My Story
by Tommy Docherty with Les Scott
Headline, £18.99
Reviewed by Joyce Woolridge
From WSC 240 February 2007 

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In these times, when making a few appearances for a Premiership club and being caught brawling outside a lap-dancing club is deemed enough for a three-book deal, Tommy Docherty’s weighty life serves as a salutary counter to such instant celebrity. This is a genuine autobiography, covering in detail his hard but respectable upbringing in a Glasgow tenement, his playing days as an uncompromising but skilful and accomplished wing-half for Preston and Arsenal, and his eventful managerial career at club and international level. Social change and the transformation of the status of footballers probably mean that future autobiographies can never have such depth of interest, replacing stories of early privation and struggle with 300 pages about the contents of their garages, address books and wardrobes.

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Man and Bhoy
by Neil Lennon with Martin Hannon
Harper Sport, £17.99
Reviewed by Robbie Meredith
From WSC 241 March 2007 

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Irish footballers have been among the most prominent exponents of the mea culpa sports autobiography in recent years. Tony Cascarino and Paul McGrath have produced open and apologetic works detailing personal failure, far in tone from the bland self-justification inherent in most of the genre.

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My Story
by Alan Rough with Neil Drysdale
Headline, £18.99
Reviewed by Archie MacGregor
From WSC 241 March 2007 

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The real disaster of Scotland’s 1978 World Cup campaign was, of course, Alan Rough’s haircut. If beforehand you had somehow missed all the other tell-tale signs that the Argentina adventure was steering a steady course towards an apocalyptic implosion of the preposterous and pure vaudeville slap-stick, then Roughie’s perm ought to have been the final giveaway. While there could be grounds for speculating that its true impact on the South American continent only emerged some years later when Colombia’s Carlos Valderrama began strutting his bouffant on the world stage, for most Scots it ranks alongside dear old Ally MacLeod clutching his head in his hands as one of the more shuddering flashbacks of that most ­surreal tournament.

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The Club That Wouldn’t Die
by Phil Whalley
SportsBooks, £16.99
Reviewed by Martin Atherton
From WSC 241 March 2007

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In one of football’s regular bizarre coincidences, when Oxford United were relegated from the Football League in 2006, they were replaced by Accrington Stanley. Stanley were the club whose place Oxford had taken following the former’s resignation from the League in 1962 due to financial difficulties. There was no club, no team and no ground by 1963, but Phil Whalley’s book tells the remarkable story of the resurrection of Stanley and their long and often fraught climb back to the top.

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My Story
by Graeme Sharp
Mainstream, £16.99
Reviewed by Mark O'Brien
From WSC 241 March 2007 

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Because his international career with Scotland was relatively limited and the period in which he won domestic honours was fairly short, non-Evertonians probably know very little about Graeme Sharp. Indeed, if they were asked to name a striker from the mid-Eighties glory days at Goodison, they would probably be more likely to go for Andy Gray or one-­season wonder Gary Lineker.

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