doesn’t remember it .
    22 1/2p was the price I remembered continued with the Aussie footy in the summer .
    that was when a million was worth a million ! 

    So are the pools definitely alive ?
  • Riviera
    Riviera Posts: 8,167
    I was speaking with my wife about it the other day she’s 12 years younger than me so doesn’t remember it .
    22 1/2p was the price I remembered continued with the Aussie footy in the summer .
    that was when a million was worth a million ! 

    So are the pools definitely alive ?
    I googled earlier and it seems something is still around,
     Aussie Pools, I always put Eltham down as a draw! 
  • PopIcon
    PopIcon Posts: 5,970
    I remember as a kid on the Coldharbour Estate our local pools guy had really bad rickets. 
  • I still do them because my numbers are registered and I pay by direct debit. I never check them but had a nice little win a couple of weeks ago
  • guinnessaddick
    guinnessaddick Posts: 28,602
    edited March 2019
    I used to do a pools round in the early 80’s when I was 16. Got about £20 for a couple hours work doing the round and another hour putting it all together for collection. Christmas was good for tips and doing 2 weeks at the same time. Would always pop back if someone haven’t had it ready when I called.

    Missed the jackpot one night, when I went to play a cricket match and I got the lady who used to the the round, do it for me. The next day she told me that she knocked at one door and a young mum answered the door with only a towel and was surprised it wasn’t me at the door. She moved shortly afterwards. 

    I bet she had no draws, let alone 8.
  • AFKABartram
    AFKABartram Posts: 57,824
    Bizarrely one of my boys asked yesterday what the pools was when watching the classifieds!
  • smudge7946
    smudge7946 Posts: 4,131
    WH Smiths had a pools machine next to the lottery one. 
  • clb74
    clb74 Posts: 10,824
    Ffs 
    Just said to the wife did your dad do the pools.
    I've still got his numbers was the reply.
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  • i_b_b_o_r_g
    i_b_b_o_r_g Posts: 18,948
    Remember the pools man coming round too collect his money years ago and also the milkman, both recognisable faces around SE7 in the 80's, along with the toffe apple man on his Tomos step-through scooter
  • Stig
    Stig Posts: 29,021
    Did anyone ever win? I didn't get the even the smallest of compensatory wins; perhaps that was another appeal of the lottery, I at least got a few tenners. My dad on the other hand had two pretty substantial wins before I was born, which perhaps explain the importance of the pools to him. In the early fifties he won enough to pack up his job, buy a new motorbike and do nothing but swan around for a year. Eventually, my mum (then his girlfriend, not yet his wife) got fed up with with him doing nothing and so one weekend gave him an ultimatum, get yourself a job or I'm leaving. "It's alright", he responded "The money's gone now, I'm back to work on Monday"!  
  • MrOneLung
    MrOneLung Posts: 26,835
    Remember my dad fuming one week as Dartford missed a last minute penalty and costing him a fortune on the 4 always line of his pools. 
    I used to enjoy adding up the points each week. 
  • MrOneLung
    MrOneLung Posts: 26,835
    footballpools.com

  • guinnessaddick
    guinnessaddick Posts: 28,602
    Stig said:
    Did anyone ever win? I didn't get the even the smallest of compensatory wins; perhaps that was another appeal of the lottery, I at least got a few tenners. My dad on the other hand had two pretty substantial wins before I was born, which perhaps explain the importance of the pools to him. In the early fifties he won enough to pack up his job, buy a new motorbike and do nothing but swan around for a year. Eventually, my mum (then his girlfriend, not yet his wife) got fed up with with him doing nothing and so one weekend gave him an ultimatum, get yourself a job or I'm leaving. "It's alright", he responded "The money's gone now, I'm back to work on Monday"!  
    A few people on my round won a bit, never the jackpot, also some won on the spot the ball competition, few were pros, who had rubber stamps with 100 x on them.
  • MrOneLung
    MrOneLung Posts: 26,835
    Spot the ball used to annoy me, as it wasn’t where the ball actually was that won, it was where a panel of ‘experts’ considered the centre of the ball to be. 
  • Hastingsaddick
    Hastingsaddick Posts: 4,079
    edited March 2019
    I use to help my sister do the collections for Littlewoods Pools around Gravesend....that was around 40 years ago....quite liked having a go at spot the ball.
  • Stig
    Stig Posts: 29,021
    Whenever I saw the results of the spot the ball, it never seemed anywhere like I'd think it should be. Always looked like a scam to me.
  • Chizz
    Chizz Posts: 28,331
    Gordon Banks was one of three members of the pools panel along with ex Blackppol and Newcastle player Tony Green and Banks' fellow World Cup winner Roger Hunt.  Three players with no experience of playing in England since 1973.  

