The extraordinary stories behind some of the football pools' biggest winners... and losers

Long before the National Lottery started in the UK in 1994, the football pools were a way the British public could win truly life-changing sums of money. The Football pools began 100-years ago when three workmates decided to start their own football betting game based around match score predictions.

One of the men John Moores - later Sir John Moores - was the ambitious 27-year old son of a Lancashire bricklayer. Littlewood's Football Pools started in a small office in Liverpool in 1923, with the three friends each investing £50 of their own money to print the very first 4,000 football pools coupons.

The coupons were distributed outside Manchester United's Old Trafford ground before one Saturday match during winter by Moores himself. While the new business started shakily, he saw something in it and bought out his two partners.

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The football pools took off allowing Moores to grow his Littlewoods retail and football betting empire. By the 1980s, it had grown to become the largest private company in Europe but the introduction of the National Lottery saw its fortunes decline.

In 2007 the football pools was relaunched after Littlewoods, and its rivals Vernons and Zetters, were bought by Sportech. James Arnold, CEO of The Pools, said: "Although The Pools has traditionally been associated with having Liverpool as its home, it was actually Manchester which was the birthplace of the famous Pools coupon."

For many years before the National Lottery, the football pools was the