A COUPLE of Blackburn nventors were celebrating after a football board game they developed in their spare time became a High Street hit.

Jason Li and Paula Slinger formed Natchos Ltd to market their On The Ball game - where players create a team of players by successfully moving along a football pitch.

Following a toy convention in London in 2006 Marks and Spencer bought a licence to manufacture and sell the game throughout the country.

It sold out of 10,000 of the £9.50 games in the run up to Christmas and Jason and Paula were in talks to produce another 8,000.

The couple worked on the game every night after work for six months before taking it to market.