the simplest game

The Secret of Football Fiction

2010-02-09T20:05:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that I've been writing a new blog. The football fiction content has been severely limited. But I've rectified the problem and finally got back to writing about football fiction. You can look at it here.

Changes are afoot...

2009-06-14T04:11:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned in passing that things might be changing around the simplest game offices... and then, of course, there were a few erratic posts and it looked like I just couldn't shake it. But things, new things really are afoot

In the next few weeks the changes will become permanent and the new blog will be rolling like a solid pass down the touchline.
The simplest game blog will be housed under the simplest game banner, but things will be changing a bit. The content will still contain the tom foolery and the football fiction shenanigans, but it will now be run alongside a blog under my own name.Yes, thesimplestgame has been stripped of its anonymity, among other things.

It's still very much in development but the new site is running. Have a look anyway...the (new) simplest game.

bitterness and reticence and biographic nonsense

2009-06-03T19:52:00.000-07:00

The leg’s better, much better, thanks. The bullet wound is healing painfully slowly, as is the way with someone in the early autumnal stages of life, so the wife (still laughing) assures me. Still no football though. Or running. It’s a bit rubbish.

And the football season’s finished.

Thesimplestgame would like to reticently and bitterly offer a heartless congratulations to the debt-ridden conglomerations who triumphed. Well-done’s must go to both Chelsea and Man (and boy) United.

Though on reflection, there is no need for bitterness or reticence. These clubs actually need our help. Yes, our help. Both squads will need large and exceptionally absorbent towels to dry their eyes after their respective puerile remonstrations and humiliating demonstrations of footballing impoverishment in the Champions League. Winning the Premiership or the vainglorious FA Cup cannot remove the images of forever-tarnished, fat and teary, petted-lips from our collective minds. It only makes their plight, a plight no football fan can afford or ignore.

So here’s thesimplestgame’s end of season charity plea: If anybody out there has a spare £750 million, could you help either of these dispassionate and unemboldened clubs, who, despite having the most expensive and roundly celebrated footballers on the planet, were unable to carry themselves with even a modicum of the decorum expected of professionals in other walks of life.

Maybe I’m bitter because I’d just got myself fit enough to play for the first time in years – a series of bulldozer throwing injuries had kept me from playing the beautiful game in my characteristically horrible and uncouth fashion for almost six years - and I find myself sidelined again. Maybe I’m bitter because the teams I follow lack the strength to carry the weight of these 'giant' clubs' debt-accumulating prowess. Maybe I’m just sick of watching pampered, excessively-paid, over-rated adult footballers kick-off like kindy kids. Maybe I'm just bitter.

Man (and boy) United Striker, Wayne Rooney, at 20 years old, agreed a 12-year contract with HarperCollins to write, that’s right, write a minimum of five books for an advance of £5m plus royalties.(He really is holding a Harry Potter book in his right hand.) If you were ever wondering where the boundaries of football fiction and non-fiction blurred together, thesimplestgame suspects that there would be a good place to start looking.

too old for football?

2009-05-18T23:11:00.000-07:00

Thesimplestgame is couch bound. Ripped a hole in the middle of a calf. Its no bovine injury, the back of the lower left leg feels like it has a bullet wound.

“Too old for football,” the wife laughed. Apparently there’s a cut off. When do we get too old for football? Isn’t it what keeps us young? The ranting at the telly, the boyhood obsession. The love of football was there before the wife was thought of. Yes, churlishness is a possibility.

She laughed even harder. She knows football is important, I'd go as far as to say she knows its really important, but there’s only a little recognition of a deeper understanding. It’s only a game, she used to say.

I know, that’s what I thought. She knows better now. She’s happy with a win and regrettably sympathetic if there’s not. That, my friends, is all a football fan need ask for in a non-footballing partner. Just ask Nick Hornby.

I’m taking part in the QWC AWonline writer’s race tonight. It’s the reason I’m blogging here now. A warm up. A wee stretch before the exertions. And yes, both were done preceding the sustained the footballing injury (I was the only one who did!).

Here’s the link - AWonline. It’ll be a laugh. AWonline has some brilliant resources attached. Well worth having a look at.

Changes in these blogging patterns are still afoot, or there are issues in squad development, something like that. thesimplestgame promises, if nothing else, to keep ye posted.

Incidentally, the painting is called Middle-Aged Men Playing Football by David Fawcett. You can look at and even purchase his very nice paintings here, if you're interested.

Apologies

2009-04-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

Thesimplestgame is currently working on some rather dramatic (for us anyway) changes in format. I know. Sounds really exciting. It's not really.

We can only apologies for the somewhat prolonged, or, you could say, slightly frozen, service of late and assure you that issues of intermittency will be resolved as soon as poss. The new changes will be rolled out when they're done. It might take some time though, so please bear with us. We might even do something about the pishy patter.

Have ye got a pair of boots?

2009-04-14T04:32:00.000-07:00

The first paid football players were Scottish. They emerged out of the mists on the rain soaked border to show the English how it was done. I like that. I like it a lot. It might reinforce myths concerning the Scot’s financial shrewdness, maybe not those working for the Bank of Scotland right enough, but I like to think it was because they were so skilled or at least skilled enough to warrant payment. I’m not ruling out the combination option, but the point stands – at least once in the history of the beautiful game, the Scots were considered to be very good, maybe even the best.

Since then, before you say it… things have changed a little. A helluva lot, actually. Yes, sadly it seems we’ve been getting progressively worse since those glorious halcyon days. The lowest point, worse than Ally McLeod’s late 70s combover and nationwide humiliation, came under the stewardship of a horrible wee German - no the other one - Berti Vogts. He steered us into some serious trouble. Enough to arouse suspicions about his real motives.

Even before that though, things had taken a turn for the worst. The stalwarts all retired, Goram gave up gambling and didn’t need the cash, Wee Baz wouldn’t play with Lambie and cheeky chappy Coisty got too heavy to lace his own boots. We’d also unhappily started on the Jackie Charlton management plan. Surprisingly, handing a pair of badly polished Umbro boots to any player who’d been near a plate o’ haggis, tatties ’n neeps, an empty Irn Bru bottle or had been seen waiting outside their local chip shop for a battered mars bar supper, is still proving to be as stable a proposition as making an investment in a US bank.

Recruitment aside, our world ranking unceremoniously dropped to 254th. One place above Burkina Faso. It prompted a Scottish national daily newspaper to pose the following question…

What’s the difference between Scotland and Burkina Faso? One’s a football backwater the other is a small country in Africa.

Now obviously thesimplestgame don’t want to be knocking an entire African nation or their footballing prowess. Professional players in Burkina get paid less than 30 pound a week apparently - less than it would cost to rap one of Wayne Rooney’s ears in brown paper. Burkina Faso is not a culturally impoverished country. It hosts one of the world’s most celebrated film festivals and, importantly, football is the favourite national pastime of the "men of integrity". Their poorly financed professional game is in 'development'. It’s not even 50 years old yet. It’s a different story for Scotland. To go from the very origins of professional football to not even being in the top 250 rankings was a blow even the most tartan spectacled fans couldn’t help making light of. Today, things are on the up, we were even in the world's top ten for a couple of weeks, yet we've failed to qualify for a major tournament in over a decade.

Now this is a site dedicated to football fiction, so it is with a mixture of pride and dismay that we discovered of the earliest examples of football fiction, including Tom Brown’s Days at Oxford in 1861 and PG Wodehouse’s Psmith and Mike in 1910, only Arnold Bennett’s The Card in 1911 features professional footballers, not much of a stretch considering the advent of the sport's professionalism only occurred a couple of years earlier. From an academic point of view this is what makes us happy. The dismay comes in that so few of the players in his work were Scottish (none - I think I need to check). Is it a legimate criticism to hold against the Yorkshireman? Some would say it is. Still we feel there’s a definitely place for his work on the football shelf before any of his pioneering peers.

staff boundaries

2009-04-08T19:24:00.000-07:00

I was in a large bookshop yesterday. For the sake of the story, we’ll call it Boundaries. Hey, before you throw down in disgust. Try it. It makes you feel much better about shopping in your favourite independent bookshop. Boundaries has lots of books. A lot. A really good selection. But then, they should have. It’s a feckin BIG shop and maybe that’s why it’s kind of expensive, but maybe it's not. I'm talking expensive compared to independent bookshop prices. Take Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends. $32.95 in yer local independent. $57 in Boundaries. I mean Really? Is there any need for that shit. I thought the idea of the corporate homogeneity is larger volume, cheaper prices. The Indies can be more expensive than chain-store equivalents sometimes, but at least you get the benefit of informed, interested staff who generally know what they’re talking about. In chain-world this is the exception rather than the rule, but we get it and we even accept it. The indies want you to come back because they like it so, so much they want you to do the same.

Boundaries isn’t always more expensive, mind. There are exceptions. The ugly spine of ‘fast book nation’ mentalities coupled with economies of scale allow for the notorious 3-for-the-price-2-deal. A bargain? It would be except there’s only ever really one book you want. There’s maybe one other, but it’s a half-interest; a might read if you ever get done reading the things you want to read. The rest you’ve either read already or never will. It’s the ‘more you spend the more you save’ sham. Still it must work for some people and charities like Lifeline definitely benefit.

Before I go on I should declare my part-time employment in a particularly good indie in Brisbane. This is hardly an objective piece, BUT were I otherwise employed, I’m confident I’d make the same observations.

While I was in Boundaries, I asked a staff member at the counter if there was a sports fiction section? He looked at me like I’d asked him if I could poo in his shoe. “You what, mate?” he says.
I said, “Sports fiction – fiction with sport in it. D’you have any books or even a section of sports fiction?” He looked at me the way people look in empty plastic bags, when they know there’s nothing in them. They’re done with them. Only good for drowning seagulls now.
So I said, “You know books that are fictional and have sport in them?”
He actually scratched his head.

Now the first time, it could well have been my lilting Scottish brogue that confused him. The second time maybe too. But the third time I said it like I was patronising a non-English speaker. Hand signals and everything. “You know? Books…that…Ah rrre …phic shon al …annnDD… have… sssspoarrrt… iiinnn… tthem?” I said it the way Lee Majors ran after he’d had the $6million dollar operation, a bit of creaking and a lot of slow motion.
Still…
Nothing.
A solid wall of blankness.
It was disconcerting.
Another scratch and a flicker of light intruded into the empty space in his eyes. He said, “There’s some sports books upstairs mate.”
He was right. But they were all non-fiction. I said, “Yeah thanks.”

What chance do I have of establishing football fiction as a genre if the staff at one of the city’s largest bookshops cannot imagine that a thing like sports fiction exists?

A floating green zone of fantasy

2009-04-01T04:16:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is taken from The Global Game. I think it's relevant to all football fiction, but it works well for this week football fiction subject. Comics. How good were, no, are they?

My first experience of the wonder, romance and let's be honest no small amount of nonsense of football fiction was in comic book stories like those in Tiger (1954-1985) and Eagle (1950-1994), where star quality football stories like Billy’s Boots, filled with Dead-shot Dean’s football magic, won him all the games and scored all the goals he really needed to score. What I would have done for a pair of those incredible boots. The closest I got to a pair was the wobbly boots on a saturday night.

Hotshot Hamish has been reprised in one of Scotland's most popular weekly Scottish national newspapers - The Sunday Mail (I said popular I never said worthy). Still it warms the cockles knowing a whole new generation will be able to experience the power of Hamish's size 16. He could smash a canon ball shot straight through a steel plated A-team built vehicle without so much as a pity the fool - and he's Scottish. His team mate highlanders, including the insanely goofy Mighty Mouse, benefitted from the big man's big toes more than once.

Roy of the Rovers, possibly the most famous of all the football comic strip characters, is also still being produced in a number of fanzines as far as I'm aware. More gifted than Best, Pele, Ronaldhino and Michael Flatley combined Roy could do anthing with a ball. The comic ran through Roy's incredible career, management jobs included and then even soapily involved his son's adventures. As far as I'm aware, they followed the great tradition of famous footballer's sons the world over, in that he failed to capture his father's acclaimed success or any of his ability. Still he managed a career - which is more than can be said for my own game.

Striker, The Sun newspaper's long standing football player comic leaned toward the adult end of the market, ye know more tragic footballer's wives than wizened old boots with any magic in them. Particularly when it changed to 3D in an effort to keep up with the times. If nothing else it was a series which was remarkable for its unremarkableness.

There are many others. Football comics first appeared with regularity in the early 1920's, but that's a blog for another day.

It was long before I moved to books, novels mostly, only to be haunted by the lack of football. It seemed there were no football novels. Things may have changed a little, but it's a little and I'd like to go some way to putting those ghosts to rest in the creative practice parts of my PhD.

football n fiction, ...they started walking out together.

2009-03-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

Now I've talked about defining it. I've talked about the books. I've talked about the history of this lovely wee genre. I've even talked about how it works. Now it's about time I start putting it all together. It's going to take weeks. The progression will be fractured and distracted with all the usual nonsense - journal entries, updates on my PhD, spurious argument and obviously football books as I find them. [It's been beyond mental in thesimplestgame back office. It's nice to be back]

The first question I need to address is... Is football fiction really a genre?

Football fiction may have started with Shakespeare. In act one, scene four of King Lear (1606), the Earl of Kent kicks and taunts Oswald with the line, “Nor tripped neither, you base football player.” I have read too that there are references in The Comedy of Errors (1592). So, it's possible that football fiction has been around for longer than the modern version of the game, which developed some 260 years later. I doubt it though.

In Ray of the Rovers: the working class heroine in popular football fiction 1915-1925 Alethea Melling puts football fiction's roots in working-class “factory or dialect fiction”. But there are examples of football fictions existing before that. In The Encyclopedia of British Football, Cox and company do a good job of contextualising the history of 'football literature', but in following Alethea's lead, they spurn the chance to create a definition themselves.

The only other uses of the term football fiction I have encountered are for classification purposes on the East Sussex (England) public library website and on a gay erotic fan fiction site. I hope the two never get mixed up, the East Sussex WI's knickers' would be so twisted for so long, there would be tears in every brown eye.

In an attempt to broaden the field to include other forms of football writing (a practice I want to steer things away from), including non-fiction, plays, revues, photography collections and poetry, DJ Taylor, in Rally Round You Havens! and John Turnbull, Thom Satterlee and Alon Raab, in The Global Game have assigned the collective works of football writing the distinction of being soccer or football literature.

This was the definition I developed (in an earlier blog). It raised a couple of eyebrows during the auld confirmation process.

Any work of fiction with a significant reliance on football as a central or substantive element of the narrative.

It's still a little spongy. It'll need some reworking, particularly around what qualifies as significant or substantive, but what it does is offer a centre spot, somewhere to play from until the field firms up. Otherwise where would you start?

Do you include Barry Hines’ A Kestrel for a Knave (1969) for example? As John Turnbull pointed out on this site, it’s about a boy and his bird, but there is also a single, narratively ‘significant’, 20 page game (in a book of 159 pages). Do you include John King’s The Football Factory (1996) even though the reader rarely sees any actual football?

Albert Camus and the boy Nabakov have both written about football - particularly their own experiences as players, (see the Global Game site, its full of great stuff like this), should I consider their work? The Plague (1970) is full of football references, well not full, but it is mentioned a number of times.

I would say no to Shakespeare on the grounds of historical perspective. King’s trilogy The Football Factory , Head Hunters (1997) and England Away (1998), works of stunning violence and football hooliganism, are saturated in the parlance of football culture and are assuredly first eleven. Barry Hines makes the subs bench as Billy Casper, the wee boy in A Kestrel for a Knave, is colourfully and clearly developing as a character in the scene that, more importantly, is a sustained description of a football game. As for Camus and Nabakov, I’m not so sure.

This all seems well and good, except people have been making stuff up about football since football began; in skewed match reports, transfer speculation filled newspapers, websites and ‘pub-storytellers’ recounting great events. If you counted everyone who’d allegedly attended Scotland’s defeat of England, then reigning World Champions, in 1967 in Glasgow, the stadium would have been filled at least three times over.

It'll do though. More next week.

Detached from the world…still chasing the ball

2009-03-06T19:33:00.000-08:00

thesimplestgame must apologise to regular readers for the less than regular service here over the last couple of weeks. My life has been given a fairly hefty doing by the PhD confirmation process. I’ve now completed and submitted the document. I can honestly say that the 140 page academic ‘tour de force’ was one of the most difficult tasks I have ever undertaken and I still have the presentation and the gruelling 5 person panel interview/review to do.

Such an intense period of thought, research and study has left my battered, bruised and bloodied brain feeling like it’s been sitting on a hot plate for the last six weeks, or in a bain-marie. Either way it’s kind of soft, hot and sweaty. A less than nutritious goo has been beading my ears since last thursday.

Every time I’ve sat down to knock over the latest spraff on football fiction the front heated window of my mind steams over and I can’t get started. It’s the reason for the delay in posting this week. It’s not a block of writerliness as such. It’s simply a matter of unravelment. Like an auld woolly jumper on a washing line in the rain, my brain feels like it's come apart in fairly substantial sections. The re-enravelment process is not happening as quickly as I had hoped. As you can see from this here word deposit, it’s still too difficult to concentrate for long enough to throw a couple of lines together.

