Does anyone remember the last time Newcastle United won the league?
Well, from memory it was sometime in early 1980, during season three of the excellent LOGacta game that I played endlessly at the time.
Be patient, because there will be people who just don’t understand.
But for those lucky enough to discover this wonderful game, which was advertised in Shoot magazine and could be obtained by sending a postal order to a residential address in Leeds, it was a godsend, especially on those stuffy weekends when the real Newcastle United were in dire straits at the time.
LOGacta was a gift from my parents for my eleventh birthday in January 1980.
LOGacta was advertised in Shoot magazine as ‘Chart Soccer, the new football game you can play yourself’ and the headline description mentioned a system of charts, dice and cards used to organize real-life league and cup competitions for British clubs domestically and in Europe, plus the European Championships and World Cup finals.
At its heart was the sixteen-team Super League, along with a full fixture list and a points recorder that allowed teams to be arranged in a sort of league table, with the points recorder also reliably informing everyone who played LOGacta to take part in the various cup competitions, both domestic and foreign, at certain times.
There was the League Cup, which was played at the beginning of the season and of course the FA Cup, which was on the rise from mid-season onwards. In between, the schedule was interrupted by the three European competitions, the European Cup, the UEFA Cup and the Cup Winners Cup.
Teams were selected to participate in the Super League and the various cup competitions. The instruction booklet identified who was who across the continent, while this ten-year-old was introduced to exotic-sounding teams like Grasshoppers Zurich, Viking Stavanger and Lokomotiv Leipzig.
Matches had a degree of realism thanks to the seven colored dice which managed to simulate home advantage and reinforce the superiority that sides usually have when facing lower division clubs.
In Super League, the points difference between the two competing sides determined which dice were rolled and although the accompanying guide seemed hellishly complicated at first, familiarity made it easy to navigate through time.
The green die was the best, this die allowed five goals and would only be combined with the yellow dice (which could score a maximum of two goals). This combination was thrown when a team was at home and more than ten points ahead of its opponent in the Super League, or when a Super League side was playing at home (or away) against a non-league club.
The Chartbook in which all results were recorded was for eight Super League seasons, so having an aunt with access to a photocopier was extremely useful; an endless supply of the various charts was made possible thanks to Rank Xerox.
In real life, the 1979/80 season saw Newcastle United return to the Second Division, having adapted to life in the second tier the season before after relegation in 1978.
An impressive run of early doors left Bill McGarry’s side in pole position on Christmas Day 1979, but a spectacular collapse left United with just two more league wins after beating the Mackems on New Year’s Day, a disastrous run that led to a disappointing ninth-place finish.
The Cups had also brought their usual problems; Sunderland knocked us out of the League Cup on penalties, while there was an embarrassing home defeat to Third Division Chester in the FA Cup.
Meanwhile in LOGacta-land, Newcastle United, after losing their penultimate game of the season and a first home defeat no less, ‘traveled’ to Kenilworth Road, knowing that a win would still clinch the title, but anything less and it would likely go to Portman Road, Ipswich Town only a point behind and with a superior goal difference, where they played their last game of the 30-game season at home to the struggling Queens Park Rangers.
Talk about nerves! In the end, Ipswich beat QPR, but United still won the league, twice coming from behind to pass the Hatters by three games to two.
Believe me, there was absolute chaos on the large open terrace behind the goal where the away fans were housed, the official allocation of 5,000 was supported by thousands of other Newcastle United supporters spread throughout the small stadium.
This was in the days before the ZX Spectrum, which introduced us to a rather primitive version of Football Manager, a game that has evolved beyond recognition over the years thanks to huge technological advances.
Coming back to today, a cursory online search tells me that it is still possible to buy LOGacta, but I suspect that given the popularity of Xbox and PlayStation, it will only be of interest to old-timers like me.
I don’t think I look back on that era and the game LOGacta through rose-tinted glasses; I remember it being really magical.
If anyone visiting The Mag has fond memories of playing LOGacta, it would be great to hear about it.
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