Second Yellow , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing Ltd - John Smith

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215 pages

English

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Second Yellow: More Adventures of our Footballing Heroes brings you more funny, fascinating and downright baffling tales gleaned by authors John Smith and Dan Trelfer from their unflagging research of over 240 footballer autobiographies. Together, they have pored through the works of genuine legends, cult heroes and players they can only dimly recall from their 1983 Panini sticker albums to find stories and facts that will delight, shock and confuse - sometimes all at once. There's the chairman who owned a ventriloquist's dummy called Algernon. There's the Liverpool legend who set a team-mate's wife's hair on fire. There's the Arsenal star who confronted some innocent fans with a samurai sword. And there's the Ipswich hero who took on Sylvester Stallone in an arm-wrestling contest - possibly inspiring Stallone's half-forgotten epic Over The Top. This book covers all the bases of the typical footballer's life: love, violence, gambling, horrific injury, banter (it's mostly banter) and, apparently, pigeons.

Informations

Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	21 septembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785317521
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
John Smith and Dan Trelfer, 2020
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library.
Print ISBN 9781785316791 eBook ISBN 9781785317521
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CONTENTS
Introduction
Train in Vain
Isn t It Romantic?
Just Call Me Robbo
The Magic Sponge
That s Entertainment!
Young, Gifted Blackpool
Before the Glory
Watching Them Watching Us Watching Them
Four-Four-Two-by-Two
Done Deal
Box to Ballot Box
Christmas with the Lads
Over Land and Sea
All We Want is Consistency
Tactics, Tantrums Tea Cups
The Greatest Show
Final Word
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
We go again.
Some of you will be here because you read Booked! , in which case, thank you for your continued support. Others will be newbies, in which case, welcome along. Grab a tea from the machine, pull a chair round and introduce yourself. We re all friends here.
If you re with us now it s because you love football. You may even love football as much as Graham Roberts, a man who missed his brother s wedding for Dorchester v Bridport. Apparently, Stephen took it badly and unfortunately our relationship was never the same again. Still, Dorchester beat Bridport 4-1. This is the level of commitment we re looking for now, people. Go big, go home or go to Dorchester.
Our fascination with the autobiographies of football folk knows no bounds. We think it was John Betjeman, or possibly Malcolm Allison, that said I have come to the conclusion that every man s life must be of interest , and he s not wrong. We see the interest and value in every account of every football figure we ve come across, from dry-as-a-bone David Elleray, to colourful character Mel Sterland who once thought he d killed a man for challenging me to fight for twenty quid . We are here, as always, to do the legwork and the man-hours, before placing the treasure before you.
For example, we re here to tell you that Ron Atkinson has a score-settling chapter in one of his books called People I Wouldn t Go On Holiday With , while Brian Laws signs off his entire book with an optimistic so far! , presumably in the hope that there will be a second volume to come, which is all the more ambitious when you consider that his final chapter is about doing DIY. Bermudan Shaun Goater wastes no time in dealing with the elephant in the room in Chapter One of Feed The Goat , by declaring of the Bermuda Triangle, So far as the islanders are concerned it just doesn t exist , which is better than leaving us all wondering for 300 pages. Meanwhile, Ted MacDougall shows a degree of self-awareness that one or two others could do with, to be honest, and uses his introduction to apologise to everyone for being such an arsehole .
Sometimes, the most entertaining aspect of a player s book is the surprising language they employ. Jimmy Greaves eloquently describes making his debut for Chelsea as like kissing Jesus , while Derek Dougan goes around the place quoting George Bernard Shaw. Some overstretch slightly and come off a bit my first big school essay , like Neil Warnock describing his hopes at Leeds melting away like a snowman in his garden, or Jeff Winter writing: The big orange sun sank slowly below the horizon. Lee Howey, meanwhile, was clearly that kid who bought a thesaurus in the summer holidays and tries to drop big words wherever possible. He liberally scatters the likes of emetic passages , eidetic memory and excrescence of strawberry blond hair about his prose - and that s just the Es. This is why we re here to pick a path through them all for you.
In doing so we ve picked up a lot of wisdom and mottos along the way. Take your own pick from the likes of
There s no shame in the game staying in your football lane . (Adebayo Akinfenwa)
Humiliations are like power plants you do draw energy from them . (Jens Lehmann)
