Author Archive

The unlikely story of football’s first FA Cup heroes
by Keith Dewhurst
Yellow Jersey Press, £16.99
Reviewed by Huw Richards
From WSC 306 August 2012

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Keith Dewhurst has already quarried personal memories as a young journalist catapulted into the Manchester Evening News‘s United beat by the death of his predecessor at Munich to produce a memoir acclaimed in WSC 302 as “one of the best football books of its type ever written”.

Now he digs further, into family heritage in the Lancashire mill town of Darwen, to tell the story of the team that, in 1879, shook the still-nascent football world by twice holding the heavily favoured Old Etonians in an FA Cup quarter-final, before succumbing in the second replay.

All three games, thanks to FA rules and the refusal of the Etonians to either play extra-time or travel to Lancashire, were played at The Oval – then English sport’s national stadium – forcing Darwen into a succession of long, expensive and ultimately exhausting journeys.

A different outcome might have changed the title. Darwen, mostly millhands, gave away inches and stones per man to better-fed opponents. “Giantkiller” would have had a literal element.

The story, often bracketed with nearby Blackburn Olympic’s defeat of the Old Etonians in the 1883 final as a key marker in the game’s democratisation, is well known. Dewhurst, though, aims to put flesh on bare bones, to give life to the silent figures in team photographs and explain why this corner of Lancashire adopted football so passionately.

He puts both teams – he also looks closely at the Etonians – into the context of the early development of football and of wider social currents. This is a multifaceted story with regional and tactical dimensions – the Etonians played a very different game to the fluid, Scottish-inflected style of Darwen – as well as the obvious class aspects.

Dewhurst has dug widely and clearly enjoyed the archives. The outcome has a certain picaresque charm. A large cast of characters includes William Gladstone, an escaped gorilla and mad mill magnates. How can you not love a book that contrives to use “Antidisestablishmentarianism” as a chapter title?

As befits a well-established playwright, Dewhurst handles his large cast with skill. Individuals such as team captain James Knowles, who emigrated to the US before the end of the season, and the remarkable Dr James Gledhill, a tantalising link to the great Preston team of a decade later, emerge from the fog of history.

Along with this are subtle, thoughtful examinations of issues such as why Darwen went to such lengths to deny that their Scottish imports, Fergus Suter and Jimmy Love, were professionals – they almost certainly were – even though payments were not illegal until 1882.

It is, Dewhurst points out, part of the arbitrariness of history that Suter is memorialised in the Dictionary of National Biography as the first professional while Love disappeared so completely that nobody is sure even when he died. Dewhurst, typically, has found a credible answer. Now, though, this entire team has the memorial that it richly deserves.

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The Albert Johanneson story
by Paul Harrison
Vertical, £15.99
Reviewed by Ashley Clark
From WSC 306 August 2012

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Paul Harrison’s The Black Flash attempts, through a combination of autobiography, oral history and the author’s own observation, to unspool the tragic tale of Albert Johanneson. The South African-born Leeds United forward endured racism on and off the field, became the first black footballer to play in an FA Cup final (in 1965), and eventually succumbed to alcoholism and an early death in 1995.

The meat of this frequently depressing but compelling book is comprised of large chunks of unexpurgated testimony from Johanneson, framed by explanatory passages from Harrison. It is at its best when its subject’s voice is at the forefront.

Johanneson, looking back on his life following the collapse of his career, paints a vividly evocative picture of his youth in a divided South Africa, where racist violence was commonplace and police were viewed as little more than “paid killers”.

Johanneson was scouted and offered the opportunity to play in England but as soon as he stepped off the plane he was branded a “nigger” by a passerby at London Airport. Though team-mates Billy Bremner and Grenville Hair looked out for him, and he found a friend in fellow black South African Gerry Francis, the impression is of a lonely, shy soul thrown to the wolves.

