Human Table Football (Ropes)

Human Table Football is the tabletop pub game blown up to full size, with people in place of the little figures. This is the ropes version, sometimes called human foosball or strapped-in human table football, and the difference is in how you're held. Instead of holding a padded pole like the bars version, you clip into a harness that runs on a rope strung across the pitch, so you're attached to your line rather than gripping a bar. That's where the name comes from, you really do get roped in.

Once you're strapped on you can only slide side to side along your rope, the same as the rods on a tabletop table. You can't step forward and you can't chase the ball about, so it comes down to reading where it's going and getting a foot to it before the other team does, with the rest of your line either helping or getting in the way. Two teams play head to head with a real football and a goal at each end, around five a side give or take, on a red and blue inflatable pitch with green netting behind each goal. It's good to watch as well as play, which is why it does well wherever there's a crowd standing about.

Size, power and setup

• 40ft long x 20ft wide, a bit smaller than the bars version, so it suits a decent lawn, a sports pitch or a hall with the floor clear
• Goes out on grass outdoors, and we've also set it up indoors on a sports hall floor where there's the headroom and the floor space
• Runs off one standard 13amp socket for the blower
• One of our staff comes with it, straps players into the harnesses and runs the game, so it's always supervised and never left for you to run yourselves
• We bring the footballs

Works well at

It does its best work where there's a crowd and a bit of competition in the air: corporate fun days and team-building, school and college fun days, scout and youth groups, 18ths and birthday parties, and village fêtes and festivals. The strapped-in business breaks the ice quickly, which is half of why it goes down well with a work crowd who don't know each other that well yet. We've run it at multi-activity fun days alongside bouncy assault courses and other inflatables. Football games like this get busier around the World Cup and the Euros, so it's worth booking early if your date falls near a tournament.

After one booking, Paul said the two guys we sent "worked hard all day long" and that "everyone loved the football especially".

The two versions, and other football games

We run two human table footballs. This is the ropes version, where you're strapped into a harness on a rope. We've also got the bars version, a bit bigger at 50ft x 30ft, where you hold a padded pole and slide along it instead. If you're filling a field with football, have a look at the penalty shootout, the giant velcro football, the football speed cage and the multi sports arena. The whole football games range sits on one page, and it's a regular on our team-building and corporate bookings.

Human Table Football hire across Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and London

We've run Monster Event Hire from our unit in Havant since 2002, and the kit is all ours, so the person who turns up to set it up and strap people in is one of our own staff and not a sub-contractor. They've passed the RPII operator and supervisor exams, are first-aid trained, and hold enhanced DBS certificates, which matters at a school or a youth group. Every inflatable is inspected once a year by our in-house RPII inspector under the PIPA scheme that the HSE recognises, and it's built to BS EN 14960:2019. It's a low unit so it doesn't catch the wind the way a tall slide does, but it still goes out with an anemometer and the same written procedure: a reading every half hour, and off use at 24mph. We carry £10 million public liability insurance, with the certificate and the risk assessment on request, and we hold additional licensed-premises cover, so there's no problem running it at a pub, club or bar.

We cover Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and London, including Havant, Portsmouth, Fareham and Southampton. Tell us the date, the venue and roughly how many you're expecting, and we'll put a quote together.