My thesis is about football fiction. Specifically the differences between young adult and adult works. To do this I’ve graphed and historicised the sociology of fictional football writing. It’s been really interesting. I’ve blended work from people we’ve seen on this site, such as DJ Taylor and John Turbull with work by cultured theorists like Steve Redhead, Alethea Melling and the writers of the Encyclopedia of British football. I’ve also come up with some of my own ideas on the genre – which is the way of things I suppose.

I’ve broken the genre down – because I can say with some authority that it is a genre – into streams and movements, which I will discuss when I’m feeling a little more attached to the world.

its criminal.

2009-02-26T22:17:00.000-08:00

Crime-related football fiction is a world unto itself. I nearly said underworld. It started a way back in the day, we're talking the 1920s and 30s here. Sydney Horler's Tiger Standish series probably aren't strictly crime but they are crime-related and more importantly, we here at the simplest game think they're great.

Tiger was a secret service agent who banged the goals away on the weekend and banged the bad guys away during the week. Barring hiccups, replays and midweek European ties obviously. Mind you, you'd have to presume the Euro ties would've been great cover for catching up with the international bad guys.

Plenty of thrills, the review in the Evening News said at the time. His real name was the Honourable Timothy Overbury Standish. He's the son of the Earl of Quorn, Master of the Quorn Hunt (that'd have to be some kind of vegetarian picnic), a better than bond style secret service agent and the finest centre forward in the land. What a Guy! He was so inspirational, Benny, his butler, followed him through four years of war in Flanders and then played on the left wing for his team - it's absolutely champion stuff.
Here's a wee sample I found elsewhere...

A pipe, a dog and a golf club : if you want to win the heart of a man, give him one of these. And when I say a man, I mean a MAN - not one of these emasculated cigarette smokers.

My other favourites of the day are Leonard Gribble's The Arsenal Stadium Mysteries (1939 and 1950). There were two of them - he pushed the boat out coming up with a name for the sequel. It was called The Replay. They were serialised in the papers. Gribble was allowed unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the Arsenal stadium and team. He cut a deal with the Chairman of the club and included actual players and their names in the mysteries - like they were playing themselves in a movie. Imagine getting a deal like that now. He also wrote They Kidnapped Stanley Mathews which was about, you guessed it, the kidnap of a famous player. Loads of fun.

There's also Gerald Verner's Football Pools Murder (1939). I've not been able to learn anything about it so far - apart from what the title tells you. John Creasey's Inspector West Kicks Off (1949), is a murder mystery which leads Inspector West on a trail from the body discovered at a football match, through the echelons of big club football and into the world of organised crime. The other book I'd love to learn more about is Cup Final Murder by Brendan Newman (1950).

Next week I'll have a look at the comtemporary offerings in the crime-related football fiction movement. In the meantime if anyone could tell me more, or at least anything, about these books I'd sure appreciate it.

the Global Game meets the simplest game part 3

2009-02-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

This is the final part of John Tunbull's interview for thesimplestgame, but I am absolutely positive that this will not be the last time his words will appear on this site. John Turnbull, editor of the glorious collection of football writing The Global Game, is the guru of football writing. I've just read one of his papers about football journalism and I've got to tell you, the guy really knows his gear. But I'll get to that in the next couple of weeks. The book is a remarkable piece of work. I'll be reviewing it soon too. These are the rest of John's answers...

thesimplestgame: What about football appeals to you as a writer and reader?
John Turnbull: Football contains the world. I cannot imagine an aspect of human experience – faith, fellowship, politics, language, law, love, resistance – that could not be addressed by considering the football ground. It is probably the most subtext-heavy sport on the planet. For a writer with interests in theology and international affairs and cross-cultural study and language, football offers all these ingredients.

My interest in football as a reader really began with Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow – a beautiful title, especially in the original Spanish, El fútbol a sol y sombra. After referring to the “astonishing void” in academic histories of the region, Galeano demonstrates how football bears much in Latin American society and culture. His is not a rhapsodic, nostalgic treatment. He is critical of the sport as spectacle that, in the modern day, is “organized not for play but rather to impede it.” That the best football writing might accommodate such perspectives of melancholy and loss – the game’s shadow side – is a strength.

tsg:There seems to be a general belief that men prefer reading non-fiction over fiction – it’s been put forward as one of the reasons for the dearth of football fiction. Another theory is that footballers are better at expressing themselves with a ball than a pen. Why do you think there is so little fiction about a sport that is so popular?

JT: The problem with the statement is the assumption that only men would be interested in football fiction. I suppose it is an explainable bias. Decisions about football books in English, to a large extent, come from publishing houses and agents in London. And as Steven Wells says, “From the British perspective, football is a measure of masculinity. It’s actually more important than possessing a penis.” Therefore, from commissioning editors lacking in imagination, with pounds sterling and the euro as the only frames of reference, we get fed a diet of hooligan memoirs (aka “hoolie porn”) and ghosted biography.

There might be some parallel in fiction to Galeano’s observation concerning the absence of sport from academic histories. Football exists in a nether region between intellect and emotion, aesthetic and kitsch. On the one hand, many writers and intellectuals see the game as too common to inspire higher sentiments; at the same time, our stereotypical image of sports fans is that they do not respond to appeals to the mind and reason. Yet clubs in the UK such as Tottenham, Barnsley and Brighton and Hove Albion have or have had poets in residence. Why not novelists in residence? Or philosophers in residence?

Jorge Valdano alone would disprove the thesis that footballers are incapable of narrating their own experience. I imagine that talented writers are no more or less common among footballers than in the rest of the population. It is open to question whether non-English-speaking footballers receive better educations or are more broad-minded than counterparts in the UK, USA, Australia and so on. From Australia, for example, the late Johnny Warren has written eloquently on football’s capacity to transcend cultural and ethnic divides.

But Alexei Smertin, a Russian player with experience at Chelsea, Portsmouth and Charlton, mentions to Marc Bennetts in Football Dynamo the challenges of learning English when “surrounded by guys whose vocabulary is limited to ‘fuck,’ and who make mistakes with grammatical tenses. ... I found it quite hard to communicate with English people in a non-football environment.” Bennetts has also quizzed Russian footballers on their favorite books. One popular selection is The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Smertin also likes Nabokov and Balzac.

tsg: Do you think there is a defined market for football literature, particularly fiction?
JT: The answer depends on the market that one considers. Certainly one would have better success pitching a football novel in Barcelona than New York. Having said that, I am aware of several novels in the United States on the “soccer mom” theme – bodice rippers about women whose overcharged libidos stray far from the touchlines.

John Turnbull's interview has been something of an enlightenment. An education in football writing. thesimplestgame is very, very grateful. We would like to thank John for his help, his time, his generosity and his patience. Thanks John.

You can have a look at excerts from John, Thom and Alon's book or even buy it at The Global Game The site really is worth a look.

The Global Game meets the simplest game part 2

2009-02-11T16:20:00.000-08:00

John Turnbull is the editor of a colourful, often beautiful and equally riotous, truly international, collection of football writing called The Global Game. But I told you that last week. I’ve now read a whole lot more of the book. It's a remarkable piece of work. I'll tell you more when I review it. Right now I want to post some more of the answers John generously gave when we spoke to him about football fiction.

thesimplestgame: Ian Plenderleith said good writing about sport avoids action on the field of play as much as possible. Nick Hornby said there's enough drama in football as it is without people needing to make up stories about it. Would you agree with either of them?

John Turbull: It is true that little content in The Global Game: Writers on Soccer describes match action. Orhan Pamuk’s comment is suggestive: football is faster than words.

Matches tend best to be described in the recollection, when the action can be parsed and account made of the writer’s perspective as supporter or participant. Ian Plenderleith himself, in “Save of the Day,” describes his protagonist making a series of stops in goal, but the narrative keeps its distance. “My life at that time,” the narrator says, “was in fact a series of mental football games.” Other writers have made use of the unique existential position of the goalkeeper to help get around this conundrum – the need to describe action at a pace faster than that possible on a page. A notable example is Peter Handke in The Goalkeeper’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. Albert Camus and Vladimir Nabokov have drawn on their time as young players – both goalkeepers – with Nabokov famously saying that, at Cambridge, he served less as the keeper of goal than “keeper of a secret.” The goalkeeper, to Nabokov, is “lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender.” He continues, writing in Conclusive Evidence:

I was crazy about goal keeping. In Russia and the Latin countries, that gallant art had been always surrounded with an aura of singular glamour. Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying ace as an object of thrilled adulation. His sweater, his peaked cap, his knee-guards, the gloves protruding from the hip-pocket of his shorts, set him apart from the rest of the team.

One of the most sustained descriptions of match action I have encountered, in English, is that by Barry Hines in A Kestrel for a Knave (1968). Again the young hero, Billy Casper, is a goalkeeper – and not a very committed one. At one point he climbs onto the crossbar “to scratch his arm pits, kicking his legs and imitating chimp sounds.”

One criterion for composing credible match action might be that the matches do not replicate fixtures in the real world. Were one to insert 10 pages of Arsenal v. West Ham in a novel – unless something were happening in the stands (as in Yury Olesha’s Envy), or the account were written from a fractured, Joycean perspective (like the match description in Antonio Skármeta’s I Dreamt the Snow Was Burning) – it is hard to imagine how this would serve exposition. (Chris Cleave’s Incendiary is based on an attack at Emirates Stadium during Arsenal-Chelsea, but I have not read the book.) But given that the authors above have integrated their own memories and imaginings into a world they have created, with their own characters and narrative logic, the football matches they describe take on meaning. Consider that the football scene in Hines’s Kes consumes 20 pages (the match itself is roughly eight pages) of a fairly short novel – Hines must have felt that the football evoked important qualities in Casper’s character.

I should also mention that as I write about “match action” and descriptions of such, I think of a male-centered world. This is a bias that is hard to discard. It might be interesting to analyze how Nalinaksha Bhattacharya, in Hem and Football and Hem and Maxine, integrates football action within novels involving a principally female cast.

Regarding Nick Hornby’s comment, I would be interested to learn more about the context. I suppose, if you think about Zidane’s head-butt near the conclusion of the 2006 World Cup final, it would be hard to create a more dramatic football scenario on the page. Yet if one were to construct a story that integrates Zidane’s upbringing in stretched circumstances in Marseilles, his conflicted heritage as a Berber and Frenchman, his talismanic role on a timeless green zone of fantasy, liberated for 90-minute intervals from all inhibition ... the climax might appear still more thunderous.

Hornby himself has written a lovely fable, Small Country of a boy press-ganged into playing for the national XI of the mythical Champina. (He read the story, part of a McSweeney’s collection published in New York, on an American radio program in 2005.) So, it’s likely that Hornby would wish to nuance this statement, if he has not done so already.

Part 3 of this interview will follow next week. In the meantime I've set about tracking down some of the books he mentions. At least the ones I haven't got yet.

thesimplestgame are extremely grateful for John's time and generosity in providing us with so much material for the site and for the PhD. Thank you John.

You can have a look at excerts from John, Thom and Alon's book or even buy it at The Global Game

The Global Game meets the simplest game part 1

2009-02-04T02:12:00.000-08:00

John Turnbull is the editor of a colourful, often beautiful and equally riotous, truly international, collection of football writing called The Global Game. What I’ve read of it is fantastic. When I’m done I will certainly include a review here. John and his friends in football, Thom Satterlee and Alon Raab, have done something that's a little special. Ye see, for the first time, that I know of anyway, someone has taken the time to seek out and translate football writing from around the world and put it in the one place. It's like a sampler, only smarter. With something to read from, and an introduction to, each author. It's an education, that's entertaining. And that's the way we like it here at thesimplestgame.

They aren’t all fiction. Some are just straight out quality football writing. There’s work in there by the likes of Mario Vargas Llosa, Gunter Grass, Simon Kuper, Ian Jack, Ted Hughes and Elvis Costello. There’s a whole lot more. Writers from all over the world. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be looking at the book in much closer detail as well as adding some of the answers John Turnbull gave me when thesimplestgame approached him to discuss his work.

The sites are well worth looking at too. Here’s a link to The Global Game - soccer writers site.You can buy the book there too.

Thesimplestgame really like the site, what motivated you and your colleagues to kick it off?

John Turnbull: Certainly there is a promotional aspect to the Web-based material, but, speaking for myself, I wanted to use interactive tools and especially podcasting to reduce the artificial separation between anthology editors and contributors. We are lucky to live in a time when such connections can be made with relative ease. Given that it was our intent in the book to draw on material from cultures and languages unfamiliar to Americans, it was inevitable that we would include selections from writers that we, as an isolated country, had never heard of before.

For example, within the book and via Internet telephony - in a podcast on the Writers on Soccer microsite - we have the chance to hear from Elísabet Jökulsdottír of Reykjavík comparing the mystery of football to the mystery of the ocean. After our conversation, she said that she had never spoken before with an interviewer from North America. That her name and her work might reach a broader audience alone is one reason for the book and accompanying Web site.
I also spoke to Uroš Zupan of Slovenia. It would be an oversimplification to say that his prose makes him the Nick Hornby of Central Europe, but he does cite Fever Pitch as at least partial inspiration for essays on overlapping recollections of World Cup tournaments and of his upbringing in the former Yugoslavia. I was able to speak with him about his 2007 book, Textbook Panini, and how he grades both teams and players via a private set of aesthetic criteria. Interesting that, for Hornby, Arsenal Football Club to some extent
shaped his identity as well as his attitude to the wider world. Zupan, in contrast, samples from the menu on offer without prejudice as to nationalities, perhaps a trait acquired from having lived in a culture of restrictions. But, more likely, he is probably just curious.

There’s a whole lot more to come from John Turnbull - too much for one blog. Thesimplestgame are very grateful to John for his generosity and his time and look forward to many more electronic conversations with a man who, it has to be said, really knows his football writing. We're also grateful for the opportunity to put Elvis Costello and Gunter Grass in the same blog.

thick herberts - DJ Taylor on Football Fiction

2009-01-28T02:16:00.000-08:00

DJ Taylor is a critic, novelist, biographer and most recent hero of thesimplestgame. He received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his work on George Orwell and contributes to The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman and The Spectator among others. Importantly he’s published a football fiction novel called English Settlement(1996), a non-fiction work called On The Corinthian Spirit: The Decline of Amateurism In Sport(2006) which is ‘mostly’ about football and penned a rather significant essay about football fiction. Like I say, he’s made a heroic contribution to my PhD without even realizing it. (thanks David). He was even good enough to answer a few questions.

tsg: The Encyclopedia of British Football notes your observation on what it calls ‘the predicament of football writing’. Apparently serious writers avoid the topic of football literature (fiction anyway) because of the often patronising or negative response given to books that try to reverse the trend. Did you know they’d mentioned you? Did you really make such a statement? And could you elaborate on what you meant?

David Taylor: I didn't know about the reference in the Encyclopaedia. I think it refers to an essay I wrote in a short-lived (but very good) book-length soccer biannual called Perfect Pitch (four issues, 1997-8) published in the UK by Headline Review. (tsg will be discussing the essay soon) The piece appeared in the first number (1997) and is called '"Rally round you Havens!": Soccer and the Literary Imagination' and the quote, about why it's so difficult to write convincingly about football, runs:
"Another drawback might be the characteristic inarticulacy of the game's participants, which in fictional terms is the eternal problem of equating the sensibility of the artefact with that of the characters the author has chosen to populate it. Perhaps in the last report this is just a way of saying that novels about soccer tend to be written by educated gentlefolks who have observed the game from afar while the cast of such works will necessarily be thick herberts, and that a certain amount of patronage, or rather distance between writer and raw material, inevitable."

tsg: What motivated you to write English Settlement? Was it a response to your observations about the market?
DT: I wanted to write a satirical state of the nation novel about England in around 1990 and I thought football was a wonderfully symbolic arena to set it in. Also a good background for the plot - an accountant friend once explained that there's no better place to launder money than a big soccer club.

tsg: Ian Plenderleith said good writing about sport avoids action on the field of play as much as possible. Nick Hornby said there's enough drama in football as it is without people needing to make up stories about it. Do you agree with either of them?
DT: Plenderleith not necessarily (see a brilliant novel which is, inter alia, about soccer called From Scenes Like These (1969) by Gordon Williams). Hornby - no with emphasis. There are no off-limits for novelists.

tsg: One of English Settlement’s real strengths lies in how much it allows you to say about England at that time (Thatcher out, Major in). The football seems to provide a window to look at the country. Was this a deliberate ploy? Was it because there were things you had to say? Or did you find that the football wasn’t enough on its own?
DT: If I could boringly quote from the essay mentioned in 1:
“On the face of it, football...ought to provide a perfect subject for fiction. There are several reasons for this, but one of the more obvious is that it involves at least 22 people spending 90 minutes in the same place, leaving aside the pre- and post-match socialising. Another is the game's centrality (along with boxing, pop music and organised crime) to the whole notion of working-class self-advancement, a social phenomenon in which the twentieth-century English novel has occasionally shown some mild interest. Then there is the agreeable, if sometimes faintly insidious, way in which soccer can transform itself into a moral exercise - the rock-like defender humbled by the jinking imp, the non-League club that brings down the Premiership's finest, that whole motivational dynamic of doing one's best against insuperable odds. Finally, and in some ways uniting the previous explanations into a single point of focus, there is the fact that soccer is essentially a romantic activity.”

tsg: You’ve also written about The Corinthians. What do you think it is about football that appeals to you as an author?
DT: I think that this is more or less answered by my response to 2. This was just the time when money was coming into the game in huge amounts - Sky etc, first inklings of the Premiership. Although English Settlement is probably more nostalgic for the old megalomaniac chairman for whom the club is a kind of private fiefdom - Walham is based on the pre-Al-Fayed Fulham, whom I used to watch in the '80s.

tsg: There seems to be a general belief that men prefer reading non-fiction over fiction – it’s been put forward as one of the reasons for the dearth of football fiction. Another theory is that footballers are better at expressing themselves with a ball than a pen, why do you think there is so little fiction about a sport that is so popular?
DT: see the essay again, which is a 20 page discussion of exactly this.

tsg: Do you think (or did you think when you wrote English Settlement that) there’s a defined market for football fiction?
DT: No and (probably) no. English Settlement was the least successful novel I've ever written (though, oddly, it was translated into Italian and won a prize there). I thought the 'literary' audience would take it as a novel, but they were puzzled by the football stuff. I think the football audience was puzzled by the literary stuff.

thesimplestgame would like to thank DJ Taylor for his time, efforts, answers and generosity. We’re particularly grateful for his contribution to the field - academic, non-fiction and literary. It’s about as good as it gets as far as my PhD is concerned.

