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by Paul McVeigh
Bloomsbury, £14.99
Reviewed by Ashley Clark
From WSC 319 September 2013

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Since his retirement from football in 2010, diminutive former Norwich City midfielder and Northern Ireland international Paul McVeigh has worked hard to create a brand for himself. A regular pundit on TV and radio, he also treads the speaker’s circuit and has co-founded the company ThinkPro alongside sports psychologist Gavin Drake, which trails itself on its website as an “Elite Performance Development Programme”. It’s all a long way from the days when ex-pros simply bought pubs when their playing days were done.

McVeigh’s first book – the alarmingly titled (but largely uncontroversial) The Stupid Footballer Is Dead – is constructed as a 12-step guide for professional and aspiring footballers aiming to realise their potential and develop successful careers. Based largely around McVeigh’s thesis that mental strength is gradually replacing the need for physical strength in modern football, it is clearly structured and easy to follow, as each chapter concludes with a case study and a capsule summary of its key points. However, it is sometimes repetitive and better consumed in chunks rather than one sitting.

Though one’s overall enjoyment and appreciation of The Stupid Footballer will likely hinge on their level of tolerance for the near-messianic tone and buzzword-heavy language of the self-help industry (when McVeigh glowingly mentions Paul McKenna, he’s not talking about the ex-Preston North End midfielder), much of the book’s content is undeniably salient. In chapters with titles such as “Define and follow goals”, “Create a helpful self-image”, and “Think about thinking” he offers a host of practical suggestions filtered through his own wealth of professional experience. McVeigh is not shy of the occasional critique, either – he is particularly scathing of England’s 2010 World Cup squad, who he castigates for their lack of positivity, and has some choice words regarding Joey Barton’s perceived lack of professionalism.

McVeigh comes across as likeable enough but he often lapses into cliche, while an occasional lack of self-awareness in his choice of language bleeds through. When, in the final chapter (“There is life after football”), he boasts of having “delivered stand-up comedy”, it’s impossible not to think of David Brent. Another unintentional laugh-out-loud moment arrives when McVeigh describes Pisa FC as having “failed to sign him”, rather than him “failing to secure a contract”; this kind of lacuna in logic is perhaps a corollary of the bulletproof self-confidence he’s engendered in himself through practising what his book preaches. That said, McVeigh is candid about some of his earlier career mistakes (often involving a drink or two) and offers welcome slivers of personal information about his upbringing in Belfast against the backdrop of the Troubles.

Ultimately, even though its content is hardly revolutionary, it’s not too much of a leap to say that The Stupid Footballer Is Dead, with its neatly pedagogical structure, could come to be used as a key text for coaches looking to help focus the minds of young players across the country. However, it remains to be seen whether the current generation of English footballers, who McVeigh characterises as being hooked on Xbox, will pay it much attention.

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In 
Britain And Ireland
by Shaun Tyas
Paul Watkins, £19.95
Reviewed by Roger Titford
From WSC 319 September 2013

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Shaun Tyas opens a new area in the examination of the minutiae of football culture. We’ve had stadiums, haircuts, kits, programmes, even Subbuteo; why not club nicknames? I would not have thought that it was an overly promising proposition but by dint of thorough desk research, extensive use of Wikipedia and taking the whole of the British Isles (including Isle of Man) as his canvas he generates over 350 pages of entries. He quotes a beautiful 19th-century aphorism – “a nickname is a biography in a word” – as a kind of justification for the study. Not only do so many clubs share the same nickname (I note to my surprise 11 cases of the Royals) but some clubs have many nicknames.

The main entertainment value lies in the archaic and the unofficial nicknames rather than the official and the well-known stories. To give an idea of the scope here are all the nicknames he found associated with Bristol City: Babes, Cider Army, City, Eighty-Twoers, Reds, Robins, Slave Traders, Turnips and Wurzels. As you might well imagine a number of these have been bestowed by fans of rival clubs and are sourced from a 2003 fans’ survey. Old football annuals and cigarette cards provide much of the source material.

Tyas has tackled his subject more from the top down – that is using official and often national sources, rather than from individual club histories and fan interviews. The inevitable and forgivable consequence is some omissions, common to the first edition of any dictionary. For instance, Reading have also been known as the R’s which has mutated into URZ and been in common usage over the past decade; the apparently unknown derivation of Spanners (a Charlton nickname for Millwall) dates to a spanner-throwing incident at Elm Park in August 1995.

