I remember way back when I were a lad, well the ’80s feels like a long time ago now. Me and my school mates used to play the spot the ball competitions, a traditional newspaper competition where the player had to guess the location of a ball which had been removed from a photograph of a football match. The position of the ball had to be deduced from the comparative positions of the footballers shown in the photo, the directions in which they are looking, and so on. The game was extremely popular back in the 1980s; hapless players like my good self would pay for a certain number of crosses on the picture, which was sent in by post to the paper. Sometimes I could plaster the image with hundreds of crosses, much easier when special rubber stamps were manufactured which helped me fill in the picture with standard arrangements of crosses. You know what? I never bloody won.
It was normal for the ‘correct answer’ for the position of the ball to be judged by a panel of experts, rather than the position of the actual ball before it was removed, this was because you couldn’t gamble on an event that had already happened. At least, that’s how it now works with the new Spotit website, where both players and actual, real life pro referees are shown the image and the players whose spot is closest to that of the prof referees is the winner of the spot the ball competition.
When I used to play back in the day, you had no real idea about how the competition was judged. Now, Spotit uses real FA referees, like Vic Callow and Dermot Gallagher, with renowned skills having been referees in World Cup events. Since players are competing against the skills of the best football referees, this a competition of skill but also a game of luck. Take a look now; they have excellent prizes, like the win free beer competititon.
