The long-forgotten Football Pools Panel have been discovered alive and well in a Wolverhampton hotel.
Made up of respected former footballers, experienced officials and Jimmy Hill, the Panel were first employed to predict the outcome of postponed games during the bad spells of weather in the 1960s. The body had become moribund since the demise in popularity of Football Pools in the 1980s.
But neither the FA nor the Pools Companies had ever disbanded the panel. The discovery was made after snow caused the postponement of many of this weekend’s fixtures, causing nostalgia buffs to ask what had happened to the body.
First to emerge was former Everton goalkeeper Gordon West. “Yes we’ve been meeting every weekend. You get a great dinner here - prawn cocktail, well-done steak and black forest gateau, washed down with liberal quantities of Liebfraumilch, then we decide on the outcomes of the weekend’s fixtures. We thought it was a bit odd that no-one from the FA came to talk to us, but assumed it was all part of the secrecy like, so nobody got nobbled.”
Red-faced FA Official Frank Simpson said “It’s a bit embarrassing, I admit. But we’ve explained to them that Leeds are shit these days, and they seem to be coping well with the news.”