Unfortunately English Settlement is out of print, but you can still get a copy if you’re lucky. We’ll review it here in the next couple of weeks. It’s worth a look.

Queensland's Women Roar

2009-01-21T17:35:00.000-08:00

thesimplestgame has a remarkable interview to post. David Taylor, author of English Settlement, was generous enough to answer some questions so we’ve been looking forward to posting it.

And I will, soon enough.

Not today though. Today, its hats off to the Queensland Roar’s W-League team who followed their minor premiership win by taking out the grand final on Saturday.

The game itself wasn’t a great spectacle. Two good goals inside the first 25 minutes wrapped it up for Queensland. Canberra United never recovered. The event though, the winning of the inaugural league in front of over 5,000 paying fans, is something to consider. If a women’s league final can generate this much interest the game is clearly gathering strength and position in this country.

A-League fans would tell you that it’s been happening for a few years already. Their detractors, and there are still a lot more of them, would have you believe otherwise. For thesimplestgame, avid supporters of the W-League and our local team, a noisy women’s final is surely all the evidence that’s needed.

My wee lassie’s first trip to a big game was the story for the day. It’s hardly news right enough and she’s been in a stadium before, a glorious stadium, but she was too young to that remember now. She’s a sturdy, ‘grown-up’ (her words not mine) six year old.

One hot dog and 20 minutes of concern over the food wrappers being blown onto the pitch later, she’d missed the first goal. She was elated to have caught the second, and cheered along with the rest of us. I spent the remainder of the half explaining as much of the football as I could. Like any dutiful daughter she listened politely. She even exhibited some signs of interest.

Half time refreshments called for a run up and down steep stairs and a trip to the merchandise van, despite the Aladdin’s cave of orange attire on offer, all she wanted was a flag. So we got one. She waved the living shit out of it for the first 15 minutes of the second half. We stayed away from seated punters so she could do so with a reasonable amount of freedom. I then managed to get her back to our seats, but not before we’d tried higher in the stand and then lower, before settling back to the midway point. We sat in front of the wall at the bottom of the tier. She could not see the pitch and spent the duration of the game standing on my knees shouting as loud as her wee voice would allow.

With only a few minutes left we decided to start making our way to an exit. Thankfully she missed the streaker, if only because my explanation of that incident would have generated slightly more confusion than the offside rule.

Most importantly she wants to go again. She wants to go as soon as the season starts. I’ve not pushed her. Yes the game was my idea and the onus was on me to entertain but the Queensland Roar women’s team helped me out, enough to see her want to return.

It goes without saying that the more popular the game is, interest in football fiction will follow suit.

Could it really all have kicked off with King Lear?

2009-01-14T21:46:00.000-08:00

Football fiction has turned out to be a tricky little vixen. I’ve had a great deal of difficulty in tracking stuff down, but now I’m starting to get places. Thanks in part to the Encyclopedia of British Football written by Richard William Cox, Dave Russell, Wray Vamplew and the National Football Museum.

I’m looking at scoping the history of the genre. The where-it-all-began. It’s hardly a journey back through the mists of time, but it spans the best part of a hundred years. So long as you don’t count Shakespeare. But I’ll get to that.

It didn’t start with Sydney Horler either, but among the 150 or so books he wrote, Horler penned a spree of almost romanticised football fiction (about 20 of the blighters) like Life’s a Game about spy footballers and all sorts. Along with works by Arnold Bennet and JB Priestley, they were published around the 1920’s right up until the 50’s.

A new favourite author of mine, Robin Jenkins, wrote The Thistle and the Grail in 1954 and little seemed to come afterwards until the mid to late 60’s when Barry Hines knocked out A Kestrel For A Knave (1968) a cold, hardbitten northern English story. Hunter Davies published the notorious Striker in the late 70’s and the story of Sinderby Wanderers was published a couple of years before it. Reviews of some of these titles will follow in the coming weeks.

Things picked up in the 80’s and 90’s when the likes of Roddy Doyle (the Van), DJ Taylor (English Settlement), Julian Barnes and Martin Amis, among others, wrote about or made reference to football in their work and, wittingly or not, established or imposed something of a literary level on the genre. No doubt, the nobility of the Italian World Cup, with its Nessun Dorma’d operatic theme contributing, the low brow gained some height before the likes of Irvine Welsh (Marabou Stork Nightmares, the Acid House) and John King (The Football Factory, Head Hunters and England Away) brought it back to earth with a lager-fuelled, hard-edged come-down and a solid terrace-style beating.

Since then there have been a number of other standouts, peers and undeserving derivatives of those mentioned, as well as a few which found themselves out of play for one reason or another. More recently David Peace lifted football fiction out of the doldrums with The Damned United. (I've reviewed it already)

There’s more to this in my PhD. Things are filling out. But my main concern will be in identifying trends, peaks and troughs, hits and misses and the anomalies, the oddities, the plain old plums and the triumphs.

Importantly I’m searching for the exact place it all started. There’s been speculative news reports and comic strips and a host of other stuff too including fiction books for kids of all shapes and sizes since the dawn of the era. I would imagine people have been telling football tales, tall and true, since the first ball was kicked. There’s even mention of a “football player” in King Lear, which could mean that Shakespeare wrote the first football fiction.

As much as I doubt it, from my studies point of view, I think it might be very cool if he did.

probably the pishest part of a PhD

2009-01-08T01:48:00.001-08:00

I would’ve liked to have started the new year with a cheeky wee book review. A nice easy opportunity for diatribe. When I say that I mean wholly objective critical examination obviously. But I’ve not the time to read or even examine said reading.

I am currently embroiled in writing the confirmation paper for my PhD. You could say up to my alabaster scottish neck in it. (Aye, alabaster - I’ve not been out of the dark wee room for days).

It requires a great deal of thought, hard work, perspiration (I know. That’s exactly what I said. Nobody tells you about that bit) and, if I’m honest, gluttonous persistence – read: sitting in a dark wee room trying to write like an academic till you’re so far past the point of boredom, it’s back on the horizon because you’re about to Lance Armstrong lap it.

And I don’t mean lap it up. This is the penance for accepting a scholarship, the part where they get their money’s worth.

I tell you all this not for sympathy – my old man used to say sympathy comes between shit and syphilis in the dictionary. I tell you because the process requires a 'real life' definition. In the throes of understanding the parameters of the cosy little niche I’m attempting to carve for myself, I need to determine, beyond it being the umbrella that shades my blog, what football fiction is exactly.

Any definition would have to be simple because, let’s face it, I’m no really that clever. It would have to straight forward enough to withstand scrutiny of the definition police in attendance at my confirmation, and it will requires a great deal of flexibility or be hard enough to take the beating it'll need to fit into or, at least, get strapped onto my thesis.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Any story with any degree of makey-uppy football in it.

There, simple, straight forward, hard and flexible. I went through all my posts to see if there were any I rejected on the strength of some spurious criteria but I’ve either been extremely discerning in my choices up to this point, too embracing read lenient or I haven’t developed stringent enough criteria. I can’t write that in my PhD though. I could try, but I’m pretty confident it won’t help my cause. It’ll have to be something more like…

Any work of fiction with a genuine and significant reliance on football as a central or substantive element of the narrative.

In the unlikely event that you feel a twinge of sympathy, a sense of altruistic good (bloglike) neighbourliness, or even the need to pour hot saucy scorn over the happy sandwich filler I've managed to process so far, please feel free to do so. Smashin'. Thanks.

Irn Bru and Boys in Dresses

2008-12-29T22:22:00.000-08:00

I was going to leave this till the new year but I figured it’s a good place to close one year and enter into the spirit of the next where discussions about what isn’t and what is football fiction should continue unabated. Ferociously even, if I can manage it.

David Walliams has written a book about a boy who plays football. A boy who plays football and likes wearing dresses. In the interests of additions to the shelf, thesimplestgame thought we’d better take a look at it.

David Walliams is the tall one from Little Britain . While that should tell you about the level and style of humour in the book, for the sake of context, had you not seen the very popular BBC (now stateside) series, he’s a straight man more comfortable wearing dresses than talking about football. Still he’s had a crack (oh dear, apologies).

The Boy In The Dress has done well as far as bookshops are concerned and it should. It’s funny, touching, heart-warming, sweetly delivered to its intended audience and, possibly best of all, has potential for controversy.

I lost the very stiff woman I was trying to sell it to at ‘…and he likes wearing dresses’. Odd in itself because I imagined Australians more tolerant of cross-dressing than they are of football. That’s if it is cross dressing, for kids this age it probably still qualifies as dressing up, doesn’t it?

Back to the book…Its a delight to read. And not, as your brain leaps into panic at my flagrant use of the term ‘cross-dressing’, about a boy with a sexual identity crises. He just likes wearing dresses. Make up, eyelashes, tights, heels and dresses. He likes playing football too. Almost as much as he likes wearing dresses, which is just as well, because it’s his football prowess that wins his detractors over in the end. That would be a spoiler to some, but only a few, discerning readers.

See his Mum’s gone, his Dad, a fairly hefty cardboard cut-out of an earnest and fairly typical embodiment of overtly masculine fatherliness – he likes football a lot too, but he doesn’t do boys in dresses – (apologies again for inappropriate word choice) is left to look after the boy in the dress and his rough ’n ready big brother.

When he’s sent to detention the boy meets a girl. She’s only the school’s coolest, most beautiful girl. The girl he’s had crush on since like forever. They make friends and she seduces him out of his clothes and into her best frocks with a pile of Italian Vogues and a nice shade of lippy. Before anyone realises what’s going on, he’s become The Boy in the Dress in class, at his own school, where he poses as a female French exchange student until he falls over and shakes his wig loose.

Importantly, he’s also the school’s star footballer. His skills allow him some Shane Warnesque leeway when his couturian adventures are unveiled. Before the stumble, he plays a few games and even scores a couple of goals, which help get his teammates to the grand final. With his teammates needing him and the headmaster having banned him for all their blushes, Williams promises and delivers an excellent resolution opportunity for the whole will-he/won’t-he-play, will-they/won’t-they-win scenario.

Walliams’ description of the football can be painful and may even be excused when the narrator openly announces early doors (page 28) that he knows nothing about the game. Its an effective way to reduce audience expectations – this is not a sports novel. In fingering the flaw Williams essentially highlights the football as the vehicle that gains the protagonist understanding (from his family), ‘forgiveness’ (the awful general societal kind) and acceptance in his local community. It also lets Walliams make one of those oft used, parochially English, self-deprecatory joking truths designed to smooth the sharp edges off a blatant lack of competence.

That’s not to say that Walliams is lacking in competence. He’s a funny man and he writes well. It’s just his football knowledge that’s tosh. I would imagine in terms of a football fiction perspective his efforts have, at the very least, taken the game to new audiences. That has to be commended and as a result we’d have to say The Boy In The Dress has found a home on the shelf.

Be safe in your bringing the year in. Nurse your hangovers with Irn Bru if you can and if you can’t, we hope you don’t suffer too badly. All the best from thesimplestgame.

popular pictures and women's football

2008-12-20T19:11:00.000-08:00

Whether its prawns and bottled beer by the pool or a couple of pints and a whisky round the fire in the pub, it seems to be the time of year for reflection and family and watching loads of telly and eating too much and drinking more than is considered reasonable. It’s the holidays though and you should be good to yourself.

I gave a passing thought to joining the fray and posting one of those ‘the year that was’ posts, ye know, where we all cast an eye over my motley assemblage of entires into cyberspace, the football fiction, the events or the authors I’ve encountered, but you know what? You can read through those posts yourself. Have a wee look at the archive thing, past the posts, on the side there. >>>>>>

One thing that has been very curious though is the popularity of this picture of a woman holding her ball. I used it to discuss women’s football, and maybe highlight the attractiveness of their more graceful game, but for some reason this photo keeps pulling visitors into my wee football fictive world. Now I’ve put pictures of Hiedi Klum, David Beckham, Jessica Alba, Robbie Williams, Jessica Biel, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, the girl from Sex in the City, a women’s beach volleyball team and Danny Glover in my posts and yet the picture of the woman holding the ball has been the most requested, looked at, linked to article on my humble pages. Obviously I would love the main attractions to be my dazzling wit, rapacious insight, content, football fiction celebrities or even my sense of humour, but if it means people are reading it, it can’t be a bad thing. Can it? As unfortunate or desperate or debauched as detractors find it, sex really does sell.

And that leads me nicely to my next point.

I can only sit back and wonder why the W-League is not picking up even bigger audiences, it’s being marketed well, Australia’s ABC have been televising weekend games and the football’s good - if you needed any more convincing that it was worth watching Tameka Butt’s absolutely delicious goal against Melbourne Victory, a perfectly weighted curler into the postage stamp, is an excellent example. I can assure you it’s a belter but have a look anyway .

Our local team, the Women’s Queenland Roar, have just won the minor premiership and are odds on favourites to win the grand final in mid January too. The peeps at thesimplestgame would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the girls. They have our full support and ask that they would have yours too dear reader.

I know there isn’t much football fiction in this post, but there will be loads in the new year including a look at David Williams (Little Britain) foray into the young adult fiction market.

Before I finish I would quickly like to point to the close, and obviously unrelated, timing of the Australian Government's announcement of a $6.1bn effort to tackle homelessness and the success of the homeless world cup which finished on December 7th (that's another two fingers to you, Andrew Bolt).

To everyone else thesimplestgame says, enjoy your holidays, enjoy your pressies (if you’re lucky enough to get any), enjoy yourself (I don’t mean it like that... but if that’s what it takes, knock yourself out – just wash your hands afterwards). Go merrily onwards and Slainte!

they may take our homes

2008-12-13T17:22:00.001-08:00

The 2008 homeless world cup was an amazing experience. It’s only now with distance I realise how connected I was to it. I followed the progress of a number of teams, managed to sneak into places I wasn’t supposed to be, won a few friends and witnessed some cracking football. But it had more of a grip on me than that. I could wax lyrically about the melodrama and emotional rollercoasters, but I’m not sure I could do it justice. Much of the time I was balanced somewhere between pragmatic joy and brimming over with heart strung happiness. Lumped throat, watery eyes and everything. Even when we were wandering round the Victorian State Library or eating Gelati on Lygon Street, my mind was in Fed Square.

To those not lucky enough to have been near it, that may sound over the top. Even writing it does, but I’m at a loss as to how to convey exactly how I felt, except maybe that I was content while the tournament was being played out and more than a wee bit sad when it finished.

So if it had that effect on me, how can it not have had an impact on the participants? My fear for those who played would be in having to return to face their own realities. I struggled a little with my own, so I don’t blame those who’ve sought refugee status for doing so – we, I should say Australians, keeping telling everyone what a great place this is, it surprises me that some still have the audacity to be stern and, worse still, abhorred when other people from somewhere much worse actually decide it is better than where they’ve come from and want to stay. Andrew Bolt, you are a dick. (I considered posting a link to his latest right wing diatribal drivel, so you could decide (see) for yourself, but elected against wasting time, yours or mine, on it.)

Afghanistan won. They beat Russia in the final. Aye, see now there’s something in itself. The fairy tale ending. People travelled the length and breadth of the country to witness it too. Melbourne’s Fed. Square resounded with their clamour. And to defeat the Russians, well, it’s like getting yer own back on the back in the day school bully for all the chewing gum/toilet water/spit/ (please insert your own personally suitable alternative) in your hair.

