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Poverty, war and football
by Julie Ryan
CreateSpace, £9.99
Reviewed by Neil Andrews
From WSC 317 July 2013

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In and Out of the Lion’s Den is a case for why you should never judge a book by its cover. Ostensibly a biography of former Millwall striker John Shepherd, author Julia Ryan – Shepherd’s daughter – delves a bit deeper into her ancestry to explore the journey of her maternal grandparents and their flight from Franco’s Spain to England. As such, this is a very personal account of many lives rather than one, offering a vivid and at times fascinating insight into the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, as well as the life of a professional footballer in the 1950s.

The early part of Shepherd’s story is a remarkable one. Recommended to the Lions by an insurance salesman who never saw him kick a ball, he overcame polio while on National Service to score four goals on his debut away to Leyton Orient – still a post-war record. Unfortunately for Shepherd a combination of injuries and bad luck meant he never fulfilled the early promise that saw him being courted by managers such as Matt Busby. More surprising still is his behaviour off the field.

In an age where many decry modern footballers and how they bear little resemblance to their predecessors, Ryan inadvertently proves that Shepherd and his team-mates have more in common with today’s players than is often suggested. Bonuses are placed – and lost – on horses, cars are driven without a licence and FA Cup final tickets are sold on the black market. The striker also sulks and refuses to turn up for training when dropped from the first team. When left out for a second time Shepherd sells his story to a national newspaper. He is even arrested after playing stooge for a gambling ring, receiving a fine for his troubles (he escapes press attention after providing a false name to the courts). More sinisterly there is a hint of match-fixing, although it’s a shame the author fails to press the matter further.

Ryan is clearly more comfortable writing about the war in Spain and handles the atrocities of the conflict and its aftermath, particularly the concentration camps in France, delicately. Her mother’s acclimatisation to life in England as a young child is particularly touching, yet while she is prepared to tackle the awkward and unexpected reunion of her grandparents in London head on, she shies away from any scandal her father may have been involved in.

There is also a lack of attention to detail in the chapters on football. While census records, casualties of war and even the address of a toy company are recorded with impressive accuracy elsewhere, Millwall fans will be startled to discover that the Den was located in London’s East End and that Neil Harris retired in 2011, while the date the club was formed is wrong by ten years.

Such errors could have been avoided with the help of an experienced editor. However this book is still worth a read, especially for manager Charlie Hewitt’s programme notes, which are an unexpected delight. Remarks such as “when will people learn how and when to mind their own business?” prove that today’s bosses haven’t changed that much from their predecessors.

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A history of sport on TV
by Martin Kelner
John Wisden & Co, £18.99
Reviewed by David Harrison
From WSC 311 January 2013

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Having worked in broadcasting, I’m painfully aware that those on the inside can be guilty of attaching far too much importance to the social significance of their output. For the viewer, television remains essentially what you do when you get home and remove your shoes. But with average viewing holding steady at around four hours a day, there are so many opinions we’ve all accumulated – consciously or not. Consequently, donning our football hats, every one of us has a view on the relative merits of commentators, presenters, pundits and the like.

Martin Kelner has tapped into the great national pastimes of sport and TV with this extensively researched work. It covers the developing relationship between the two, from the early days – characterised primarily by suspicion and resentment – through to today when everything has changed, apart from the suspicion and resentment.

The opening chapters are fairly dull, accurately reflecting TV coverage of sport for most of the last century. Things don’t really get going, in real life or the book, until the FA Cup’s “Matthews Final” in 1953 when the first rights payment was made for coverage of a live sporting event. Kelner observes that this represented the first occurrence of footballers overtaking their cricketing counterparts in terms of public awareness. So many pioneering figures, on both sides of the camera, have helped drive televised sport to the intrusive position it holds today and Kelner is happy to acknowledge and credit, generally without attempting to compare – apart from the BBC incarnation of Des, his absolute favourite.

