
Blow football is a table-top game popular in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
, where the object is to blow through some kind of pipe causing a small lightweight ball to pass through the opponent's goal, as in other forms of
football.
The game is often played with whatever materials are at hand, such as drinking
straw
Straw is an agricultural byproduct consisting of the dry stalks of cereal plants after the grain and chaff have been removed. It makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has a numbe ...
s, and
ping-pong
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...
balls but is also sold as a boxed game in some toy shops. Boxed games typically contain a few plastic pipes, a ball, and two plastic goals. Some versions may include two plastic goalkeepers on sticks for the players to defend the goal with, or a football pitch laid out on a piece of cloth that is then put on a table and used as the playing surface, or even supply a rigid surface to play on, with raised boundaries so the ball cannot go out of bounds. At least two players are involved, though some sets will supply more pipes so the whole family can play. The pipes may be simple, or may have mouthpieces after the fashion of a
pea shooter.
Various versions of the game were produced by
Spears Games,
Peter Pan Playthings,
J & L Randall and several manufacturers.
References
Children's games
Association football variants
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