This is the first in a series of sporting figure sets that Caesar produced with highly uninformative titles and a generic box that gave no clues either. In fact this particular set contains footballers, which is an appropriate place to start as football is by far the most popular sport on the planet, both in terms of participation and spectating. Even those in the few countries that recognise some other sport as 'football' (basically the USA and Australia), recognise this sport as Association Football, but we will use the simpler, international name.

There are eleven footballer poses in the set, and they are all pretty lively. A variety of running and kicking poses is what you might expect and on the whole it is what you get. These are all well done and in particular they have none of the flatness often seen in plastic figures, which is perhaps even more important here than in military figures. The first figure in the top row is somewhat balletic for our taste, although by no means inappropriate. The figure with no base in the middle row is perhaps making a sliding tackle, while the baseless figure in the bottom row is apparently in the act of heading the ball. Unlike the larger-scale Airfix set there are no players here just standing, although the last figure in our line-up looks to be a goalkeeper, ready to intercept any shot.

These are not soldiers, so accuracy is wide open to debate. The shirts vary in style with round and V-necks, and one man even having a collared shirt as first appeared in the 1930s but has long been out of fashion. Equally the shorts vary greatly in length, ranging from the shorter form of the 1950s to 1980s, to longer types as might be appropriate for the pre-WWII years or more recent fashion. Since such figures do not betray the material of the clothing, these could serve just as well as either wool, cotton or any of the many man-made fabrics of modern sportswear. Hairstyles too are hard to date, although one rather strange one (on the last figure in the top row) looks at first glance like a flat cap!

The sculpting is of the usual high quality Caesar standard, with realistic musculature and folds in the clothing, since these are otherwise largely lacking any need for detail. However the faces are expressive, and if some of the hairstyles are rather out of the ordinary then that is not unusual for such sportsmen. As we have said, the excellent three-dimensional nature of the poses works very well, and with no flash these are well made figures.

The variety of styling means these figures do not naturally work together as a team from the same era, although many will find it easy to overlook that when painting them. To our eye these is a really nice set of footballers, but have you noticed the cuckoo in the nest? The second figure in the middle row is certainly not a footballer, but looks like a sprinter or hurdler. This may well be a result of the variation in figures you find in Caesar boxes (they call it 'surprise', we call it 'unpredictable'), so your box may have slightly differing numbers and may have a different random extra figure. Also, one other omission is the ball itself!