Search: 'laws'

Surviving football’s money business
by Brian Laws with Alan Biggs
Vertical Editions, £16.99
Reviewed by Graham Stevenson
From WSC 316 June 2013

Buy this book

For a manager who has spent over a decade employed by Scunthorpe United in three spells, it’s disappointing to find only 19 pages in Brian Laws’s autobiography about his time at Glanford Park. He’s led the club to a couple of promotions and a couple of relegations, so it’s not as if there is a dearth of interesting history between them, despite the balance sheet currently reading roughly “nil”.

Scunthorpe are now broke, broken and back in the basement division for the first time in several years – which is exactly where they were when Laws first arrived in 1997. For the small steel-town club he was a relatively big appointment and made an immediate impression. Rumours spread quickly of dressing-room dust-ups and car-park dusting-downs, but “Ol’ Big Hair” and his journalist co-writer don’t take many opportunities to fill in much colour between the lines here.

The Machiavellian boardroom-level manoeuvres during a bizarre three weeks in 2004, for instance, are dealt with in just over a paragraph. This involved Laws being fired by a new chairman, before the previous one stepped in to take back control of the club and reinstated him. “The whole thing got quite nasty,” Brian says. But nasty how? Were horses’ heads involved?

It’s much the same elsewhere throughout this (terribly titled) book. Laws’s time at Grimsby Town is over quite quickly and the aftermath of an injury caused by his launching a plate of chicken wings into Italian midfielder Ivano Bonetti’s face reads like only two-thirds of a story. The lessons learned seem to have been to do with Laws’s handling of the media rather than the handling of his players. Later managerial roles at Sheffield Wednesday and Burnley are similarly done-and-dusted in mere pages and key incidents at all of his clubs feel as if they are dealt with like clearances to be booted into row Z. Much more care is taken in detailing why Laws got the nickname “Ernie” during his playing days. It’s as simple as you imagine – team-mates’ reference to comedian Ernie Wise being short and wearing a wig.

Laws’s years on the pitch dominate – obviously none more so than successful ones at Nottingham Forest (during which he drank Mick Hucknall’s backstage bar dry and wet himself walking out at Wembley for a Cup final – events unrelated). A series of anecdotes about Brian Clough’s eccentricities add more to the mythos but it’s actually Laws himself who surprises with some poignant recollections of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, such as his continuing embarrassment at not realising the seriousness of events and hurling verbal abuse at the first few Liverpool fans out onto the pitch.

It’s clear Clough had something of a soft spot for Laws and it’s easy enough to figure out why. Laws comes across as reasonably principled and workmanlike – qualities he showed as a player. He also seems prone to let his feelings boil over from time to time, an attribute he clearly takes into the dressing room as a manager.

Buy this book

General rules

Accents
Put them in on French, German, Spanish and Portuguese words where we’re certain they’re right. Leave them off all other languages except in occasional instances when it’s polite, eg with a contributor’s name. Use discretion when the whole article contains accents and they are definitely correct and consistent. Leave them off common English words like cliche and protege. But do put them on words that could otherwise be confusing eg exposé.

Read more…

The Albert Johanneson story
by Paul Harrison
Vertical, £15.99
Reviewed by Ashley Clark
From WSC 306 August 2012

Buy this book

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.

Buy this book

Alex Lawson on the role of train travel in football

In the 1970s and 80s Football Specials were used to ferry fans to away games by rail in a bid to contain hooliganism. Supporters’ organisations and the British Transport Police have been investigating the idea of restoring the services in the wake of frequent arrests of fans travelling on regular trains. At the height of hooliganism, spare carriages and redundant trains were used to transport huge numbers of fans. But the Specials became a focus for problems and were largely scrapped in the early 1990s as privatisation made organising services across the networks more difficult.

Read more…

Sepp Blatter causes a stir with his views on part-time refereeing, writes Steve Menary

When Sepp Blatter announced that referees at all World Cup finals from 2014 onwards must be full-time, he caused consternation among many ambitious match officials. “Some people say there’s not enough money to pay them, but there always seems to be plenty in the professional leagues,” said Blatter. This prompted particular concern among Germany’s part-time officials. When Blatter recently clarified his position he did not back down, insisting that German football association must “establish a system in which the referees are its employees”.

Read more…