On playing in front of the defence: If the sea s deep, a fish can breathe. If you put him just under the surface, he ll get by, but it s not quite the same thing . (Andrea Pirlo)
Better to wake up with a girl on your arm than a hangover in your head . (Terry Curran)
My golden rule is be sensible . (Alan Shearer)
The real gift for us in being able to expand our research has been to achieve a greater understanding of many things. For example, in our first book we dealt with Jim Smith putting on a puppet show team talk on the QPR coach to a Wembley cup final. Only during the research for this second book did we get to the root of the Bald Eagle s puppet obsession, which, thanks to information gleaned from Ron Atkinson s book, appears to date back to a celebratory dinner thrown for Smith when he got Oxford promoted to Division One. The entertainment that night was provided by Roger De Courcey and Nookie Bear, and Ron tells us that after a few drinks, Jim became engrossed in the behaviour of Nookie Bear , who, for those too young to remember him in his pomp, was not a real bear. Jim was oblivious to all of us. As far as he was concerned it was Nookie and him alone in that room, and Nookie was telling jokes. And Nookie, it seemed, had taken on a human scale. Every time Nookie told a joke, Jim just roared with laughter and punched it right in the face, almost lifting poor old Roger off his feet. The punching we ll leave to one side for somebody else to analyse but once you know Jim had a fascination with ventriloquist acts, the monkey puppet team talk doesn t seem so daft does it? What do you mean it still does?
Along the way we ve picked up other insights that have added to our enjoyment of the game, and pop culture, such as the fact that Rod Stewart was asked to star in Escape to Victory , or that future Man City chief executive Garry Cook (of AC Milan bottled it fame) sang backing vocals on Rod s Rhythm of My Heart . Because of course he did.
We learned that just before Liverpool lost the title in the last minute at Anfield in 1989, Jan Molby and the subs were on their way to get into their kit for the celebrations when the Michael Thomas goal went in. And we already thought it was funny enough.
And speaking of full kit, we ve always enjoyed John Terry missing what would have been the winning penalty in the 2008 Champions League Final for Chelsea v Manchester United. Particularly because he fell on his arse while doing it. However, we ve since learned from Frank Lampard s 2006 autobiography that having slipped while scoring a penalty at Euro 2004, Terry would often make fun of it in training: At Chelsea, John will occasionally re-enact that kick, complete with the sliding foot , little knowing that he was tempting fate and a fall was in his future. And now we can enjoy it all the more. Oh, hindsight, you wonderful thing.
What? We never said we weren t petty-minded and spiteful.
So our research has run the full gamut of these books, taking in a lot of players from many clubs and several eras. The extremes among them are perhaps best summed up by two introductions we came across. Firstly, the needlessly grandiloquent Alan Hudson:
I was born in June 1951 under the influence of the star sign Gemini. It is represented as the Twins, Castor and Pollux. Egyptian astrologers depicted them as a pair of ghosts, while Arabian astrologers symbolized them as peacocks. Characteristics include being quick and restless. Mutable, not to be depended on.
And then the no-nonsense, nail-on-the-head approach from Roy McDonough:
In a career that surpassed 650 games, 150 goals, 400 women and thousands of beers, I played for three England World Cup winners, tried to clog Dutch master Johan Cruyff and pulled a Miss UK finalist with half a pint of lager and 1 petrol money.
And whichever approach you prefer (and we all know really: you re not made of stone), we hope we ve catered for you in the pages that follow. Enjoy.
TRAIN IN VAIN
One-nil down against no one
Straight off the training ground is a frequently heard cry from over-excited commentators, usually in response to some kind of set-piece wizardry. Think Javier Zanetti s bit of devilry for Argentina against England or a classic short corner for Teddy Sheringham to belt home. But we ve looked into it for you, and it turns out it s not all tactics boards and unfettered genius down there among the balls, bibs and cones. In fact, at times it seems like some of them are making it up as they go along.
Before we get too involved in the session, it s vitally important that we stretch and warm up - all footballers must surely agree on that. Apart from Andrea Pirlo, who has views: I hate it with every fibre of my being. It actually disgusts me. It s nothing but masturbation for conditioning coaches. Disgusted, you say. Well, this changes things. Pirlo was both pretty good at football and stunning to look at so maybe we should listen to him. As you were then. Just make sure your laces are tied and let s get cracking.
The stadium might be where the eyes of the world are on players, and where they get the glory and the fame, but fame costs, and the training ground, to paraphrase a great thinker, is where they start paying in sweat. It s therefore important to build a welcoming sense of camaraderie between players, to create an environment where they can relax and give their