The lives and times of four captains of England
by Colin Shindler
Head Of Zeus, £18.99
Reviewed by John Earls
From WSC 356 October 2016
With barely a shrug at Wayne Rooney continuing as captain despite being an increasingly controversial choice for his club side, Cambridge University academic Colin Shindler has chosen an unfortunate time to launch his high-concept social history linking the state of the nation to England’s captains of the era.
18 August ~ Two days after Britain formally joined the European Economic Community (EEC) on January 1, 1973, a Wembley crowd of 36,500 watched an international friendly. The teams were “The Three”, comprising the home nations and fellow Common Market newcomers Ireland and Denmark, and “The Six”, from existing EEC nations Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, West Germany and France.
The story of black
British footballers
by Emy Onuora
Biteback Publishing, £16.99
Reviewed by Paul Rees
From WSC 341 July 2015
The issue of racism in football remains sadly pertinent, as indicated by serial incidents at games in eastern Europe and the taunting of a black man by Chelsea supporters ahead of a Champions League fixture in Paris earlier this year. As such, there is a requirement for a definitive history covering the emergence and ultimate triumph of black footballers in the British game. Emy Onuora would seem to be well-placed to produce it. Brother of erstwhile Huddersfield, Gillingham and Swindon striker Iffy Onuora and a race relations scholar, he promises to bring a unique perspective to his subject but never manages to mould that into a gripping narrative.
Pitch Black is strong on basic detail. It capably charts the rise through the 1970s of players such as Clyde Best at West Ham and West Brom’s so-called Three Degrees, Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson, relating the vile abuse these early trailblazers were routinely subjected to at grounds across the country. Similarly, Onuora sheds light on the tales of less familiar names. Among them are those of Bradford City’s Ces Podd, the first black British footballer to be granted a testimonial, and Calvin Plummer, a promising young forward with Nottingham Forest press-ganged onto a tour of apartheid-era South Africa by his manager, Brian Clough. However, Pitch Black is undone by the author’s dry writing style, often reading like an academic dissertation, and his unfortunate tendency to continually repeat the same facts.
Onuora’s book also suffers from his apparent lack of access. He recounts the chastening experiences of one black footballer after another, but the reader is deprived of first-hand accounts. As a result Regis, Batson, Garth Crooks, Ian Wright and others pass through Pitch Black like ciphers and with no new flesh being put on the bones of their stories. Onuora is scant on the contemporary game too. The likes of Danny Welbeck, Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling are all but invisible and he skips over the Luis Suárez and John Terry controversies with undue haste.
Frustratingly, there are the beginnings of a more rounded book here. Onuora touches upon such disparate but integral themes as the upsurge of the National Front, the role taken by football fanzines in confronting racism on the terraces head-on and the paucity of black managers and Asian footballers in the British game, but without burrowing down to extract deeper truths. Other than passing references to evolving hairstyles and “high-five” goal celebrations, he is remiss in tracing the strong influence black culture has had on football and the wider society in this country. Reggae, ska and hip-hop, to name but three black musical forms of incalculable significance, barely rate a mention.
Doubtless, there is a fascinating and important book to be written on this subject, one that is as much a social and cultural document of record on post-war Britain as it is about football. It is a shame that Pitch Black isn’t it.
My story
by Alan Buckley with Paul Thundercliffe
Matador, £18.99
Reviewed by Tom Lines
From WSC 325 March 2014
Alan Buckley sits just above Matt Busby in the League Managers Association’s Hall of Fame. Admittedly the list is organised alphabetically (it recognises the 18 managers who have taken charge of over 1,000 games in England) but Buckley’s story is certainly worthy of closer examination. Not simply because of his record – he took Third Division Walsall to a League Cup semi-final against Liverpool and achieved back-to-back promotions at Grimsby – but the manner in which his teams played. Buckley was a sort of anti-John Beck, achieving success at unfashionable clubs on shoestring budgets by playing an unusually attractive brand of passing football.
From his early days as an apprentice at Nottingham Forest it is clear that Buckley has one eye on his long-term future and he recounts the bafflement of Forest’s coaching staff when, at the age of 16, he casually announces that he has enrolled on an FA coaching course.Unable to establish himself at the City Ground, Buckley made his name as a prolific lower-league striker at Walsall, scoring over 20 goals in five consecutive seasons and earning a move to the First Division with Birmingham City in 1978. Persuaded to return to Fellows Park the following year, he became player-manager aged just 28, embarking on a 30-year career in management that included successful spells at Walsall and Grimsby as well as unhappier times at West Brom (his one shot at managing a “big” club), Lincoln and Rochdale.
Buckley is, by his own admission, an awkward character. Spiky, quick to anger and with little interest in what he dismisses as “the PR side of football” he spends a fair bit of time here recalling his bad behaviour and then apologising to those who were on the receiving end.
Many of the book’s best moments involve the late Walsall chairman Ken Wheldon. A scrap metal dealer by trade, Wheldon has a mysterious padlocked phone in his office and is described as looking “exactly like Poirot”, something confirmed by the inclusion of a photograph of him standing next to a man dressed as Elton John. The fact that, on closer inspection, it actually is Elton John reminds you what a reassuringly strange place football was in the 1980s. When Dave Mackay is linked with the Walsall job, Buckley demands to know whether there is any truth in the rumour. Wheldon spends half an hour rubbishing the stories and, suitably reassured, Buckley leaves his office – only to pass Mackay sitting in reception.
Buckley’s time at Grimsby is more successful on the pitch but not as entertaining off it and the closing chapters are the most personal; his career enters a flat spin and he writes eloquently about the turmoil of being unable to turn around a failing team. For his longevity Buckley deserves his place in managerial history. But it’s his dogged commitment to playing “the right way” that marks him out as one of the game’s more intriguing characters.
Mike Whalley takes a look at Hyde’s terrible winless runScott McNiven is, by his own admission, hard to live with when he isn’t winning. The manager of Hyde, the Conference Premier’s bottom club by a mile, can barely remember what victory feels like. Twenty-six league games have brought no wins and just three points. The New Year opened with an unwanted record beckoning: no team in Conference history, going back to 1979, has gone through a whole season without a league win. McNiven’s wife Adele is enduring a lot of gloomy weekends. “She’s very understanding, especially as I don’t really speak to her on Saturday evenings now,” he says. “I’m not in the best mood for conversation after a defeat.”