Introducing Poolhaven: A 1970s Football World You Can Read, Play, and Collect

Why we’re building Poolhaven

Football in the 1970s wasn’t just results on a Saturday — it was rain on the terraces, creased match programmes stuffed in coat pockets, and clubs whose stories lived as much in memory as in the record books. Poolhaven is our way of capturing that feeling: not as a straight retelling of real history, but as an original world with its own town, club, and characters.

Poolhaven Town FC plays at The Haven Ground in sky blue and white. The squad includes names like Barry Watting, Bobby Newtone, and Neil Warnack — nods to the era and to clubs like Hartlepool United, without pretending to be them. It’s a tribute to lower-league football and the culture around it: programmes, posters, scarves, and the small dramas that stick with you for decades.

What you can explore today

The site is a living archive, not a finished product. Here’s what’s in there now:

• Episode 1 — a 36-page comic read in a page-flip viewer, setting the tone for the world
• Match programme archive — searchable vintage-style programmes filterable by opponent, player, date, and category
• Match simulation — a top-down football sim with player attributes, tactical controls, and post-match reporting
• Season mode — league and cup fixtures across 21 fictional clubs, with standings, a cup bracket, and a flipbook season book
• Collectibles — card packs and stickers unlocked through play, collected in a personal gallery

Episode 2 is already in the works — a poster tease is on the site with a “coming soon” overlay while the full story takes shape.

From comic page to kick-off

Poolhaven sits at an unusual intersection: narrative comic on one side, playable football experience on the other. We didn’t want the sim to feel bolted on. When you simulate a fixture, results feed back into your season — standings shift, cup runs continue, and you can earn rewards that belong in the same world as the comic.

The simulation engine runs full matches with configurable tactics: line height, pressing intensity, build-up style, and tempo. Players carry individual attributes — pace, passing, tackling, shooting, and more — drawn from team data files that make it straightforward to add new clubs later. Twenty-one teams are already in the North Division, from Eastborough and Grimshaw to Coalridge and Windrow.

Collectibles tie it together. Win matches, open card packs, and build a collection of player cards, team cards, and stickers. Flip them in the collection viewer. Stick them onto comic pages. It’s the same instinct as swapping cards in the playground — just rebuilt for a digital archive.

A moody archive, not a bright brochure

Visually, Poolhaven leans dark and atmospheric: black backgrounds, muted typography, and photography that feels like it was pulled from a damp match-day folder. The archive isn’t trying to look modern and slick. It’s trying to feel found — like you’ve opened someone’s collection of programmes and stumbled into a story.

That extends to the real-world inspiration. Many of the programme entries echo fixtures from Hartlepool United’s past — Sunderland, Darlington, Middlesbrough, Chesterfield, and others appear in the data — grounding the fiction in something recognisable for anyone who grew up around northern football.

What’s next

Poolhaven is in development. Episode 2 is the immediate focus, but the platform is built to grow:

• More comic episodes and posters
• Expanded season and cup structures
• New teams dropped in by adding folders and JSON — no rebuild required
• Behind-the-scenes tools for comic layout and sticker placement (already in use internally)

If you care about football culture, indie comics, or interactive archives that reward curiosity, this is the project we’re pouring our time into. Explore Episode 1, simulate a match, and watch the haven fill up over the coming months.