It was December 2023 and I was searching in the attic for Christmas decorations when my phone pinged. I pulled it out of my pocket and found a WhatsApp message from my son who was backpacking in Australia. The message read, simply: “You might want to take a look at this” – it was accompanied by a short video clip.
The footage was grainy – it was night-time somewhere in Queensland and the streetlights weren’t the brightest – but I could make out Louis and his travel companion Asher throwing what looked like a rolling pin at a collection of numbered wooden skittles.
As a sports writer, I thought my knowledge of the games genre was extensive but I was puzzled. This was unfamiliar.
In their Santa hats and shorts, with the cicadas chirruping in the background, the two of them seemed to be enjoying the mystery game. Another message came through: “It’s called Mölkky. It’s Finnish. Think you should try it.”
The video got me thinking back to a conversation I’d had with a couple of friends in a Leeds pub five years previously.
‘A time out from real life’ … from left: Graham, Martin, Neil and Bill pictured before boarding the train from Tokyo to Hakodate. Photograph: Courtesy of Neil Squires
We were all turning 50 and to mark the milestone year we had devised a sporting contest – a “50 at 50” challenge. The penalty shootout we had just completed had been event number 34 – if you counted the dominoes. I’d blown my chances with a failed Panenka to allow Martin to extend his lead over Graham at the top.
After updating the scoreboard, the conversation had turned to the wider world of sport. The England cricket team had just called up a 32-year-old called Joe Denly for the first time to their Test squad – his age evidently not a barrier to selection. He was 12 years older than his teammates Sam Curran and Ollie Pope.
Was there anything out there, we wondered idly, that we might still be able to compete in internationally, aged 50? Like many others, I had always harboured an ambition to play for my country but had been held back by a) working on weekends and b) not being very good. The passage of time had added a third constraint.
Given that the three of us were almost 20 years older than Denly, it was slim pickings. We ran through various possibilities but whether it was fitness, strength or the quality of the competition, there were insurmountable hurdles with them all. The topic was quietly put aside for the evening – but the idea never really went away.
‘We became unlikely Japanese media celebrities’ … a TV news bulletin in Hakodate, showing Neil and his Mölkky team. Photograph: Courtesy of Neil Squires
It turned out, Mölkky was what we had been looking for. The game itself was curiously addictive – a mathematical puzzle with different solutions each time. It was skittles, yes, but, on top of the requirement for an accurate throwing arm, there was also an appealing strategic element.
We enjoyed it, so the three of us went in search of competition. Mölkky wasn’t played too widely in the UK but we found a Cambridge Open and entered as a clubless collective representing Nidderdale in North Yorkshire, where we had first met as kids. The Mölkky fraternity, it turned out, was eccentric but welcoming and despite our advanced age, we weren’t out of our depth.
Our appetite was whet. When we discovered that Mölkky had a world championship and that it was to be held in Japan for the first time later that year, we were all in.
After a mind-bending eight months immersing ourselves in the game and its culture – and an exhaustive process to find the like-minded fourth member of the team, Bill – we found ourselves in Hakodate somehow competing for Great Britain at the sport’s global showpiece.
I had interviewed plenty of sportsmen and women over the years and covered lots of international events but being at one – even an ultra-niche one such as the Mölkky World Championships – felt different. Invigorating. Thrilling.
Neil competes at the World Championships in Gołotczyzna, Poland, in August 2025. Photograph: © FotoGryfka/Dwunastka Mölkky Association
We were introduced to the pressures and privileges of representing a nation as we took our unlikely shot at (small-scale) sporting immortality. In our ill-fitting Team GB kit, it was a ridiculous against-the-odds underdog mission on every level but, fiftysomethings or not, our competitive fires still burned. We didn’t want to let our country down.
Mölkky was just the front cover to the story. Inside was a shared adventure, a time out from real life that incorporated squid breakfasts, bullet train world record attempts, and run-ins with inflatable dinosaurs.
We mixed with thousands of other competitors from around the world including comedians and pop stars. We became unlikely Japanese media celebrities in our own right – it’s not every day you are asked to introduce the weatherman on the national public broadcaster.
Our oddball sporting odyssey also illustrated to us the value of male friendship. Blokes of our generation are not the best at opening up to each other – but it is surprising where you can go with Mölkky oiling the wheels. It flagged the importance of seizing the moment when the clock is ticking. The temptation, particularly as one slides into middle age, is to stick to the path well-trodden. To stay in your comfort zone. But there is a world of opportunity out there.
The Mölkky magic carpet took us on the ride of a lifetime; the message from Australia proved to be our calling.
The Fall and Rise of the Mölkky Bar Kids by Neil Squires is published 2 July (Icon Books; £20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