More important than all of that, Scotland’s quarterfinal penalty shoot out defeat of England. That’s what I said. We beat the Auld Enemy. It’s the first time in the tournament’s history that the two nation teams have met. We done them. The rivalry was energetic, fierce and very humorous. It provided a great advertisement for what the tournament’s about and a great argument against the nonsense of a GB team for the 2012 Olympics.

Fear not, I’m not going to turn this into one of those things where we say… ‘Och well, we got beat in the semis by the Russians and then lost to Ghana, a team we beat comfortably in the second stage, in the third place play off, but none of that matters, because the game against England was the team’s real triumph.’ That would be puerile. Churlish even. But we did beat them. We done them and the roar across Fed Square when we did made my heart sing, but I’d leave it there.

Like I said the tournament was an amazing experience, it has the power to change things for people, like really truly madly change things. In Milan 2009, I expect it’ll be even bigger, attract even more attention – good and bad - and be an even bigger success. I'd happily get involved again.

impressions

2008-12-03T15:16:00.001-08:00

Things that have impressed me most about the homeless world cup…individual player’s stories, the how they got here and the difference it makes would break your heart a hundred times. That teams like Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Rwanda, countries literally torn apart in recent years, are here at all. And the embracing warming sense of community, people are happy to be here, to help one another out, to get along. I know, I could be falling over clichés. But it is incredible.

I met one of the Scottish players on his way to play in goal for the Canadians. I stayed and watched the game. He had a good game, they needed his help. I also met the Argentinian goalkeeper. He can’t speak English and I can’t speak Spanish, despite rumours to the contrary. Mumbling common and sometimes lucky words and phrases, offering hand signals, the strangest expressions, we found a way to converse. I then watched their game against the Ukraine where he let in at least 9. He passed me on the way out after the game. He looked so gutted I didn’t have the heart to say anything – in Spanish or English.

The other thing... some of the football has been absolutely stunning.

Moments from a tournament

2008-12-01T16:13:00.001-08:00

The Homeless World Cup is an awesome tournament. The street soccer is fast, sharp and entertaining. Goals everywhere. Better still, the people are spectacular. I have a number of moments of magic which I will maybe share at length in later blogs but I’ve not the time… in the tradition of tv football commentary here are some highlights.

Meeting the Scottish team. Great lads, resplendent in our national strip and out done by a classy Afghani side. The boys battled well to come back from a two-goal deficit. The game finished 5 each and the Afghani boy slid the ball around our keeper. He’d had a great game as well. I don’t think it was a bad start, in fact I think it’ll work in their favour. I believe they’ll win the rest of their games now. I think it was a result of too much pressure – when was the last time Scotland were the world’s footballing number one?
I’m pretty sure the playing of Scotland the Brave as our anthem, instead of Flower of Scotland may well have had an impact. It upset me. If nothing else, I was looking forward to singing it.

I met The Age’s Martin Flanagan, a man of great stories. Easy to see why I like reading his work, right enough.

I met Lawrence Cann whose blogging about the tournament for the NY Times. He’s also President of Street Soccer USA which I think is most impressive.

Chibbing Craig Foster about his dislike of Scottish football and quietly reminding him that we won this tournament last year was a touch of gold to an already bejewelled day.

But watching the opening matches from the touchline among the photographers was something special. Me n the wee yin, she was on my shoulders, were moved on a number of times, but a kindly soul, a lovely lady, let me stay for the duration of the Scotland game at least.

If the rest of the week is even half the adventure of these few wee hours, I'll be a very happy man.

Knuckleheads on football forums

2008-11-27T03:50:00.000-08:00

The most worthy of international tournaments is almost upon us. Sunday night is draw night for the homeless world cup. The route to the final which takes places the following Sunday (that'll be the 7th) will be announced. It’s exciting. Heidi Klum won't be pulling the balls out of her bag, but it is exciting nonetheless. As an added bonus wee sleekit Sepp isn't there either.

The teams have been arriving all week. The team from Scotland came out of the gloomy rain to the warm shine of the Melbourne sun with big smiles on their faces. If you were ever looking for an example of how far the tournament has come and how far it’s brought the people it has embraced, they'd be one of many.

Nelson Mandela famously said, “Sport has the power to change the world.” The ripple effect of the homeless world cup which runs from the 1st to the 7th of December will be felt long afterwards. Within twelve months of 2005 Homeless World Cup in Edinburgh, 77% of players had changed their lives. They moved into education, homes, jobs, come off drugs and alcohol and improved and developed stronger social and family relationships. 12 players even got work in football as semi or professional coaches or players.

That makes the HWC a powerful thing. With 56 countries competing in men’s and women’s tournaments, this year’s HWC is the biggest yet. SBS's World Game will televise the final. Channel 10 in Oz are currently making a doco about the Street Socceroos. You know something’s working when the event is getting that kind of attention. People are really taking notice. And they should its really making a difference.

I’ve spent close to 20 hours in the last week or so trying to get it talked about, spruiked and promoted across a number of different online forums and blogs including the old facebook. I got into trouble there for sending lots of people the same message. Spam, apparently. Pish, if you ask me.

It’s fair to say I met with some success in some places and little or none in others.

A true believer in karma and justice of the poetic nature, I’ll not mention names. A couple of knuckleheads on the World Game’s forum for example will hopefully be shitting hedgehogs next time they sit down to squeeze their heads. I have to add here that I think the World Game's site is a solid one with great coverage of the beautiful game. They can't be held responsible for a few broadbanded lolly boilers.

There are some very decent peeps out there. This clip is well worth a look and it was posted by one of the many posters on the same forum... lovely music, lovely idea

Dougie Brimson, author and long term friend of this blog, has vowed to give the tournament a shout on his site. Jack Bell, soccer blogger extraordinaire at the New York Times blog Goal, is a gentleman lending his support and his blog - the US team Coach will post from the tournament. And Fiona Crawford, a foxy blogger putting the boot in for the girls at 442, is a gentle lady with plans for HWC coverage.

I hit up some more blogs to a range of responses, including ignored, and worse, removed.

I’ll be providing some scribbles and some updates here, but I’d ask you to look at the Homeless World Cup yourself, n maybe give somebody who needs it a hand up while you're there.

A Hand Up Not a Hand Out

2008-11-20T23:18:00.000-08:00

I love the Big Issue's slogan. It’s smart, simple and it means a great deal to the people who’ve sold the big issue in all the countries it’s now sold in. It says it all. Its not just a magazine, it’s about giving people a means to regain something, rebuild a bit, a means to get by or enough cash for a decent feed. Its a way to help the vendors sort out whatever it is they need to sort out whether it’s a job, a home or themselves.

To me it’s even more than that but. What about the stick they have to take? People taking the piss or worse. It takes bollix to stand on a street corner, to be ignored by hundreds of passing people. It takes bollix to stand there and say, “Hey I know I made mistakes, I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t, but I’m trying to fix them now and you, yes you, can help me.” It takes bollix to stand there whether the weather’s shite or not, because well because there’s a millions reasons int there? I don’t know if its something I could do. They’re the ones making an effort. All we need to do is stop for a minute, put our and in our pocket. When a nod and a smile are a comfort and someone actually buying the paper is a bonus, it’s a hard road, could you do it?

Quiet, smiling Tom, the guy who sells it on QUT campus is a gem. If it’s the second week, he even tells me, he’s like, “You sure you’ve not got this already?” and I’m like “I’m sure Tom just give us the magazine, will ye?” I’d get it off him every week. Because he’s honest, because its a good read (interesting, topical, funny and definitely worth 5 bucks) and because he’s making an effort.

Now when Mel Young and Harold Schmied banged their heads together and the homeless world cup fell out, it took the issue to a new place. They weren’t talking about giving somebody a wee job for a spell, they weren’t talking about helping somebody or giving them a hand. This was something new, something much bigger. They set out to give people a once in a lifetime experience. Along with their respective organisations they've said ‘Here, start again’ or ‘Life doesnae always need to be a struggle’.

Hey, it’s no a holiday by any means. Try 15 minutes of street soccer. Its hard work. The team players don’t just show up on a Saturday to find their boots polished and the strips ironed, they have to put in a tremendous effort off the park as well as on it. Just getting to practice every week is a steep hurdle over the water.

I don’t just think the Homeless World Cup is important, I love it. And not just because Scotland are the current world champs either. The HWC is about football. Football that actually changes people’s lives. Really changes them. Physically, emotionally, mentally. Scotland’s coach, is just one of many shining examples of what I’m talking about.

You don't have to imagine it, football is the Anthony Robbins here, and it’s not charging some mug a small fortune to walk over hot coals.

So make an effort, it doesn’t even have to be a big one, just show them some support. Buy an issue, donate some cash, take the vendor a cup of coffee. Go and see the documentary.
Or
Keep an eye on the results at this year’s tournament in Melbourne - December 1st to December 7th – if your in Melbourne Federation Square is just one of the venues.

There’s 56 countries competing this year, so there’s every chance your country could be could be a world champion football side and you wouldn’t even know it.

For Whom The Ball Rolls

2008-11-15T11:39:00.000-08:00

Following on beautifully from last week’s less than stable football supporter, I give you Alf Wangerman.
An ostensible fan of Welfare club football, he happens to be one of my favourite characters in football fiction. A solid, hob-nail booted, cigarette-rolling, donkey jacket-wearing abuser of referees.

The mission he chose to accept in Ian Plenderleith’s short story, Furlington Welfare’s Last Great Orator is to keep out of order Ref’s in order. The ordinary ones too when it comes to it. That’s all he does. He’s no interest in the football, the people around him or the result. His scorn, a singular, unrepeated, often unrepeatable, unrepentant stream of vitriolic verbosity, is plentifully poured all over the men in black. He attends games just to carry out these incessant attacks and gains some minor celebrity until… well, you can read it for yourself.

Scottish football refs have been joined by Irish Rugby Union refs in their acceptance of a Specsavers sponsorship. It’s a mark of their sense of humour and how they’ve taken the stick from the terraces in good grace. Under Alf’s avalanche they all crumble. Like some great Lincolnshire Viking, he sets the boat on fire before he pushes it out. It’s calamitous. Messy even. And brilliantly funny. But there’s a touch of sadness in it too. Sadness for the loss of what going to the game was like before corporatised, channel-hopping mercernary conglomerate football overwhelmed us. It reminded me of Pointless Jeff Connor’s spectacular non-fiction season with the completely unspectacular East Stirlingshire, the worst team in Scotland.

Another quality story in Plenderleith’s collection is The Man in the Mascot. A washed up alcy actor spends his Saturday afternoons inside the bird suit mascot of his local team and his Saturday nights willing his doomed relationship to change or fall apart. The girl, a slick marketing exec looking for a bit of rough or at least handing out a sympathy shag, seems just as ambivalent. A study of the morose, the bleak and the darkly (like night time in the middle of a Norwegian winter) funny, it’s another standout.

I’m also not the first to use Plenderleth’s work in the academic arena. A German Masters student used it in her thesis and translated the chapter about this story - have a look.

In For Whom the Ball Rolls there are many other stories which catch the eye. We almost tenderly take in the wife of an ex-player who cannot move past his miss in the cup final. Save of the Day (in a Small Scottish Village in 1974) feels like a tale from Plenderleith’s childhood. Importantly, it could so easily have been from my own. The Right Result and The Day FIFA came to Lincolnshire have a don’t-let-the-bastards-grind-you-down ebullience which makes them hard to forget. They’re classic boy’s own (and just a bit more grown up) football stories. Like many of the stories in the collection, they woo the pants off the ghost of football past.

Unlike Greg Furt-Trevis, the ex-player in the story the book takes its title from, we are not doomed to watch the same thing over and over. Nick Hornby’s wrong when he says all the drama we need is contained in the actual game. These stories, the ones we read in novels and collections as opposed to the ones we read in autobiographies and newspapers are worthy of our attention. For Whom the Ball Rolls proves it. It could be argued that the inclusion of non-football short stories shows these works can stand alongside their more generic counterparts.

It’s a great collection, it might be a few years old now, but it’s still relevant, it’s still fresh and most important, it’s very entertaining. Are you looking for anything else in your football fiction?

You can buy the book on Plenderleith's site.

Elements of style

2008-11-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

The elements of style in football fiction have very little to do with fashionable strips, cutting edge hairdoo’s, trendy cars and flashier bars. It’s about the words and how they’re placed on the page. The order of things. In football it’s the stuff the manager thinks about mostly. Smart players do it too. Well… I’ll leave that where it is.
Smart fans know it’s all about the football. Smart fans don’t worry about style or image, unless it’s to take in the latest version of the club’s away game alternative training kit.

Now, take Robbie Williams, Port Vale’s ‘biggest’ fan. Obviously when we say ‘biggest’ we’re not talking pie-eating, legging stretching or Texas rancher euphemising here. We’re talking celebrity LARGesse. Yesterday, pop’s largest celebrity football fan, ignored his famously favoured team to watch what he described in an impromptu game-side Sky Sports interview as his ‘secret Vale’ in action at the Emirates stadium.

Standing alongside his old Take That chum, the Barlow boy - he is after all unofficial leader of the manboy ‘band’ (he’s the only one who can actually play an instrument), Williams blaw-blaw-blawed a profession for football love at its vainest. He unwittingly revealed something most people probably would have guessed. He suggested following Port Vale can be difficult sometimes and that he enjoys watching a team who win a game once in a while. I know. Wanker! Football fans stick with their teams through thick n thin. Or thin n thin if you’re a Vale fan, but that’s besides the point.

It turns out Williams thick, like many of football’s shallower, shiny trophy, gold diggers, is a clandestine dirty love for Man. Ewe, Alex Ferguson’s pedantically preened multi-millionaire European champers who strut, stroll and, with the ball at their feet, victoriously sweep all-comers aside. Except, they got done, didn’t they?

In the classic writer’s text, Elements of Style, by Strunk, White and Kalman, now in its fourth edition, it says write about what you know about, write about what you feel most comfortable with.

Clearly most weeks Robbie words would have wrung truer than the electronically controlled giant bell hanging above the Thames near the houses of Paharliament. Except he chose to say what he did during an interview in the stadium on a day when his sentiment was hopelessly inaccurate. Clearly as a singer of over prescribed love songs this is not new to him, but in the world of football, fictive or otherwise, these are the things that count. Like a flat cap, a black pudding under the arm, a losing racing card and a pair of steel toe-capped boots, your words are the stable, solid ground you stand on and if you get it wrong, you’re in the mire. I don’t think football fiction writers are any different.

Port Vale’s 2nd round FA cup spectacular 4-3 comeback (from 3-1 down) was the stuff of legend, a genuine football story of the day. Or would have been if it hadn’t been overshadowed by the Red Devils (has there ever been more appropriate name?) getting their bums felt by the Gooners. While the result will make the likes of Nick Hornby, Karren Brady and, allegedly, Osama Binboy Laden happy, it only leaves Robbie wishing he’d been in Huddersfield.

On a side note, I was wondering if the destruction of the part of the Emirates stadium by Osama’s mob in Chris Cleave’s novel Incendiary would count as a football fiction moment? Mind you, it’s probably just a happy coincidence that my thinking of these things has converged in this week’s post.

Ian Plenderleith talks football fiction...

2008-10-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

A handful of years ago Ian Plenderleith wrote a bagful of football fiction short stories. Some of them are very, very good, but the exquisitely titled For Whom The Balls Rolls will be reviewed soon enough.

Plenderleith clearly knows something about writing football. Mind you, he's been doing it for years, in places like The Guardian and When Saturday Comes and more recently in the US where he now resides. He was happy to answer a couple of questions for us. Happy enough that he may even answer a few more, so eh, like they say, watch this space.

thesimplestgame: we’ve read you made a calculated move to write about football because that’s what your publisher was looking for, but there must be something beyond that (you’ve written about football as a journalist for years). What is it about football that appeals to you as an author?

Ian Plenderleith: It wasn’t quite as calculated as that. I wrote to a publisher that had put out a compilation volume of short stories (‘A Game Of Two Halves’), which I thought were pretty average bar one or two. So I sent them three stories on the off-chance they were planning a second volume.
It was calculating in the sense that I thought, as an unknown writer, there would be no chance of having a volume of short stories published without a theme running through them. And as football books were extremely popular with most publishers in the late 90s, I thought football was as good a theme as any, given that it was an area I knew well. Also, somewhat naively, I thought that the shortage of good football fiction meant there was a literary gap in the market waiting to be filled.
But once I started thinking about football as theme for fiction, the ideas came. Almost every time I went to a game, or played in game, I had a basic idea I thought could be turned into a story. It could be something as fleeting as the expression on a player’s face, and my interpretation of that expression, that would lead to a story. Or a quip or a heckle from a fan.

tsg: Did you think then (or do you still think) there’s a defined market for football fiction?

