Book reviews

When Danny Brady found out his sister's boyfriend was an ex-pro he feared the worst. This is what happened when they met…

When I first discovered that my big sister had started going out with a retired footballer, two thoughts bubbled up into my mind: “Ooh, I hope he’s minted and still gets tickets”; and “Please God, don’t let it be Frank Worthington”. Because in the mind of the general public, it’s either/or when it comes to retired footballers. They either spend their time sitting on a throne made out of bricks of £50 notes, or they’re scowling at the world behind a paper-shop counter or run-down bar, gazing wistfully at faded cuttings from The Pink ’Un on the wall.

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Viewed as romantic story in the FA Cup, Team Bath are considered very differently at league level. Tim Lezard explains why they are attracting hostility from their opposition

You probably remember Team Bath FC as the plucky students who lost to Mansfield Town in the FA Cup back in 2002, in front of 5,000 fans.

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Few promotion parties have been as damp a squib as Lewes' and, as Joel Abraham explains, it's been all downhill from there

How do you reward a promotion-­winning team? In Lewes’s case, you sack the manager and sell the entire squad. The Rooks’ first ever Blue Square Premier game against Kidderminster Harriers saw ten of the starting XI making their debuts, led by a manager who had never managed before. Four months and 12 defeats later, they are rock bottom of the league, and will in all likelihood be returning to the Blue Square South considerably worse off than when they left it.

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Former star Stefano Borgonovo has motor neurone disease and, as Matthew Barker explains, some wonder if football is to blame

On October 8, a team of Fiorentina veterans played a Milan XI made up of current and former players, in a fund-raising match for Stefano Borgonovo. Now 44, Borgonovo is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or motor neurone disease (MND), a condition that progressively paralyses the body when nerves that connect the brain to the spinal cord, and then to the muscles, die off. There is no known cause, with the majority of victims dying within two to three years of first falling ill.

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Neil Forsyth recalls a Carlisle takeover bid that turned out to be less than credible

In an era when takeovers of football clubs involve sheikhs, billionaires and intricate financial arrangements, it is worth remembering a simpler time. A time when just about anyone could try to buy a football club and, in the memorable case of Stephen Brown, just about anyone did. Among the vast ranks of dreamers and chancers who have drifted into football for often questionable reasons, Brown stands alone for his sheer daring.

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