    I wonder who will get to replace Banks.  
  • Chizz said:
    Gordon Banks was one of three members of the pools panel along with ex Blackppol and Newcastle player Tony Green and Banks' fellow World Cup winner Roger Hunt.  Three players with no experience of playing in England since 1973.  

    I wonder who will get to replace Banks.  
    Happy memories resding this thread. I always retained an affection for the pools panel as back in 1991/92 our game at the Den was postponed and the panel gave it as an away win. How little they knew. So poor is our record against Millwall I've held onto it as a small victory ever since.
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  • Chizz
    Chizz Posts: 28,331
    Stig said:
    Whenever I saw the results of the spot the ball, it never seemed anywhere like I'd think it should be. Always looked like a scam to me.
    It was
  • SuedeAdidas
    SuedeAdidas Posts: 7,736
    Chizz said:
    Gordon Banks was one of three members of the pools panel along with ex Blackppol and Newcastle player Tony Green and Banks' fellow World Cup winner Roger Hunt.  Three players with no experience of playing in England since 1973.  

    I wonder who will get to replace Banks.  
    Happy memories resding this thread. I always retained an affection for the pools panel as back in 1991/92 our game at the Den was postponed and the panel gave it as an away win. How little they knew. So poor is our record against Millwall I've held onto it as a small victory ever since.
    Luckily he wasn’t one of the spot the ball judges. 
  • 3blokes
    3blokes Posts: 4,610
    I used to do a pools round as one of my several  jobs sponsoring my way through uni. Don’t think any of my round ever won anything substantial. If they did, they never told me!
    That was also the time of renting videos, and I also worked for a firm where I used to trail round parts of Erith and Blackheath with a suitcase of videos for rent like an overgrown Del Boy. 
    I would often get a customer give a sniffy sift through my motley collection of titles then they would say:
    “ You got....any...OTHER sort of videos,mate?”  followed by a nudge nudge wink wink.
    I would reply “ No, sorry mate ‘fraid we don’t do Betamax.” :wink:


  • Mosscat
    Mosscat Posts: 197
    My dad won the pools in 1958, He bought a house in Petts Wood and my mum still lives there. He put the cheque in a frame and it was on the wall. 
  • COOPS
    COOPS Posts: 146
    Yes I still do it with The Football Pools. Been playing for 3 years now and only won 33 pounds.

  • Addickted
    Addickted Posts: 19,456
    My Nan won £1400 on the pools in 1969.

    What a Christmas that was. Got a go-kart and a Johnny 7.
  • LenGlover
    LenGlover Posts: 31,651
    I've not done the pools in more than 20 years.

    Littlewoods still write to me once a year or more though to ask me to start again.

    Another example of the impotence of the Data Protection Act I referred to on the 'General Things That Annoy You' thread.
  • Addickted said:
    My Nan won £1400 on the pools in 1969.

    What a Christmas that was. Got a go-kart and a Johnny 7.
    A Johnny what???
  • Nicholas
    Nicholas Posts: 7,626
    I was speaking with my wife about it the other day she’s 12 years younger than me so doesn’t remember it .
    22 1/2p was the price I remembered continued with the Aussie footy in the summer .
    that was when a million was worth a million ! 

    So are the pools definitely alive ?
    So your wife is 55 then?
  • LenGlover
    LenGlover Posts: 31,651
    As a child about the time I first went to Charlton the pools panel members I remember are Arthur Ellis, Ted Drake and Tom Finney. There was another bloke but no idea who he was and not convinced I knew back then.