IP: At the time the book was published I idealistically hoped, as all first-time authors do, that my book would define a new market! Now I think that if there is a market for adult football fiction (there’s always been a market for Boy’s Own football fiction aimed at the under 12s), it’s a very small one. Part of the problem for my book was that the publisher put virtually no resources nothing into marketing it. I was told that marketing budgets were only for already established authors. It’s apparently too big a risk to market a new writer, because they might not sell, but market an already famous name, and you’re guaranteed a certain number of sales. Cold hard business practice! Which needless to say quickly shattered my illusion that publishing houses are stacked with people who love and care about good literature (my editor is one of a number of editors, I should add, who nobly fight their corner for good writing).

tsg: Your fictional work is very engaging and the 'lonely luckless' characters are so well drawn, you put the reader right beside or inside them. How do you think you are able to do this?

IP:I didn’t really notice that a lot of my characters come across as lonely until a friend pointed it out. It wasn’t something I consciously set out to do. It helps, of course, if you’ve had phases of your life when you’ve been lonely, and can empathise with the world view that for the majority of people, bad luck outweighs the good, and that a stoical acceptance of that fact will help you endure and even thrive. I don’t think loneliness is any kind of affliction, just a state that of mind can hit us all at any time, like any other mood.
I’m flattered that you think the characters are well drawn, and I’m not sure how I’ve achieved that. Years of reading fiction, perhaps, and an awareness that all people are multi-dimensional characters. Even the ones we think we despise.
 
tsg: There seems to be a general belief that men prefer reading non-fiction over fiction -- it’s been put forward as one of the reasons for the dearth of football fiction. Another theory is that footballers are better at expressing themselves with a ball than a pen, why do you think there is so little fiction about a sport which is so popular?

IP: I think that belief is put out by publishers’ marketing departments. I wrote a (non-football) novel set here in the U.S. that was about a (non-sexual) male friendship, and my agent was told repeatedly by publishers that it was well written but wouldn’t sell “because there’s no market for male fiction.” That’s a crudely ignorant and insulting assessment to any male who reads fiction (not to mention a blow for my chances of ever getting a book published again), and an example of the narrow, myopic attitude that aims the majority of fiction at middle-aged women readers in the Book Club Belt (who might themselves not be averse to reading “male fiction.” Whatever that is).
As for the lack of football fiction in general, I think that’s partly down to the way that sport is used in fiction, either in books or films. The majority of it follows the formula that works towards a final scene where the hero scores the winning goal in the cup final, having no doubt overcome a number of standard obstacles on the way. So it’s a lack of imagination on the part of writers and the publishers who think that’s what the reader wants. But then again, maybe that is what the readers wants. It’s hardly as though the sales of my book suggest otherwise!
I do think, however, that good writing about sport avoids action on the field of play as much as possible.

This avoidance of the sports action on the pitch is worth a blog on its own. Its also one of the things thesimplestgame wants to discuss a little further with Ian Plenderleith. In the meantime, we'd like to thank him for his time, his help, his epic answers and for patience he will have to show in our future pestering of him.

Buy the book at Ian's site. It's definitely worth a look.

Rough Diamonds

2008-10-25T17:22:00.001-07:00

When thesimplestgame interviewed Coach Gianni Mininni a couple of weeks ago (interview), he had plenty to say. Like plenty. We’re a curious bunch, so we asked about his book. And he sent a copy. He even signed it for us.

So who is he? He’s a motivated Italian living in San Francisco. He’s almost 60 and, even though he thinks it’ll never happen in the US, he continues his battle to popularise the beautiful game. His first (and only) self-published book, The Team: a soccer novel, is just one of the many steps he’s taken to walk his formidable, enthusiastic, football talk.

It’s a fictional account of a mature (I nearly said old) Italian migrant to the US and his trials and tribulations in organising a football team. It focuses on what a team needs, what a coach needs and, touchingly, what it takes to bring it all together. To people who know Coach Gianni it’ll be a familiar story. It’s what he dreams of. It’s what he talks about on his site and I’m sure it’s all he talks about at BBQ’s.

The Team, like the man who wrote it, is the proverbial rough diamond. Part soccer novel, part football fiction, part coach’s pocket guidebook. It offers a coaching ethos, coaching wisdom and plenty of Gianni’s own views. Particularly on why football isn’t working in the US – 300 million population, 17 million players, and only 13 national league teams. Organised football has existed in San Francisco for almost 100 years, something concrete should probably have materialised before now. Mininni is as baffled as everyone else.

Maybe the Australian model, currently picking up power, momentum and most importantly, large-scale corporate sponsorship dollars, could be held up for the US authorities to have a squizz.

But back to the book. Through talking about the fundamental aspects of football’s success in Europe and the factors choking it in the States – some of them more than a little familiar after watching the fall and rise of the local game in Australia – Gianni takes his book beyond the simple frame of it’s storyline.

Each chapter opens with a nugget of wisdom. An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it for example - this one's from JFK I'm told. Some of it is pure Gianni, some of it is filtered wisdom gleaned throughout his long, and I’d have to say colourful, football journey.

There are some issues with the book. English is clearly not Gianni’s first language, but I knew that before I started reading. It needs a solid edit (copy and structural), but most self-published titles do. The simplistic story is fairly predictable, but while it’s more of a vehicle for Gianni’s thoughts and ideas, it’s still an effective means to draw the reader in. It’s certainly more engaging and imaginative than wooden how to guides for dummies.

Rough diamonds get their name because they're uncut and in need of a polish. While The Team might need a hefty polish, the sparkle is there. It may not be a work of literary aplomb, but, for us here at thesimplestgame, it’s football fiction with two very important concepts folded in. There’s football and there’s plenty to talk about. Isn’t that what we’re all looking?

Coach Gianni would probably tell you to scratch the surface and see for yourself. You can buy The Team here.

A matter of perspective

2008-10-20T04:50:00.000-07:00

I watched Australia playing Qatar the other night. What a bag of shite. Great result, fantastic result. World Cup Qualification looms closer ’n closer. Which is fantastic, right? Right? The answer’s simple innit? It’s…

Yes.

And no.

40,000 people turned up to watch an international football match in Brisbane on a (really) wet (by Queensland standards) and (really) cold (you see where this is going…) Wednesday night. A school night!

It’s incredible. Five years ago you’d have been lucky to get people to pay to watch football in Brisbane on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. For the tormented creature that is Australian football, attracting 40,000 people on a brisk rainy midweek evening is the equivalent of having Jessica Alba (or George Clooney depending on your tastes) chapping your front door at six o’clock in the morning and, while your still wearing your breakfast head, asking, “Please let me take you away from all this?” Then, jetting you to a luxurious island in the Pacific where you’d have drinks and get naked and she’d call Jessica (Biel) and Angelina and you’d all have a party (read: Brad Pitt, Viggo Mortensen and, I don’t know, Danny Glover? if you’d prefer it not to be girls) before she dropped you back home with a Chicken Tikka Masala each for you n whoever's waiting for you at home.

I know. Sorry. I get carried away. Danny Glover was probably stretching things a bit.

But for Football Australia that what’s happened. And it will happen again should it be allowed to.

The flip side, the dark foreseeable problem side, is if Australia do qualify for the World Cup (and thesimplesgame thinks they will), we’ll all go mental!

We’ll celebrate, party, cavort and even maybe, gallivant. Then we’ll raise our levels of expectation to new highs and, inevitably, have them smashed to pieces when they don’t qualify for the second stage, like they, so luckily, did last time.

Then, as we leave it behind us, we’ll get all optimistic and philosophical. “Better luck next time,” we’ll say and, “we had a bloody good try, didn’t we?” And then two years later when qualification comes round…it’s on for young n old.

Imagine the pressure there’s going to be to qualify a third time? Imagine the pasting the Socceroos will get if they don’t qualify? Football Australia would be lucky to get a cuppa tea of my Nan if it happens.

Look, most importantly, last week’s game was a win. A dull, solid win against a team we should say less about. But let’s not get too excited. It was the first time thesimplestgame have ever seen a team, any team, score four goals in a game and still bore the living shit out of just about any football fan who was unfortunate enough to bear witness, BUT, it’s still a win and we should enjoy it. So long as we do it for what it is worth.

Which brings me to this week’s football fictive business. Now I’m talking about the parameters of the genre now. This weeks subject is perspective. Point Of View.

At present there is a bit of a pattern. I looked into a bit during my Masters. I’ve read books in first person (I kicked the ball), second person (you kicked the ball), limited third person (she kicked the ball) and omniscient third person (she kicked the ball and the goalie saved it. He thought, Yes! I’m a brilliant goalie. Dirty Bastard.) First person is a popular choice for authors, but limited third person is the most popular. I reckon it’s down to the fact that most football fiction is about or by spectators, observers rather than participants. But I’m going to come back to that. Because it also raises questions about the kinds of characters involved.

While your waiting on Jessica or George chapping your door or until levels of expectations will have changed so dramatically 40,000 on a Wednesday night will be commonplace, you could maybe have a think about the POV in the last piece of football fiction you read yourself. Maybe let me know about it.

Apologies... Match Postponed

2008-10-13T04:23:00.000-07:00

The team at thesimplestgame have been flooded with well, stuff. So much so, we've had to postpone this week's fixture. Look don't get us wrong, it's not that we're fishing for excuses...

We just haven't the time to train, work out the drills for the free kick set pieces or maintain the usual quality repartee regarding football fictive matters.
Needless to say, we will return to full fitness with a barely credible, hopefully noteworthy and no less entertaining article.

Sorry.

Coach Gianni on football and fiction

2008-10-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

thesimplestgame is always keen to talk to authors of football fiction, especially authors who’re trying to plug the gap between playing football and reading stories about it. Gianni Mininni was a very successful young player in his Italian homeland. He won an U17 national title medal and played in youth teams at Milan and Inter. He has 50 years experience in the soccer industry. Now, in San Francisco, he successfully coaches and tirelessly promotes the beautiful game. You only have to look at his site to see how much this man loves his football. We talked to him about his book The Team, football fiction and heard some interesting views.

thesimplestgame: Why did you choose to write about football?

Coach Gianni: Because I came to live in a country that apparently loves football, but doesn't understand why it’s so deeply rooted in Europe. Football (soccer!) should be the expression of the territory we represent. To wear the jersey is a great honor. In doing so we represent ourselves, our families, our little towns, our teams and our coaches. This concepts is unknown in the US, so I’ve tried to fill the hole. Besides this, for young players, I think football is a kind of time machine that can transport them to a future (but just around the corner) reality in which they have to solve the same problems they will encounter in everyday life.

tsg: There’s a belief that men prefer reading non-fiction over fiction – it’s been put forward as one of the reasons for the lack of football fiction. Do you think this is true and do you think your fiction book will make it easier for your audience to access the game?
CG: Generally speaking, it seems to play sports is a 'macho' thing and, it seems, to read books is a girl’s thing! By reading non-fiction maybe the 'machos' realize this need. When you ask: Do you think this is true and do you think your fiction book will make it easier for your audience to access the game? I say Absolutely! Superficially, calling the book The Team and having a ball on the cover, it looks much more like a football manual than a novel (the word in the smallest writing on the cover) It’s only after, they realize it's a novel. The people who read it as a novel, without realizing, get the many football concepts that are buried inside the narration, so, I got both readers. The non-fiction and the fiction, transferring the information that I wanted to transfer.

tsg: Another theory is that footballers are better at expressing themselves with a ball than a pen, why do you think there is so little fiction about a sport which is so popular?
CG: This theory could be correct. Please don't misunderstand me but, as you notice in this moment, the majority of the top players are from countries deeply not developed. South America and Africa. With all due respect, we can't say that they have had an instruction when they where young. They just played soccer from a tender age and preferred that to what reality offered them: play soccer on the street bare foot instead to go to school (assuming that there was one there!)
This gave them the opportunity to get out of the misery and have a decent life. But they are not readers, so they will not become writers, which is the natural evolution of a 'real' reader!

tsg: That’s certainly one way of looking at it Gianni. What about the country you live in now?
CG: It's really a shame that a country with almost 300 million inhabitants, 16 million people playing soccer, 12 millions of which are kids, is so underdeveloped at a professional level. Ruud Gullit, after having coached here a few months, went away desperate. The standard is so low that it is hard to describe. And until it is understood that to play soccer doesn't mean you’ll be a soccer player, things will continue like this. And I'm also sorry to say, that is not a matter of time. Things will NEVER change because the problem is deeply rooted in American society so, this will never change. It will take a 'revolution' and this country had already had its revolution. A long time ago. Revolution time is really gone.

thesimplestgame would like to thank Gianni for the signed copy, the time he took to answer the questions and for his undying enthusiasm for the game that brings us all together.
You can buy Coach Gianni's book at The Team

...but I didn't inhale.

2008-09-27T03:08:00.000-07:00

Recently I read Breath by favoured son, golden child of the Australian literary world, Tim Winton. It's a great book, a beautiful book, a book to be inhaled in a single lung-bursting gulp. I have some issues with the way he writes women though. They always tend to be awkward, not characterwise, but kind of undercooked or under developed I'm not sure what. Still,like I say, a great book.

It’s also about surfing. So is it surf fiction? Logic would follow that that makes it a sports fiction novel. Right?

If it is, it would be a literary sports fiction novel, because if it was just a sports fiction book the literati's bingo wings would be close to wobble overload. Hearts fluttering for all the wrong reasons. That is, of course, unless cynical publishers chose to target a sports fiction audience?

Now its not football fiction, I can see why you’re asking. It did make me wonder if there would ever be a fit on the shelf for it. There isn't, but it made me consider what it takes to make a football fiction book? Beyond binding pages together and filling them with load of balls obviously.

In the 1920’s this geezer called Vladimir Propp studied a collection, his collection - it was huge as well - of fairy stories. Makes you wonder. He then drew up, I should say circumscribed, a set of 31 parameters a fairy tale needs to qualify as a tale for eh, fairies. The things that make a good fairy tale good, is what I should have said, ye know like a wizened old crone with a poisoned apple and a penchant for eating gingerbread men or a big hairy, shiny-toothed wolf with a taste for cross dressing. They’re bad examples, but you get the point.

So this led me to think that it might be possible to develop, I mean circumscribe, a set of parameters for football fiction. Like really carve it out as a meritorious niche. What academics would call a genre of narrative discourse…but where to start?

First, I’d say, to qualify the stories have to include a game, watched or played. From the pitch, the stand or memory. To gloriously, or otherwise, celebrate the game through character participation in the spectacle.

Most of the examples I’ve reviewed so far have all enjoyed this faculty.

So what’s next? What other signifiers could there be? Is there a difference in the stuff for young adult and adult football fiction? Any ideas?

a sensitive two fingered over reaction

2008-09-21T00:29:00.000-07:00

Brisbane Writer’s Festival this week. It was busy, busy, busy. It was awesome. I met loads of people, editors, publishers, writers. Loads of people. Good people, smart people, hungry people and people with issues, beyond problems with their writing by the way.

I heard lots of writers talking, some really good, some not. Heard a few readings and even did one at the Fringe, where, apparently, like willies at a urinal, all the cool young dudes were hanging out.

I also attended a couple of master classes and a mistress class, if you count the hottie diligently trying to teach a difficult group about modes of telling.

Now I could have helped myself. My reading wasn’t about football fiction – it was about two men on a mountain who’ve run out of toilet paper. Other than me raising it, I didn’t hear a person other than myself writing, reading, talking or who even knew anything about football fiction.

In fact when I mentioned that it’s fast becoming a genre in its own right (via this blog obviously) the listener buckled. Not with shock or awe or even pleasant surprise. Laughter. Feckin’ laughter.

I know. Hey I really don’t mind, but seriously talk about having the laces taken out of your boots.

If the reader could regard this blog as an appeal to those among us that think football fiction can be funny but not completely laughable I’d sure appreciate it. Like I said the Fesrtival was awesome - maybe I should do something about the lack of football fiction on the agenda?
And to the laugher at all things football fictive, I think the message is clear.

cable telly channel surfing mansluts

2008-09-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

Up to now I’ve been thinking solely about football fiction, cause let’s face it the fiction of other sports just can’t be as interesting. I’ve just reviewed a non-fiction AFL book for my favourite Booksellers magazine and it struck me, for all I’ve been thinking football fiction is limited in its dimension, it’s also true that the fiction for other sports is even less diffuse. That's if ‘less diffuse’ is an actual expression. I wanted to say thin on the ground but I’m trying to stay ringside of sporting analogies. I’ll wait for the whistle though.

This does not mean that I will begin to look at other sports fiction on this blog. Far from it. I am loyal to my lady. Even if she’s made up of 22 blokes on a pitch, she is still my lady and she will forever hold me in her heart. Ever since I got picked off the wall at school lunch when there were boys still waiting to get picked that I thought were better than me, she’s had my lips, my hips, my love and my loins. I am a football fan first. To think about another sport would be something akin to betrayal. And while I know sports promiscuity is the domain of many a weekend cable telly watching channel surfing manslut, it’s not for me. It’s always been football and it will always be football. Now I have been known to take in the odd Olympic women’s Beach Volleyball stand off, but I know where my bread’s buttered. Besides you can only watch the beach volleyball on the telly every four years.