Age will determine where the reader’s affections and admirations lie, but they’re all here – from a football perspective commentators such as Captain Henry Blythe Thornhill “Teddy” Wakelam, who delivered Britain’s first live sports broadcasts in 1927, through massive figures like Raymond Glendenning, Peter Dimmock, Kenneth Wolstenholme, David Coleman, Brian Moore and beyond. Pundits, effectively a 1970 World Cup innovation, are acknowledged and discussed, as are the off-screen visionaries who made it happen – men like the heroic Dimmock, Angus Mackay, Paul Fox, Bryan Cowgill, John Bromley and many others. And then there’s Jimmy Hill, a man who could justifiably claim a place in all three groups.

The book is characterised by Kelner’s gags; many dismal, for which he consistently and wisely blames others, but some very funny. The factual stories also contribute greatly. In the weeks before the consummate Coleman took over as presenter of Grandstand, I particularly liked the account of Dimmock’s own attempts to read results from the teleprinter. Not a football man, Dimmock was confronted with “Cltc 3 Ptk Th 1” which, in the absence of any assistance through his earpiece, he delivered as “Celtic 3 Purr Thaaa 1”. Kelner wears his lack of actual match attendance as a badge of honour and the device works well. If this book appears under your Christmas tree, you may well finish it before the turkey sandwiches appear.

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The official story of the team that transformed United
by Ian Marshall
Simon & Schuster £18.99
Reviewed by Joyce Woolridge
From WSC 307 September 2012

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“He’s only tiny; he’s got ginger hair – you’ll probably have a bit of a laugh. But he can’t half play.” Thus Brian Kidd prepared Eric Harrison, Manchester United’s celebrated youth team coach, for the less than auspicious arrival of the young Paul Scholes at the Cliff training ground. Scholes’s success and longevity is perhaps the most remarkable of all the luminaries of the 1992 FA Youth Cup-winning side, which also included Giggs, Beckham, Neville, Butt… and Robbie Savage.
 
Scholes’s hair colour proved no great problem, but he was tiny, suffering from bronchitis and Osgood Schlatter’s disease which gave him bad knees, and had no real pace and strength. Despite his abundant and obvious skills, just one of these disadvantages should have been enough to ensure that he joined the ranks of the 500 or so boys joining Premier League and Football League clubs at the age of 16 who, according to the PFA’s Gordon Taylor, are out of the game by the time they are 21.

That he was taken on and made it into the first team is testament to the patience and foresight of Harrison, Kidd, Nobby Stiles and Alex Ferguson, though even they would probably have rejected Lionel Messi for being too small.

Few things are as intoxicating for a football fan than the promise of youth. Last season, stories of the emergence of another brood of Fergie’s Fledglings generated the traditional, heady expectations of more “golden apples” among United’s support, providing a welcome distraction from the head-splitting absurdities of Glazernomics.

Ian Marshall’s account duly begins at Moss Lane, Altrincham this January, wondering, with appropriate caution, whether the current crop can follow in the footsteps of their illustrious predecessors – the Busby Babes and the “Class of 92”. Subsequent interesting chapters detail how Stanley Rous inaugurated the Youth Cup in 1952 and how United’s youth “system” pre-dated the war and Busby, who became youth’s most high-profile promoter.

An official United book for sale in the club megastore is hardly going to be shot through with radical revisionism and searing comment, but nevertheless Marshall handles the material skilfully, interweaving the fortunes of the 17 players who made up the squad with a match-by-match account of the 1992 campaign.

Only four of these players dropped out of professional football without making a senior appearance, a remarkable statistic given the high wastage rate which persists in England and demonstrated by an instructive comparison with Crystal Palace, United’s opponents in the final. The ones that got away are inevitably more intriguing, none more so than “local hero” and crowd favourite, Salfordian George Switzer, whose name has become a pub quiz staple.
 
Concluding chapters take those who survived through to the present, whether to the Treble, global superstardom, down the divisions, into coaching and management or career-ending injuries, revealing a little of the darker side and the many scandalous cruelties of youth football in this country lurking beneath every glittering tale of triumph.

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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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Tom Davies explores the boardroom politics causing trouble at Wrexham, Port Vale and Rushden & Diamonds

Few clubs can have attracted such a remarkable string of inappropriate suitors as Wrexham in recent months. To a backdrop of winding-up orders and threats of disqualification from the Conference play-offs, an extraordinary soap opera has been playing out in the battle for ownership of the club, which now has a fighting chance of a happy ending as supporters stand poised to take control.

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