Small gaps perhaps but Tyas has approached his task in a determinedly scholarly way with a full complement of appendices, indices, bibliography and cross-references that allow the reader to skip easily around the main body of the text. If that were not sufficient he offers a detailed four-step classification of nicknames into 50 categories so that in “name-based on locality/human history/language/proverbial sayings” you will find “The Bairns” (Falkirk) and three possible derivations thereof.

There are times when one could feel that this is a lightweight subject taken rather too seriously but then nobody nowadays would dismiss the 1960s folklore work of Peter and Iona Opie on children’s nursery rhymes and playground games which at the time may have appeared inconsequential. Moreover, while Tyas is methodical and, as far as I can tell, factually very sound, he writes with real joy and positivity about his chosen subject. This dictionary is an entertaining volume to dip into and there cannot be a fan who would fail to learn something of interest or amusement. I’d never heard of the Old Farm derby (Norwich v Ipswich) or this neat, modern biography in a word: Jackburn for Blackburn.

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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 life in football
by Paul Fletcher MBE with Dave Thomas
Vertical Editions, £14.99
Reviewed by Alan Tomlinson
From WSC 315 May 2013

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This is a book about life-changing moments, successful adaptations in life and survival in the football business, from player to executive. Paul Fletcher explains the title by saying that his “life and career has been magical; it’s as simple as that”. Fletcher’s three moments of life-changing experience were seeing a small player head the ball, inspiring him to practise jumping and heading aged 16; meeting his wife-to-be at Bolton’s Beachcomber Club; and attending a Dale Carnegie course in leadership training. The third Damascan moment was at the end of his playing career and, as a fan of Carnegie’s book How to win friends and influence people, Fletcher enrolled on a 12-week course in Bark Street, Bolton. There’s a deliberate evocation here of dead-end hopelessness, back in the stark, dark uncertainties of his early life in the town but now with a pair of worn-out knees and an unplanned future. The Carnegie programme changed all that for Fletcher, with the probing question: “Where do life’s opportunities lie, inside or outside of your comfort zone?”

Fletcher was born in Bolton and played football for his hometown club then Burnley and Blackpool, all in a state of decline or at best static during his playing days, which peaked in the mid-1970s. But the Carnegie course gave him the urge and the confidence to branch out into after-dinner speaking, from World Cup events to the Bacup Wheeltappers, India to Ramsbottom and an appearance at the Cambridge Union. He also moved into photography, the property business and marketing, which got him the job of commercial manager at Colne Dynamoes, a non-League outfit threatening Burnley’s local hegemony at the time.

After a year he was recommended for the commercial manager’s job at Huddersfield Town, where a derelict plot alongside the club’s old ground was available but undeveloped. He went there to introduce money-making ideas but found himself drawn into the process of modernisation of the game, by taking on responsibilities for the specifics of stadium design. The old Leeds Road ground was superseded by the modern McAlpine (now John Smith’s) Stadium and suddenly Fletcher was a man in demand – a former player with commercial nous and a pedigree of successful project management.

Fletcher’s is an engaging story with some good put-downs; Alan Ball, in charge at Blackpool, comes out as one of the worst managerial appointments of the era. But it’s a bit laddish, cultivating the spirit of the dressing-room and stand-up/after-dinner circuit. I’d have liked to know more about the minutiae of his departures from top jobs at Huddersfield, Bolton, Coventry, Wembley and Burnley (covering their season in the Premier League). But he holds back on that and tells another anecdote or reminds us that he’s a ukelele-playing stalwart of the George Formby Appreciation Society. “Magic” or “magical” gets a dozen or so mentions throughout the book and at the end “serendipity” too. Fletcher recognises that he was a chance-taker not just on the field; his life in football at his impressively wide levels of achievement is testimony to his determination, ambition, loyalty towards and sustained affiliation to his local roots.

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Damning evidence about the state of their ground makes tough reading for Owls fans, admits Tom Hocking

In late 1898 officials from The Wednesday FC learned that the lease on Olive Grove, their home for a decade, could not be renewed. The land was needed for a railway expansion and they had until the end of the season to find a replacement. With few locations available they settled on High Bridge, Owlerton. The plot of meadowland to the north of Sheffield was uneven, a long way from the city centre and poorly served by public transport.

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