It could be argued, and I would, if all other sports are nothing in comparison, the fiction of these other sports would interest me even less.

Now, having said that, I can still name a couple of really good examples. The Naturalist by Bernard Malamud is a fantastic book about baseball, but I won’t be reviewing it. Read it yourself. It’s awesome. The Fight by Norman Mailer is the best book about boxing ever, but it’s not fictional. It’s a creative non-fiction account of Ali’s 1973 rumble in the jungle, a fight book so bloody, blunt and balletic only Mailer or maybe Hemingway could’ve written it.

In Australia, where Rugby League is the number one sport and football the poor cousin who only occasionally sleeps with a sibling, there are a couple of other sports fictions worth considering. The Specky Magee series is a best seller aimed at young Aussie rules audiences. If kids are reading anything other than the wanky wee wizard that’s a good thing innit?

Philip Gwynne’s brilliant book Deadly Unna? is about Aussie rules and a whole lot more. Then there’s Sam DeBrito’s rough and tumble book The Lost Boys about some lads an’ their surf boards, not much surfing mind you, and the time travel cricket series endorsed by thon eedjit, indian chart topper and buggerlugged bowler Brett Lee.

I’m reading a collection of cricket short stories at the moment. I don’t really get it. I had to watch the last Ashes and read at least two Gideon Haigh books before I understood half of it. Thinking about cucumber sandwiches and Pimms on the village green gives me the boak, so I’m not exactly coming at the collection with a warm heart, right enough.

There’s plenty more examples of other sports fiction, like plenty more - from other countries and other sports - and I’d be happy to take recommendations, but unless they’re as good as The Fight or The Naturalist I’m no sure I’d want them.

...so far so few

2008-09-07T02:20:00.000-07:00

Right in the middle of writing another book review I remembered that I’m supposed to be looking at this for my Pee Haitch Dee where I'm going to be looking at mapping football fiction. Ye know carving out the corners of my own shadows and an area of expertise, a wee niche if ye like, so if nothing else, the peeps at Uni think I know what I’m talking about. Regular readers of this wee bubble in the bath full of washing liquid world that is blogger may already have worked out the ruse.

Okay seriously, this is where thesimplestgame is up to.

As far as I can tell and this is absolutely disputable, there are maybe 60 -70 books which could be classed as football fiction. I reckon that’s about three good shelves worth in my artistic hovel.

The young adult fiction in Gracie, Megs, Jasper and a couple of other very similar examples, its probably the only place in the book world where the concentration is so great. Almost a whole shelf worth by the time you tie in the sequels.

There’s the Hoolie lit with the likes of your John King trilogy, the largest part of the Dougie Brimson collection (see Dougie's own site)) and more recent discoveries such as Away Days by Kevin Sampson giving fans with a taste for football related pugilism something to read. It's a section which probably takes up about the next most space. It's an area I’m going to revisit soon.

There are, relatively speaking, loads of good short story collections from Nicholas Royle’s A Book of Two Halves, For Whom the Ball Rolls by Ian Plenderleith and my personal favourite The Hope that Kills Us edited by Adrian Searle are all good examples.

There’s lipstick football fiction with the likes of Karren Brady and Siobhan Curham specialising in the WAGS – wives and girlfriends – view of the game.

In Dominic Holland and Des Dillon’s books The Ripple Effect and ...The Busby Babes respectively, if not respectably, there’s the tales of teams saved from extinction by hair brained schemes and ghosts of football past.

There are crossovers too. In Pitch Black there’s dark emotive lad lit. and other male masculinity crises in the likes of The Man Who Hated Football by Will Buckley. In Sexy Football there’s some soft porn and there's even some detective stuff in the Montalban book Offside.

And of course there’s The Damned United, the literary end of the football fiction shelf, while fan fiction like that of Roddy Doyle in The Van and other places, Jonathon Tulloch's The Season Ticket and at a non-fcition stretch Hornby's Fever Pitch all mingle in the stand.

I’ve to review some of these yet and there’s a few more I know of that I aim to acquire in the coming months.

If this article felt like one of those episodes in a sitcom where they sit on the couch and remember all the funny stuff that happened to them over the years (usually for lack of a script), that’s because it was. Mind you, this wasn’t about saving myself anything, it was about keeping track. There’s nothing worse than when you stop to watch a game in the park and it’s half way through and you don’t know what the score is. Well now you do. Football fiction eh? There’s a bit more to it than I expected.

The Damned United

2008-08-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

The Damned United is probably the best football fiction book on the shelf so far. It’s a rare beast, a work of literary football fiction. Another sub to this ever expanding wee genre of mine.

Author David Peace has written a number of other works including award winner GB84, an account of the British miner’s strike, a kind of Billy Elliot for those less inclined to wear tights.

The Damned United (released in late 2006) follows the 44 days (total) of Brian Clough’s tenure at the helm of the 1974 Leeds United side. And it’s a remarkable, stunning, breath-taking book. Seriously. As Peace beatifically picks the scab off Clough’s verging-on-psychotic state of mind and his equally volatile managerial style, you find yourself violently pulled along on the book's force and simultaneously admiring its brilliance.

As a work of man management, something Peace does incredibly well across his work, it is an utterly absorbing, down and dirty fictionalised account of actual events. It’s exactly what fans imagine Cloughie would’ve been like at an emotional level. Arrogant, awful, conflictual, deceitful and dogmatic. A man who could pick a fight at a funeral. Terrifyingly enough, as a reader, you still like him more than the moody, churlish, obstinate players he’s supposed to be coaching and lots more than the less honest drink stiff Board employing him.

Paced like one of Clough’s famous surges of fury, …United plays as a maniacal headlong rush through one of the most notorious and the briefest manager/club relationships in the darker corners of football’s more sordid histories.

Through Clough’s eyes we see the divisions threatening to break a club even at the peak of it’s most successful period, divisions among those in charge and those on the pitch and how it’s all tenuously held together by what happens on the park. Or in Clough’s case not happening on the park. They only won one game while he was there.

It could be an analogy for what’s going on inside Clough’s head. As he takes an axe to his predecessor’s Don Revie’s desk, falls out with Billy Bremner and bitterly considers the end of his own playing career, we also get an account of sorts of Clough’s early career as a manager, a taste of his drinking habits and a razor sharp insight into the devious and dangerous nature of a complex football mind.

But The Damned United does much more. It raises questions about the place of football fiction, and sports writing in general, in the literary world, (except maybe Julian Barnes writings about chess right enough). It demonstrates how football fiction can be more than just a readable extension of fanatacism and most importantly, for me anyway, it legitimises the novel as a means to recreate or give life to events which would otherwise be reduced to vapid statistics and dry old football history. An area I’d like to look at more myself.

It’s also an awesome read. A book to swallow whole.

If you haven’t already, you should be thinking about getting yourself a copy.

Is time on your side?

2008-08-24T03:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve just realised something. I’ve just watched the Scottish Premier League Press Box followed by the Inside the SPL and the Friday Football Show and even started watching the Blue Square review. That’s almost three straight hours of football speculation, discussion, pundit slaver and talking pish. Particularly from that feckin’ eedjit Gerry McNee.

Then I set the wee box under the telly (Foxtel IQ here in Oz, Sky Plus in the UK or I think TEVO in the US – I’m not sure) to record the two Scottish games. Then I looked at the fixtures to decide which English games I’ll most likely watch. The power of the technology in that wee box lets me record two channels at the same time. One English game, one Scottish game. And there’s the unbelievable option on Foxtel Sports that allows me to choose one of five possible games kicking off at 3pm (UK time - Midnight in Oz). The rest of the games are shown all day Sunday before and after the A-League games.

I’d already lined up a seat on the couch for the Men’s Olympic Gold play-off between Argentina and Nigeria, so by the time I’ve looked at the World Game, BBC sports and Pitch Invasion on t’internet, selected my team in the fantasy football league competition, read through all the speculation about potential transfers and made myself a cup of coffee I’m looking at the best part of 12 hours of watching or reading about current football. That’s just today.

Thinking about what I should’ve been doing instead of looking at football stuff, the impacts of consumability and immediacy on the tiny world of football fiction rolled right over me but I was struck by something even more pervasive.

There simply isn’t time to read a book about makey-uppy football.

In my search for reasons why there isn’t more, I’d failed to consider how much free time even the most discerning of football fans (I’m not necessarily including myself there) actually have to consider anything beyond their own teams.

Then there’s the bigger picture, the time between seasons beginning and ending. The time left between the dust settling on the pea in FA Cup Final whistle and the first kick of the ball of whatever summer tournament the marketeers have got us hyped for. In ’06 it was the World Cup; in ’07 it was the Women’s World Cup and the Asian Pacific Cup; in ’08 Euros and the Olympics - though what the likes of Messi and Ronaldhino are doing at the Olympics is beyond me. The 2010 World Cup looms large on the South African horizon. Which leaves about 4 weeks in 2009 to read something that’s not topically football.

I have just realised something else. Something you probably realised before me. Am I actually talking myself out of a career as a football fiction writer? Maybe. I’m not worried though, in order for me to carve out a wee niche it’s important to realise where the boundaries are. That’s what this whole blog is about. I’ll just have to do it by stealth. Shorter pieces and different markets, but that’s a story for another day. I haven’t the time to tell you now.

Hornby, a lawyer n sex in the city?

2008-08-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

At the weekend in the boozer, I was having a gas with a football fan. He was a lawyer, so obviously his opinion meant a great deal to him. He asked what I did and I told him about my PhD. Being the experienced litigator that he is, he knew about my quest to map the world’s football fiction in a matter of no time. I’m not sure what he thinks of the quest. You might need to invoke some kind antidote to the client confidentiality clause he keeps up his sleeve for his days at the coalface of human misery. He did however forthrightly give me his opinion on why there’s a shortage of football fiction.

He says its because every single story, every moment of drama, tension, mystery and … he used other words too, a lot of other words, but I was drunk, he was slavering - he’s a lawyer remember. Essentially, while he’d probably never admit to it, he agrees with Nick Hornby (see Fever Pitch) ) who said, “I've never particularly wanted to read a football novel. Like most football fans, I suspect, I wouldn't believe in a Melchester Rovers, nor in a player I'd never heard of. And I'm not sure what the POINT of such a book would be. Real-life sport already contains all the themes and narratives you could want.”
(see Full Hornby Penguin Q & A))

I don’t agree with either Hornby or the lawyer I think there are still loads, maybe millions, of stories, moments, results to discover and perspectives to be offered. There can never be enough football. There will never be enough football, especially well-written football. I do think Hornby and the lawyer have a point though. I think it’s more likely, as my friend big T pointed out, that disproportionate levels of football fiction is due more to the most contemporary of capitalist values, immediacy and consumability. And there’s the solace in forgetting what happened the week before. A devastating early exit from European competition for example, is something you’d want to put behind you as quickly as possible.

It takes time to read and digest a novel. If it’s good you never want to forget it. But regardless of how good it is, it offers very little to discuss with your mates in the pub. Unless your mates are the book club. Otherwise it’s kinda like great sex with the wife, husband, mistress, master or sister. No matter how good it is, you’re not going to be giving a stranger the details over a pint are you? Are you? I don’t know. I have to say the lawyer crossed my mind. And I did say kinda.

Like the most casual, frivolous, promiscuous sex, non-fiction football books offer real-life anecdotes, giggles and embellished tales to share openly. In fact I would say there’s a customary, if sometimes taciturn, one-up-(wo)manship in who can find the best, weirdest, most abstract and utterly scandalous to relay to the lads and ladies in the pub. A dirty, dressed down Sex In The City for football fans if you like. It’s easy to see why there’s so much more non-fiction football writing when it's put like that innit?

Even if he wouldn’t cough up for his share of the taxi, (miserable bastard!) I am grateful to the lawyer. It’s good to revisit the questions that started all this.

Strangers in a stranger land…

2008-08-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

I’ve had to do a couple of readings recently and I’ve got a couple more coming. The thought of them is not any more alarming than actually doing a reading. It’s mortifying to be in front of a crowd reading out loud something you’ve written. What if they think its shit? What if they don’t like football? – in Australian literary circles there’s a fair chance that might happen or worse still, what if they can’t understand the thick Scottish Brogue? For me, in Brisbane, this is as close to dead cert territory I can get without getting electrocuted on the wire.

As a football fan and a football fiction enthusiast (read geek), I feel like a stranger in a stranger land. Like I’m looking for golden pins in a field of straw. The only Australian football fiction I’ve found, by Cath Crowley (Gracie Faltrain) and Neil Montagnana-Wallace (Megs), are both aimed at young adult fiction reading audiences. Australian Sports Commission and Football Federation of Australia figures point to the game’s popularity among young adults and children so it goes without saying that’s where the lion’s share of native football fiction should be aimed.

But I’ve not found any Australian based football fiction aimed at older audiences, so I’m asking for your help. Can you tell me if you know any?

See, I naively thought, “there’s a hole there”. And I thought,“I’ll fill that”. So I did. I wrote a book and thought, “Right, I’ve filled it”. The game of football in this country (a place where the uninitiated steadfastly call it feckin’ soccer) will be even more popular as a result of my work. But we all know that’s a long free kick from deep in your own half away from the truth. I kinda knew that before I started. Now I don’t say this because my work is unpublished, (I’m confident it’ll find a home one day). I say it because even if it was, I’m not sure I’d have filled the hole. Isn’t there just too much drama in the real thing without reading made up stuff about it?

The season, A-League version 4.0, beckons so you can make your own decisions. Before you do, please consider the following…

The A-League teams are improving beyond all expectation. Well enough, in fact, to attract stars from overseas. Queensland Roar, having already found a home for Craig Moore - albeit 20 minutes before his retirement from international football - have signed an indubitably hefty Charlie Miller. Moore’s former Rangers teammate, stopping only to empty kitchen cupboards all over b-side europe, has made his way to Brisbane. Hopefully his diet will fair better with all the fresh fruit and sea food here. Don’t worry Charlie you can still get a fish supper. They aren’t as good but you can get one. The best part is he looks like their best player.

Then there’s the Central Coast Mariners controversial Mark Bosnich.
In December 1995 the way clubs sign players changed significantly, thanks to a Belgian bloke called Bosman, allowed players to become their own Masters. Kind of like subcontracting tradesmen with the literal and figurative ball at their feet.
The Bosnich ruling is something else altogether. Signing a Bosnich is the equivalent of having a pinless grenade taped to your chest. While you can hold the grenade parts together with one hand, your other is holding a rope tied to a safety rail precariously floating off the side of a 80 story skyscraper. Either way it goes, it’s trouble. Sure, from a distance it looks spectacular. The close proximity truth is nobody knows what’s going to happen, except that, whether it’s the window cleaners or the street sweepers, someone’s cleaning up a mess. And that, as we all know, makes it worth watching.

I say good luck to the high-steppin, high flyin, crazy, crazy bastard. I hope he’s settled down. He is, after all, the lesson that one act of stupidity is not the unmaking of a man, unless, of course, it’s a nazi salute to a stadium full of Tottenham Hotspur fans. Even though I’m confident I’ve never done anything that stupid, I feel like I can kind of relate. Playing to the crowd, the literary or the football, can be an awesome responsibility. And there are clearly some stories you just can’t write, whether you read them out or not. I have to say though when the real-life stuff is that scary, I think I prefer the fiction.

The Faltrain's graceful but the football...?

2008-07-31T16:04:00.000-07:00

Another book for the girls this week. Actually, technically, its books. Australian author, Cath Crowley’s Gracie Faltrain series. It’s popular YA fiction, it’s a trilogy, its about football and its for girls which makes it almost unique. In having all this, it should be applauded. Should it though? Is it deserving of a place on the football fiction shelf?

In contrast to last week’s review I started reading book 1, The Life and Times…, expecting it to be spectacular. Gracie is a winner. But from thesimplestgame’s perspective it’s far from spectacular. We meet GF in Year 8 (aged 13, I think). She’s been playing in the football team for three years and she’s having trouble. Her best friend moves away, she fancies the unattainable smiling hunk and doesn’t see the quiet achiever beside her. He’s having his own problems right enough. Then school bitch gives her a hard time, things on the park get positively monstrous (not just because she won’t play nice with the other kids) and her Mum and Dad look like they’re in trouble too. All ingredient boxes ticked then for a mill run teen angst story.

Where Gracie scores is for readers not necessarily interested in football. They will read it, swallow it whole, I’d imagine. It’s a genuinely earnest and engaging book. It's good and the issues - real issues affecting girls (well as a boy what I would imagine the real issues girls face) are dealt with, eh… realistically? Better than that, in doing her thing Gracie has the potential to turn a whole new audience on to football. And the people at thesimplestgame are all for that.
Unfortunately discerning football fans will have put it down after the first 20 pages. I almost did.

Good characters with emotional depth kept me there. They are Crowley’s strong suit. The story, told from a number of characters points of view, has great form and reads well too. But the football is rotten. Almost criminal. Like pish. Poorly phrased, it lacks articulation, resonance and any semblance of the real thing.

