When Shorts Were Short S3 E06 Mark Adolph - Subbuteo

When Shorts Were Short

When Shorts Were Short concerns itself solely with what was actually a very narrow window in football history when teams wore, well, short shorts. The podcast takes 1954 as its starting point, when Umbro made their first England kit with shorter shorts, to 1992, when short shorts were all but finished as Umbro's baggy shorts for Tottenham's new kit, ahead of the '91 FA Cup Final, quickly caught on.

If the shorts weren't short, we don't talk about it.

A dashing and restless figure, an innovator and QPR fan, with a packed life away from the game he gave life to, Subbuteo founder Peter Adolph had a colourful love life, even getting caught up in a duel as we’ll hear. He had a Mr Toad-like love of fast cars, pursued expensive and exotic life-long hobbies such as ornithology, and much later, botany and photography. Pre-subbuteo, he’d even been a vocalist in one of the UK’s most popular big bands of the era. A humble and shy man, flawed as so many of us are, this is the story of the man who gave us one of the greatest games ever, and something that for many of us who grew up in the era of short shorts and knew the discomfort of wearing those early, itchy replica kits, remains the greatest football game ever made.

This is the second of two festive When Shorts Were Short specials and it’s the story of Subbuteo founder Peter Adolph, told by his son Mark, whose book Growing up with Subbuteo: My Dad Invented the World's Greatest Football Game is the closest we’ll ever come to knowing the real Peter Adolph.

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