It is harrowing to read about the constant abuse Johanneson received. It is not difficult to imagine how the deep psychological scars from this continued mistreatment might have contributed to his eventual fate.

Though Harrison is clearly reluctant to demonise his Leeds heroes – including Don Revie, who comes across as a cold bully – The Black Flash paints a grim picture of a wider footballing community who hadn’t the first idea how to engage seriously with the pressures faced by Johanneson.

Sadly, the book is beset by structural problems. Harrison is inclined to interject with his own largely irrelevant opinions on the state of modern football and subjects such as political correctness. Key elements of Johanneson’s experience (his marriage, divorce, descent into alcoholism and early death) are sprinted through in a matter of mere pages toward the book’s conclusion.

Though obtaining information must have been difficult – Johanneson was essentially a homeless drunk by the time of his death – and the man’s wishes not to discuss his family should be respected, the book feels as though it is missing a sizeable, vital element.

There is also a conspicuous lack of attention to detail. In one particularly flagrant case, a significant passage of Johanneson’s testimony is repeated twice within the space of 16 pages. The Black Flash feels like it has missed out on a final edit.

Despite its flaws, the books is a worthwhile, instructive and often shocking read, especially in the context of a challenging year for football, when racism has once again made headlines. Harrison’s decency and commitment shine through in a tale that adds flesh to the bones of the story of a key figure in British football history – a man who slipped through the cracks, but helped to pave the way for future black footballers.

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The story of Irish football
by Peter Byrne & Matthew Murray
Carlton Books, £14.99
Reviewed by Ciaran McCauley
From WSC 305 July 2012

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It is hardly surprising given the island’s turbulent history, but football in Ireland has never been a simple matter. Just take the eligibility issue, which has dominated relations between football authorities north and south in the past few years. James McClean’s selection for the Republic’s Euro 2012 squad, and a few brainless morons issuing death threats on Twitter, made headline news once again and stirred up the usual hornets’ nest.

The Irish who-can-play-for-who furore illustrates two key points. Firstly, relations between the Irish Football Association (IFA) and Football Association of Ireland (FAI) rarely appear anything other than frosty.

Secondly, what the hell happened for things to get this way? In a country where every other sport is happily played on an all-Ireland basis, why does football suffer the indignity of such tension?
Into this knowledge breach steps Peter Byrne’s Green Is The Colour, perhaps the first authoritative overview of the history of the two associations.

Taking the origins of football in Ireland as its starting point, the book outlines the formation of the IFA in Belfast – the world’s fourth oldest football association – and its running of the game in Ireland before the disgruntled Leinster Football Association broke away to form the FAI just days after the partition of Ireland in 1921.

Neatly illustrating the symmetry between Ireland’s political strife and the football power struggle, Green Is The Colour goes on to outline nimbly decades of squabbling between the two associations over everything from who could pick what players (eligibility again) and even who had the right to call themselves Ireland in international games.

These early decades make up a large portion of the book, with Byrne’s scrupulous research offering invaluable insight into the power plays at work between two associations fighting desperately for control of the game.

The writer clearly appreciates the difficulties in overseeing the growing sport in a country struck by sectarian divisions and never lets his academic eye for detail get in the way of a good anecdote – for instance, his eye-opening account of the Irish Free State taking on Germany in 1939, the Nazi state’s final football match before the war.

If anything, the book is too ambitious. Despite being packed with information, it feels light in some areas and Byrne largely skips over the more well-known modern days. But he spends large chunks looking at the FAI’s struggles, notably in taking on the fiercely nationalist Gaelic Athletic Association which was against “British” games. This is excellent material but it leaves this ostensible history of the game on both sides of the border with a distinct slant to the South.

Nonetheless, Green Is The Colour remains a fascinating account of how football related to one of the 20th century’s most enduring local conflicts. A must-read for all Irish supporters and highly recommended for anyone with an interest in the tantalising contradictions of how football, the great unifier, has always been divided on the island.

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