I’ve chosen to focus on the first Gracie, but I’ve started the second, ...takes control, and if anything there seems to be even less football in it. The writing is improved. It seems everything but the football is getting better. The fact that it’s well written makes the football look even worse. We don’t kick goals, we score them. Gracie can’t make goals either.

Now, I read recently that Cath openly notes she's only ever played football once. I’ve also read that she was asked by her editors to put some football in her book about a girl playing football. So it’s no surprise that it lacks in the football stakes. Not exactly a promising sign.

Crowley’s work does, however, raise some interesting questions about grammar and use of language in writing football. To make it sound authentic and /or familiar to football fans it has to be written to populist conventions. The vernacular and the colloquialisms are as important as the football itself. If evidence is needed, look at the sports pages in any newspaper.

Having it grammatically correct isn’t important. The right thing to say is Manchester United is playing Arsenal, but to football fans the world over it’s not right. Man U are playing Arsenal. Football fiction should be written the way it’s reported in the papers except with narrative, plot, characters and depth. This is what Crowley has missed. It’s not enough to stand at the sidelines and learn some patter. This criticism could be put on the doorstep of the editors who told her to add the football. Ten minutes with any football pundit, not necessarily SBS’s Craig Foster, would’ve straightened them out and made a huge improvement to the book.

But even where the football isn’t the best, Gracie Faltrain raises some interesting questions about how football fiction is written and who’s writing it, so it gets a berth on the shelf. But it’s only rolled over the line, quite a come down from the postage stamp free kick I expected.

Cath Crowley's own site has all the books.
Or you could try Pan MacMillan.

Sweet Feck All?

2008-07-23T04:32:00.001-07:00

For a wee while Sweet FA was all I thought I'd be putting on the blog this week. School's back. I'm really busy. Still late and never and better, apologies for delays and the rest.

I am dilligently looking for football fiction, but I couldn't help feeling this week that I was looking for something in all the wrong places. A bit like the four women who lead the charge to take their football widow bitterness out on their men folk in Siobhan Curham's book Sweet FA.

I have to be honest I was fully expecting it to be absolutely shite. I was looking forward to having something to rip into. Something I could open up and tear a big lump off. But I couldn't. Now, it isn't the best example of football fiction, but it isn't the worst either.

It's in the same league as Karren Brady's woeful lipstick football fiction, but while Brady's books would be fighting with each other to avoid relegation. Curham's book would be in the play-offs for promotion.

'Whoah' I hear you say. And you'd be right too. 'Whoah' is exactly what I said. The book's content and lack of any real football bar it from being Championship material and the glory of a higher division would ultimately allude it, but there is something there. A couple of wee bubbles of questions popped into my mind when I was reading it, besides why I was reading it obviously, and that made it a worthwhile exercise.

On her official site Curham says its about a group of football widows. She writes,"I wanted to write a book that would appeal to all women. I was interested in the notion of a group of women who are feeling neglected and unfulfilled coming together to regain control of their own lives. Sweet FA is not just about seeking revenge, but it is also a story of friendship and the fulfilment of dreams. As Belle, Ginny, Anna and Maz embark upon their campaign of sabotage and retribution they also begin a journey of self-discovery that will change each of their lives forever. Deciding to follow their football-obsessed partners' example they each find a passion of their own to pursue. Belle decides to have an affair, Ginny learns to chill out, Maz attempts to become a fashion designer and Anna finally finds the courage to escape from her abusive relationship."

This is all true, but it's not what I was thinking when I was reading it. I did however let my mind run with the ball at it's feet and I was entertained for a wee while, but honestly I would much rather be reading something else.

Awright, so I should've looked at her site before I read it, but I'm not sorry I read it. Well not as sorry as I thought I would be. It's often funny and sometimes even evocative. Along with the writing, the characters are engaging. See the bit I myopically focussed on was the football-obsessed partners. And there wasn't enough of them. But that was to be expected. It was about the girls. Still it opens the door to a world of football fiction that I hadn't put a great deal of thought into. Footballer's wives and football widows. There's bound to be creeds of material there.

And then that made me think that there must be football widowers, ye know, fellas whose partners are obsessed with football. US all-star Mia Hamm's partner for example might be sick of football, I can't see it right enough but you get the point.

Curham's written a number of other books. They're most likely not for me. Even on the beach I'd prefer to read something with more substance or more football or both. If you're interested most book sellers on the net have them. Or have a look at Siobhan Curham's own site

Wallace, Schwarzer, Megs and an interview

2008-07-13T17:44:00.001-07:00

The work of Messrs Montagnana-Wallace and Schwarzer have been highlighted here before. In March I reviewed the first Megs book, …The Vootball Kids and then last month just after its release I reviewed Scarves and Sombreros. Both books make great contributions to the world of football fiction and of course the shelves of childrens/young adult fiction in general. The focus here is on the first and I recently caught up with Neil Montagnana-Wallace to discuss Megs, Mark Schwarzer’s involvement and Neil’s own views on football fiction.

As he almost wistfully recounts ‘the old days’ and how much fun he had as a football playing youngster, Neil tells me the Megs stories are largely inspired by his own experiences. These memories were rather sharply brought into focus a couple of years ago with what was for Neil a bit of a nightmare experience in Rome. “I spent some time in Italy teaching English. It was really pretty difficult, but for one hour a day, we all played football. It was fantastic, the kids really had fun and it reminded me how much fun playing football is and, of course, of how international a game it is.”

From there he started developing the characters and storylines for the Megs books. “Planning the first Megs book,” he says, “was really the planning of the five of them. It seemed to take a long time, but it was probably the most fun part.”

The third book is due out in December this year, the fourth in June 2009 and the fifth and final book is scheduled for release in December 2009. I asked Neil if five books had always been his intention. He said, “We wanted to build momentum with the books. Rather than publish one and then try and sell it for two years, we figured we’d publish five over the same period. That way we keep things fresh, we keep the books current, we’ve always got something new to sell and we’ve got five products to sell rather than just one.”

“We did a promotional tour to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane with the first book and then we had Mark for three days to help us promote Scarves and Sombreros in Perth and Adelaide. We took it to libraries and schools and we got a a pretty good reception but because we hadn’t been over there with the first one we were really selling two books.”

Neil’s response, when I asked how it had went, was “Great. Kids love it, parents love it too. We get emails from kids and parents all the time. The challenge for us is to communicate it. To get people to read the books.” At the moment there aren’t any tour plans for the third but big plans with Mark are afoot for the fourth.

Mark Schwarzer got involved, partly because he knew Neil through his authorship of, Our Socceroos, a book Neil and his partner at Bounce worked on for two years and partly because Mark had been considering a book of his own – a children’s picture book which Neil hinted we may still see in some shape or form in the not too distant future.
The lads met face to face for the first time in 2005 when Australia played Germany in Italy in the Confederation Cup. With both of them looking to write football fiction for kids and both having something valuable to contribute in terms of their own experience things simply grew from there. They’ve certainly produced a book of two halves. A series of books in fact.

One of the strongest aspects of the book is the very likeable central character. Megs isn’t a superstar, he has skills and he’s a good lad but in every other way he is an ordinary kid who simply loves his football. Neil says, “it was a conscious decision to make Megs an accessible character. I wanted him to be what I like to think I was like myself,” he says and laughs. “It’s obviously egocentric to write that way, but he is the best bits of what I really do think I was like. I see a lot of myself in him, but Mark says the same thing. He sees a lot of himself and what he contributed in Megs too. We also obviously see a lot of what I invented, but there are bits from other kids and people we know which bring the puzzle together. I think that’s part of Megs appeal.”

It’s true, Megs is an everyman kind of character, well at least an every lad. Footballers and fans the world over at any level will be able to see a bit of themselves or their hopes and aspirations in him. I imagine it’s what makes it fun for kids too.

As far as a defined football fiction market, Neil wasn’t sure why there are so few examples, but he did say he was, “glad there aren’t too many to be honest. There’s less competition and it means our work will get more attention hopefully.” Though he did add that Pan MacMillan have a football celebrity and a writer project in development for the UK market and that he’d picked up a couple of examples in the US market on a trip himself recently, so there are more examples out there and signs that, for kids at least, the market is expanding. I’ll hopefully bring them to you through this blog.

In the meantime TheSimplestGame would like to extend its gratitude to Mr Montagnana-Wallace for his time and for writing his football books. Thanks obviously go to Mr Schwarzer for his contribution and for using his status in the game to do more than make big wages. Good work both of you.

I'm looking forward to seeing where the series goes from here.

The books are available through Pan MacMillan, Bounce Books or any good bookshop.

Fans can join the Penendale Wanderers (Megs team) on the the Megs Website, they can email Mark, Neil or Megs himself. There’s a shed-load of prizes up for grabs including signed jerseys and books and all.

Some Tartan football fiction

2008-07-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

Talking about other people's football fiction is one thing. I thought I'd put a wee bit of my own on the blog to eh, ye know, level the playing field (...ouch). I wrote it last year (it was in a draft of Some Tartan Hyde, a novel I'm still looking to get published). It will also provide the basis for a short story I'm working on. It's the view from the pitch and it's very rarely used in football fiction, especially when it's about very ordinary football.

Their man in the centre of the park is strutting his stuff. He has a lovely touch on the ball; he’s pointing at his teammates and spraying passes about. Fancies himself as a midfield dynamo. He won’t last; he can’t. Not at this pace. And a couple of the boys, myself included, have given him a good dunt already, so he won’t.

One of their defenders puts a tidy pass to his feet. Under control, he’s trapped it and stroked it like it was his only love. Inch perfect, their forward, the boy I’ve been chasing after, steady's himself before he lays out the return pass. The ball completes the perfect isosceles triangle. The dynamo zips into the space and collects the ball like he’s been transported Star Trek style from deep in his own half. Zooming towards me, his only mistake so far is that he’s not looked up enough, not looked directly in front of him. Too busy looking to play it to someone else. He sways with the ball at his toes, left then right, then breaks left when he’s still looking right. Selling Mulheart the dummy, he skips out from under the untimely lunge. With Mulheart’s big body prostrate, the dynamo stops, picks his direction with a knitted brow and zooms off again. In a couple of short bursts, he’s dancing on the edge of our goal mouth to avoid the puffing, wheezing, clumsy tackles littering his feet and battering his ankles, he breathes in and pulls back to shoot. That’s when I step in.

I’m lucky. His view is all goal, until I fall into the picture. It isn’t exactly thief in the night stuff. Ordinarily he would have skipped away from me same as he’s done to everybody else. Sensing the danger of my momentum from the periphery, he’s faked the shot and tried to draw the ball back. Give himself some space. I should’ve blown past him. Being so slow, I catch him off guard. By accident. Trailing his foot to drop another feint and turn past me has left him exposed, so when I mis-time my challenge and slide in, it looks like I’ve anticipated it. It’s an exceptional tackle, even better if I’d meant it. The ball momentarily trapped between us, pops up in front of me. Where he couldn’t keep his feet, I’m on mine, the ball at my toes, before I’ve even stopped sliding.

I use the momentum to carry me round his mate, who had been following in, and do a bit of zooming myself. The liberation and freedom at having won the ball inspires a trip to the furthest reaches of my own half. I keep motoring into theirs. I’ll never score. I’m a defender. I clear them out and stop others coming at us. It kind of feels unnatural to be this far forward. I push the ball ahead, lining it up for an unstoppable shot but, touch like an elephant; I’ve knocked it too far. Where I should have been pulling the trigger and pinging it, I take an over-stretched step and fluff the shot. Its wayward trajectory turns it into a chip into the box. Incredibly, Keef catches it crisply on his right foot and the volley smashes into their net. The lads, to a man, congratulate me on the tackle in our box and my clever, selfless touch to Keef. We’re one nothing up in a very tight game.

Right, any questions, comments or feedback would be gratefully accepted and considered. Even if you don't think I'll like them I'm still interested to hear them. Thanks for reading it.

The Hand of God and the 2008 Euros.

2008-06-29T02:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve been feasting on the European Championships. If football was food I’d look like Maradona does now… but I’ll get back to him.

There’s nothing for it, Austria and Switzerland have played host to an awesome display of the beautiful game. Has to be one of the best international tournaments in my life time. I can’t remember watching better.

Not a single team had a solid defence. Poor for the players, excellent for spectators. Goals everywhere. Analogies with sieve’s and other things with holes in have been rife. People thought there was no way Russia would lose that many goals to the Spaniards a second time not after the way they done the Dutch. The ball is round right enough.

Thanks must go to the nations of Europe who, in leaving their defensive tactics at home, made a valuable contribution to a rare football extravaganza, one that really has lived up to the hype.

Only a couple of games have been a bit lumpy, most notably Italy vs Spain (wince!), but the plot, being completely unpredictable, thickened all the way to the finale where the Spanish Armada finally grabbed the gold. I'm pleased for them and for football too.

With so many twists, turns and goals the entire football show had all the makings of a good drama. It made me wonder if the novella I’m knocking together for my PhD, which is tied to the 2010 World Cup, will maintain the same level of excitement. I also wondered if there’s any other football fiction set at or during a specific international tournament.

I did think of three which come close…

The third, and arguably best written, of John King’s ‘hoolie-lit’ trilogy England Away sees his Chelsea head hunters make some violent appearances in Holland and Germany on their way to watch their national team clash in an international fixture. I don’t think it would count as a tournament based football fiction.

The same would be said for me old mate, Dougie Brimson’s (see the interview) The Crew. It's about a team of football fans, three crews actually, who plan and execute a hoolie-handed Italian Job while England play the Azzuri in Italy. The old bill try to stop them scoring, but their defence is a bit like the Germans.

The Hand of God Squad are a couple of opportunistic Scotland fans who’ve named themselves after that famous moment in Argentina’s defeat of England in the World Cup (22 June 1986). Gordon Legge penned a wee cracker for the The Hope That Kills Us about the lads and how girls and love get in the away of their international game attendance record. Again its not tournament based, but it has the most games in it.

I will take a closer look at the football fiction of Legge and King in future posts.

I can’t think of any other examples. Maybe you know some, maybe you’re writing one. I’d really appreciate it if someone could point me towards any good, bad or indifferent offerings. They'd be worth their weight in eh...burgers?

Scarves and Sombreros

2008-06-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

When he was in trouble, his Mammy called him Edson Arantes do Nascimento, but the rest of the world calls him Pele. He needs no introduction. I mention it because he’s after writing one. He’s written the foreword to Scarves and Sombreros, the follow-up to the best selling Megs and The Vootball Kids. I don’t know if it’s possible to get a more famous endorsement for a football book, but I’d stick my neck out and say that the book is worthy of it. Pele says, “The Megs series…is a great example of how football speaks the same language to people all over the world, regardless of their background, colour or religion.” Of course, he’s absolutely right, but these books are also engaging, fun and this one in particular looks at real life issues.

Co-written with Aussie and Middlesborough keeper Mark Schwarzer, Neil Montagnana-Wallace has knocked together two of what is set to be a five volume series. Schwarzer’s involved because he thinks “It’s a great way to encourage children to read. It’d be difficult to disagree with the sentiment.

Scarves and Sombreros continues the story of mad for football, Edward “Megs” Morrison. Freshly immigrated to Australia, he’s still struggling to adapt to his new environment. The newly formed school football team and coach (see Book 1 Review) are helping him settle, especially when a trip to the UK - a chance to return home for Megs - is offered to the league winners. The team must pull together in the face some stiff competition, some tough choices, get around some underhanded antics and still try and win the league.

The first book was good. I like the second one better. It’s snappier. It deals with deeper issues - the scarf of the title arises from the controversy over whether a female Muslim team mate should be allowed to play while wearing her hijab or not. There’s also a heap of life lesson stuff about ‘growing pains’, parental problems and tolerance. And there’s plenty of football.

This time round the story is incisively and insightfully put together, we still get the anticipated happy ending, but, rather than use contrite ways to find solutions to the questions the book raises, Wallace is more than happy for the reader to decide the answers for themselves. While some resolution is required for the story, there’s no preaching and as a cynical adult reader, I for one, appreciate that.

It’s a rare thing for a sequel to equal its predecessor, its rarer still for it not so much surpass as outstrip it. The action on the pitch is lengthier and more exciting and Wallace having garnered greater command of his art has interwoven much stronger story elements.

While his use of modern technology like emails and references to iPods and Archie Thompson work well to push the story forward and place it in a self-aware contemporary setting, there is a danger that they may date the book. Though having said that, if you want the kids to read it, the kids have to be able to relate, right?

Scarves and Sombreros is an excellent example of good football fiction, better still it’s an excellent example of any kind of adolescent fiction. The third in the series, Megs & The Crazy Legs, will follow soon and promises a great deal. Messrs Montagnana-Wallace, Schwarzer and Arantes do Nascimento have done a good thing here. Let’s hope they can keep it up.

Which maybe makes it a keepie-uppie contest?

You can buy the books in most bookshops, or on the website, www.megsmorrison.com. It’s worth having a look at anyway.

Nelson Mandela?... Paul McGrath's Da?

