Stuart Hall joined the It's A Knockout team this year and quickly made his mark on national television, with his previous success being mainly in the north west BBC region. Jeux Sans Frontières 1972 saw a British win to kick off the series, three wins from the Germans, but the Swiss won when it really mattered, on home soil in the International Final.

This year saw four changes to the rules in the International Series: Firstly, in response to the abuse of the rules and regulations in previous seasons, competitors for each game would now be drawn by lots just two hours before the recording (with the exception of the Fil Rouge and final game in each heat). Secondly, the Fil Rouge returned to its normal format of countries competing in alphabetical order (dependent on the venue of heat). Thirdly, the Joker was no longer permitted to be played on the final game. This resulted that the imbalance of the highest achievable scores in the previous two years no longer occurred. And finally, an error by one of the Belgian teams in the first International Heat resulted in an immediate change of rules, one which would seriously affect the British team in the following heat, albeit not directly.

The blue scoreboard that was introduced in 1971 became uniform in its display in the 1972 International competition and remained in place until 1977. It was also the first year where the team’s name and country ‘flashed’ whenever they were leading on the master scoreboard.

JSFnetGB Series Guide pages researched by
Neil Storer and Alan Hayes
with Ischa Bijl, Julien Dessy, Sébastien Dias, David Hamilton, Denis Kirsanov, Paul Leaver, Philippe Minet,
Christos Moustakas, David Laich Ruiz, Marko Voštan and JSFnet Websites