Imagine this. At the busiest time of the season some of the biggest names in the top flight face each other on a rock hard plastic pitch and kick lumps out of each other, often without shin pads, sometimes playing twice a night, all for the chance of winning a top prize of £50,000.
Well, that’s exactly what happened in the mid-1980s when, just before Christmas, the country went six mad as an annual indoor competition was held in front of a sell-out crowd and even broadcast to an audience of millions on the BBC’s flagship Sportsnight programme.
This was no kick about or overly-hyped legends’ tournament that we see nowadays, broadcast on a Bank Holiday Sunday when there is no live sport, this was a full-on competition with a trophy on the line which teams set out to win at almost all costs.
Britain's first major six-a-side tournament was held back in 1982 and went by the name of the Austin-Rover Soccer Six, but failed to capture the nation’s imagination. Teams were limited to the Midlands region with the likes of West Brom, Leicester, Coventry and Notts County sending what could best be described as a list of substitutes to compete.
Despite the failure one thing the fledgling format did do was pave the way for a regular indoor tournament, as the following season winners Birmingham joined Arsenal, Everton, Ipswich Town, Manchester City, Nottingham Forest, Southampton and Swansea City at the 7,600-seater Birmingham NEC for the inaugural Atari Soccer Six.
This time round it was a huge hit as Birmingham retained their trophy and the popularity of the tournament grew: by the end of the decade it had turned into a four-day pre-Christmas festival of futsal at Manchester’s G-Mex arena and The Guinness Soccer Six was born.
If it happened today managers would go nuts as their biggest “assets” tore into each other complete with body checks, mazy dribbles, shots from anywhere and full-on body slams against the perimeter wall when the ball became stuck in the corner.
Unsurprisingly the crowd lapped it up thanks to seven-and-a-half minutes each way fixtures, rolling substitutes and the opportunity to see some of the biggest names in the game doing what everyone else does on a Thursday night in the local leisure centre.
The rules were pretty simple too. Along with the standard six-a-side pitch and smaller goals you always had to have a man in the other team’s half, you couldn’t shoot inside the marked yellow box and if the ‘keeper passed you the ball, you couldn’t pass back; there was even a sin-bin for the more serious offenders.
Due to the competition’s popularity by 1988 21 First Division clubs, along with Second Division Manchester City, were now contesting a tournament which was sponsored by one of the best-known names in the world that offered a total purse of £250,000.
As a result some strong teams were fielded with the likes of Peter Beardsley, Bruce Grobbelaar and Jan Molby in the Liverpool ranks, while both United and City included a host of household names to the delight of the well-lubricated and very vocal “home” fans in attendance.
There’s little doubt that the popularity of The Soccer Six was due to the vast void left by the absence of European football following the Heysel tragedy in 1985, which saw English clubs banned from competing on the continent. That and extremely limited live coverage of games at the time meant that the tournament became must-watch TV that everyone would talk about at school or work the following day.
Notable achievements included Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest who excelled in 1987 as Neil Webb, Franz Carr, Nigel Clough and Ian Bowyer lapped up the quick passing and one-touch football that the competition encouraged, an exciting Charlton side who lifted the trophy in 1988 and Luton Town, the plastic pitch specialists, who thumped Liverpool 4-0 in the 1990 final.
Needless to say when English clubs returned to European action at the beginning of the 1990s and with the greater rewards that would soon be on offer with the dawn of the Premier League the fun soon stopped as managers became reluctant to risk their star names.
Not surprisingly the tournament was quietly canceled in 1991 with little fuss or outrage as television money talked and clubs began to import pass masters rather than encourage them through indoor football competitions; ironically around the same time that a new generation of Futsal fanatics like Ronaldo and Messi were growing up.
But for anyone who ever had the pleasure of going along to the G-Mex or staying up on those cold December nights to watch the fast and frantic football that this incredibly popular tournament so often provided, just the mention of the Guinness Soccer Six will bring great memories flooding back.
