Watching football on Ceefax

[TwigtheWonderkid]

As discussed on another thread about stuff that's died out, anyone else have fond memories of Ceefax live football in the 80s and early 90s.

There was an excitement about watching a live football match on Ceefax that will never be replicated. Especially staring at it thru extra time and a penalty shoot out because your team's match wasn't on the tv or the radio.

I recall a league match, we were away at Swindon I think, level after 90 minutes at 1-1, just waiting for FT to appear on the right to signify it was all over, and then when the FT appeared the score was 1-2 and our strikers name was below with (90) next to it.

That was the best feeling in the world.

[sc0tt]

I'd hate waiting for the pages to scroll back around to your team

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Oh yes, I recall that. You could conceded 3 goals by the time it got back round to you.

[ShawCrossShark]

Remember if you went to a different page where it gave you the little score update box in the bottom corner of the screen?

[MrMagoo]

sc0tt said:

I'd hate waiting for the pages to scroll back around to your team

The memories. That wait was agonising the longer the game went on. Especially if your team were drawing or losing. Nothing like seeing a last minute winner pop up. Those were the days.

[HaplessBoyLard]

Used to love it. The one game I can actually remember is when I switched ceefax on and Norwich were 2-0 up against Bayern at the Olympic stadium. Incredible.

Plus...you could get a bit of Bamboozle in at half time.

[The jiffle king]

When there were multiple pages, sometimes, 1 got missed out, so it could be a full 4-5 minutes before you got to see your result.

[GT03ROB]

Those of us that work during most games now do the same watching football on Livescore! A bit faster than Ceefax but the same basic principal!

[benny.c]

My house mate at uni used to watch full five day test matches on Ceefax. He only used to turn it off to watch Susie Dent on Countdown, and Natalie Imbruglia on Neighbours (lunch time and evening if she happened to feature a lot in one episode).

[TwigtheWonderkid]

benny.c said:

My house mate at uni used to watch full five day test matches on Ceefax.

Makes watching 90 mins of footy seem quite sane.

[aka_kerrly]

HaplessBoyLard said:

Plus...you could get a bit of Bamboozle in at half time.

Bamboozle was on Teletext

[Dan_1981]

Press hold and then unholding made the numbers run round again and update to the next page, no idea if it was quicker or if it just seemed that way

[Eric Mc]

Ceefax was the BBC's teletext service.

ITV and Channel 4 had their own versions. Originally the ITV/Channel 4 service was run by Oracle. In 1993 Telext took over.

Channel 4 called their text service a number of different names over the years - 4 Tel, Telext on 4 or Fourtext.

[The jiffle king]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/29242558

Looks like others also used to love Ceefax.

[Wadeski]

Digitiser, Bamboozle, and lower division football results. Childhood...kids these days with their iphones dont even know they're born!

To be fair, working in the USA these days I watch champions league games on the Guardian's minute by minute coverage....not too different!