2008-06-15T04:14:00.000-07:00

Genius is a word that’s been thrown around so much it looks like a waterlogged ball that no one wants to kick - I think that’s a Tim Rogers line, I can’t take the credit.

But Roddy Doyle is, he’s a very clever man. He’s won the Booker Prize already (for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha). Humble and gifted though, gloriously gifted – if you need proof, he’s written a big shelf full of brilliant books to have a look at. They’re mostly about the Irish or people in Ireland, well that’s where he’s from, and all of them, for want of a better expression, are a gas crack. Stunningly funny and searingly emotive. Laughing and crying and thinking. That’s what Roddy Doyle books are good for, looking at his people to help you think about your own. It’s, well, it’s genius.

Now football fiction? You’d be fair to ask. He’s written a piece, well actually it’s part of a piece, I mean he’s written books about lots of things. He’s even written a couple of plays and a couple of kids books – one of the reasons why I’ll be looking at his work in my PhD. His latest collection The Deportees is excellent and garnered some fame as it contains a little sequelette to his first book The Commitments. The resourceful Jimmy Rabbitte Jnr strikes again you might say. And it’s brilliant as well.

He’s also written a piece of football non-fiction called Republic is a Beautiful Word for Nick Hornby’s collection My Favourite Year. It’s fantastic, it’s about Ireland’s qualification and subsequent run in the 1990 World Cup in Italy with Paul McGrath and manager, Jack Charlton – I met him once in a train station in Edinburgh. Smashin’ bloke, became something of a cult figure in Ireland after his run of success.

Well coincidentally, The Van (Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1991), Mr Doyle's football fiction, is about that self same World Cup ‘triumph’. When Jimmy Rabbitte Snr goes in with his mate Bimbo in his chip van and they look like their goin’ down the shitter before the winning of World Cup games has them selling burgers and chips to fellas ‘on the lash’ outside the pub. They watch the important games in the pub themselves, of course. There are many moments of incredible humour, the battered nappy, the Eamon Dunphy – he’s the eedjit TV pundit they name the battered sausage after; the book incorporates a great deal more of Dublin’s experience of the World Cup success and the events of Jimmy Snr’s life, it’s a heart breaker and a heart warmer rolled into one. It’s a beautiful, beautiful book.

To appreciate it fully though, you’d have to go back to the beginning of The Barrytown Trilogy and start with The Commitments and follow it with The Snapper.

Republic... is a report of the World Cup campaign, It provides evidence of where he got his inspiration. (Ireland got to the Quarter Finals!) Doyle had been to the Hungary Qualifier (McGrath scored) before he’d gone to the pub to watch the highlights. “I clutched my pint into my shoulder – where babies fit when they’re being winded or walked – and watched” (pg1). It’s where his football story starts, that and the Khomeini dying on the same day, but that’s a different thing altogether.

Nelson Mandela happened to be in Dublin the same day the Irish National team did an open top bus tour of the City to celebrate their unprecedented success, as Doyle reports it, this was the reason the half million strong crowded streets burst into chants of Ooh Ah Paul McGrath’s Da, Ooh Ah Paul McGrath’s Da…” It’s funny but I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to mention Mandela and football fiction in the same place again…you never know, right enough.

Jasper Zammit Vs. Sheilas, wogs & poofters

2008-06-08T17:00:00.001-07:00

The late and undoubtedly great Johnny Warren was a force in playing football and in football media in Australia. A veritable ambassador for the game, he had a tendency to shine whenever football did and sometimes times even when it didn’t. On SBS Him ’n Les Murray were an awesome team-up as far as pundits go.

His autobiography Sheilas, wogs & poofters is a sometimes dry but no less interesting and often amusing unofficial history of Football in Australia.There’s the story of the 1974 World Cup campaign, doomed because the players ripped off a Witch Doctor in Rhodesia during qualification and the story of $13.74 cheque they got for playing something like 11 international games (and people call the Scot’s tight!). In 2004 John Saffran went to Zimbabwe, tracked down and straightened out the Witch Doctor with a tenner and, lo and behold, Australia qualified for the 2006 World Cup - first time since '74.

The controversially titled book -its what Warren was often told of the game in his playing days- is a must read for any discerning football fan in this country.

Less can be said about Jasper Zammit: Soccer Legend the young adult football fiction he hoiked his name to. That’s not to say that it’s badly written, the idea that the all-conquering goodness of football will always win out/save the day/ teach us a lesson is now as well worn as Johnny’s oldest pair of boots.

We could live with the story if the writing dazzled, but it’s a bit too vanilla and certainly not in the same league in terms of spark as the Megs Morrison series (see Here’s one for the kids blog 2 March 2008).

With the exception of Jasper, the cast of cardboard characters move through a paper thin story, while messages, the tips at the beginning of each chapter - ‘Rule #12 Stay relaxed and focused under pressure’ - hammer home Johnny’s sportsmanlike positively-minded, footballing philosophy.

It's all right for me, I've knocked it over in an hour, but if I was a kid I’d be bored of the lessons by the end.
There are a couple of requisite sequels. I haven’t read them, but I’m going to.

It’s still football fiction innit?

Fan fiction

2008-06-02T04:07:00.000-07:00

Does it matter what team the protagonists in our football fiction support? Does it make a difference? Does it add to or take away from our reading experience? What about as a writer, should a writer have to consider their audience or fanbase? Is it possible to get a message to as many people as possible if you write about one team - more specifically the team you follow?

They say write about what you know. They also say a good writer can write about anything. Book shelves are filled with examples which prove both these theories.

Arsenal man, Nick Hornby bared his soul in Fever PItch, while Chelsea man Peter Gilmour bared his arse in Sexy Football. These two, I know for sure, have identified themselves as supporters of a particular club. Many others, who may or may not have some degree of club loyalty, have written football fiction.

Alan Bissett’s Boyracers are Rangers supporters and Irvine Welsh, famous for his love of the Edinburgh club, has Hibs fans all over his work. Dougie Brimson has written fiction about West Ham supporters in The Crew and Top Dog and a Watford supporter in Billy’s Log. John King’s first three novels are about a group of Chelsea supporters, does that mean he is as well?

I don’t know if Jonathon Tulloch is a Toon Army man, or if Laura Hird, like most of the main characters in her story This is My Story, This is My Song, is a Hearts supporter. Does it really matter? I don't think it's had an impact on the popularity of their work.

In Peter Gilmour's case, the exception in the list above, I would suggest the comparative lack of popularity of his book is probably due to the quality of the writing as opposed to people taking issue with the club he loves.

As a football fan it doesn’t concern me which team is involved. It's not like the writers are endorsing the club in the same way say Oasis would in sponsoring Manchester City, the club they follow. Wet Wet Wet's sponsorship of Clydebank is a bit different, lead singer Marti Pellow is a Rangers fan, but I'm getting away from my point here.

I don’t imagine David Peace would need to have been a Leeds United fan, or even a Brian Clough fan, to write such an astonishingly good book as The Damned United.

Should we concern ourselves with this stuff? What if you start to empathise with the characters and then they play against your favourite team? Talk about a conflict of interest. If we narrowed our reading to books about our own club we'd all be wearing eye patches, wouldn't we?

It is obviously entirely possible to get away with it though, most of the people I’ve listed here have, but it made me wonder if it's possible for a writer with no interest in football to write about it or that you could be interested in football without following a team?

the pish part of a PhD?

2008-05-26T16:36:00.000-07:00

I’ve just this afternoon determined, with the help of a very patient, battered-eared, coffee-fuelled and tired supervisor, that my PhD will look deeply and longingly into the way ‘voice’ works in young adult and adult football fiction narratives.

I mean how the writing changes depending on who’s going to be reading it – it’d have to wouldn’t it?

I will look at the what and the how of these changes. I’ll be looking at stuff like language, metaphors, descriptions, stylistics and the like. Others too. When I discover them. If anyone can help me, I’d love to hear from you.

At the moment, whether its wrong or right, I’m going to work on the assertion that young people reading football stories are far happier to read more game time stuff for example and less happy to work in the space between the reader and the text. They like the emotional stuff on the page – the ref’s obvious bias pissed John off. He was proper angry, for example.

Where as adult fiction readers require a bit more complexity, a little more sophistication. They don’t want to be told stuff they want to work it out for themselves and I don’t mean a mystery novel or some crime number – although I will look at detective football fiction aimed at both markets in a future blog.

In Young Adult football fiction, the football is the vehicle for the issues. Examples include the Megs books (see Here's One For the Kids this blog March 2 2008), Jasper Zammit, the King of Large and the Gracie books for example. I’ll be getting to all of these and more too I’m sure.

Adult readers on the other hand, as patronising as it sounds, are said to require a challenge. The books have to be about a bit more than the football. In the blog so far, I’ve already looked at Karren Brady sexing the board room game up with some lippy and some naked limbs; Dougie Brimson’s mixed it up with some metaphorical blood on his knuckles and the touchier, feelier Nick Hornby has given us male mood swings, sharp patter and some sharper insights. There are other spins in football fiction too. Again I intend to get into them in future blogs.

That’s not to say that youg adult fiction does not deal with complex or sophisticated issues it does and frequently, Roddy Doyle, Elmore Leonard, Hornby and Janette Winterson have all written sophisticated YA fiction, I’m going to have a gander at them too though not on this blog.

I’m looking for more examples of football fiction regardless of where it fits into the scheme of things. If you know of any good books I’d be keen to know about them…

Fever Pitch

2008-05-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby’s account of his obsession with his favourite team is a football fiction hall of famer - if ever there was such a thing.

It should be famous for the quality of the writing, the humour and the incredibly moving chapter regarding the Hillsborough nightmare, but it’s mostly about a sad wee football fanatic who can’t keep a girl.

Hornby’s style keeps his work from falling easily into transparent genres. More importantly the book vindicates the unrequited love people like us (I mean geeks like me ’n him at least) have for something as ungiving as a football team. It allows us to get away with justifying the irrational. (Almost). It provides depth and meaning to our resentment of the phrase “it’s only a game.”

Unless, of course, you’re this guy…ESPN Soccernet's review of Fever Pitch. Sean didn’t do enough research and read the book with a preconceived agenda in mind and I think kind of missed most of the point as a result. Still I’m glad he liked it.

For me the issue of the book’s notoriety does come from its spawning of a horrible film adaptation. Two horrible film adaptations to be precise.

For a stiff English man playing a stiff English man, Colin Firth did reasonably well. The US version with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon (another SNL movie flopper) had to be baseball to make it more, I dunno…accessible? It smells like shite, primarily because it is.

As a writer myself, or at least someone aspiring to make a living from the written word, I have to commend Hornby for doing it, getting away with it and keeping on doing it. Not too many authors have managed a film from a book let alone two. Even fewer writers have been responsible for two large scoops of celluloid poo and maintained as much authorial credibility as he has. I think it's because he’s a decent bloke and a great writer.

I’ve been told that one of the secrets of Hornby’s success, particularly his earlier ostensibly boys books, Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About A Boy, is there’s always something in it for the girls. His work has an emotive largesse which appeals to the eh, more emotional in our football fiction tribe. I wondered if it was what Dougie Brimson was driving at when he talked about ‘making blokes sound like limp wristed tossers’. (See the Dougie Brimson Interview this blog, April 9th 2008).

In the aftermath of the books success he was kind of held up as editor in chief of all things football and has put his name or his work or written introductions for a number of collections of football writings – I’ll get to those in a later blog.

Nick Hornby has been held responsible for the initial breath of life given by the now bloated corpse of ‘lad’ lit. To me Fever Pitch was always more than that though, it was the book that helped me, and a lot of others I'd imagine, realise football writing, something far more durable than a notional category, can be literary. Of course, I then read McIlvanney, Walvin, White and Davies and found that people had been writing football literature long before Hornby, but he opened the door, he seemed to make it easier to get the ‘it’ of literary football fiction. I’m grateful he did.

Talking about football fiction with Alan Bissett

2008-05-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

Alan Bissett has been mentioned in this blog before. He's a Scottish writer. For his literary efforts, he's been getting called a doyen and rating mentions in places like the List's top 100 cool eh, things. At the moment he's working on some more fictional largesse and plans to revisit the peeps in his first novel BOYRACERS. His last book THE INCREDIBLE ADAM SPARK is excellent too. Well worth reading for any number of reasons. None of them are football related right enough.

A wee while ago, he wrote a short story for the THE HOPE THAT KILLS US football writing anthology, so I wrote to him and asked him if he'd maybe talk about football fiction for us. And he did.

TheSimplestGame: What made you choose to write A Minute's Silence? What's behind it, your inspiration? How did you get involved with The Hope...?

Alan Bissett: A MINUTE'S SILENCE was written specifcially with the theme of the anthology in mind, so it had to be based around football, but I did want to use it to explore issues that are bigger than football, and in Scotland there are few more important issues than that of religious sectarianism. It's difficult to grow up as a young male in Scotland without being touched by this in some way, and while it wasn't quite as fierce as it is in Glasgow, that Catholic/Protestant shite still reached us in Falkirk. Looking back on it now I can see how my young mind was being warped politically by the simple issue of supporting a football team and I wanted to explore that. Football can be divisive at the best of times, but in Scotland it is particularly sharp, and I thought I'd be shirking my responsiblity if I didn't recognise that.

TSG: One of the great strengths in your work is voice, you are able capture the patter, the sense of time and place and all the stuff that goes with it in these really fascinating characters, how do you think you are able to do this?
AB: All I wanted to do was write as genuinely as I could about the world around me, and certainly when I was young my friends and I communicated in a language composed of film, sitcom, music and football references. That pop-culture world was as much a dialect to us as the Falkirk accent that we spoke with. I wasn't conscious of doing anything other than to show how this 'stuff' informs the very fabric of people's character and the way they interact with each other. If I'm able to do it well, it's because that 'is' the natural voice of contemporary society - from Dunoon to Denver. How often have you been trying to describe a situation to someone by saying, 'It was like that epidsode of Friends/The Simpsons/The Sopranos when X says to Y....' And yes, for a lot of men, football is a culture and language all of its own, which includes or excludes the same as any other culture and language. I'm just reflecting the reality of that."

TSG: There seems to be a general belief that men prefer reading non-fiction over fiction – it's been put forward as one of the reasons for the dearth of football fiction. Do you think this is true and do you prefer reading non-fiction or fiction?
AB: It would seem - if marketing statistics are correct - that most men do prefere reading non-fiction, and certainly as I've grown older I've started to read a lot more of it: whether on history, popular science or politics. The advantage of fiction is that it can explore the psychology and motivations of characters in a way that is dramatically exciting, but the disadvantage is that you can only learn so much 'about' the world from fiction, as it just does not have a duty to record the facts in the same way that non-fiction does. I think it's probably healthy to read in both areas.

TSG: Do you think there is a defined market for football fiction?
AB: There's a market for any kind of fiction, as long as it's good. But I do think the market is smaller, for reasons I'll soon come to.

TSG: Another theory is that footballers are better at expressing themselves with a ball than a pen, why do you think there is so little fiction about a sport which is so popular?
AB: I think the difference is that most people whose main interest is football *tend* not to be big readers of quality fiction; most readers of quality fiction *tend* not to be football fans. If you want to do any reading about football, there are newspapers, magazines and non-fiction books by the dozen devoted to it. There are online forums where you can discuss the game with other fans. Given what I said about fiction being poorly equipped with facts - and football being a game based on speculation based on statistics - fiction would not seem to be the most natural place to go for insight .

That said, David Peace's THE DAMNED UNITED is one of the best novels I've ever read, let alone novels about football. It elevates the game - and Brian Clough in particular - to the level of Shakespearean tragedy, which massive egoes, obsessions and personal demons exposed for the reader to see. It's epic! More exciting than football itself, as far as this reader is concerned. Fiction deals with characters and narratives, which is why Clough's enormous personality and the twists and turns of his story are perfect material. But let's be honest, most footballers and managers are fairly blank. They're athletes. Their story takes place before us on the pitch. There's often little fiction can do to supplement it that no fan can do for himself as he watches.

You can buy these books on Amazon, or go straight to Alan Bissett's My Space page or the Alan Bissett website in the links on the subs bench (on yer right).

…Women were meant to play football…

2008-05-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

I don't know about any of you, but women's football is sexy any way you look at it. A lot of sexy women play and pretty much any woman you don't need to use complex shopping analogies to explain the offside rule to definitely is.

The feminine qualities they bring to the game make it even more graceful, flowing and easy on the eye, not to mention the gilt-edged guile and cunning that comes with it. (Did you see the goal Brazil scored against the Matildas in last year's Women's World Cup Qtr Final tie? Quite honestly, one of the sexiest goals I've ever seen.)

While I may have offended people with the sweeping generalisations I urge you to read on. The book I'm talking about will change your mind...about a lot of things, not just me. It has impact - I'm probably just not showing it.

While it's certainly not a football fiction publication (this site's primary concern), it is a significant work about football and since the media-culture reviews asked me to review Jean William's wonderful book I thought this blog could live with one non-fiction review.

Here's what it says on the back of the book...
FIFA, the world governing body of association football, declared ‘The Future is Feminine’ in a 1995 press release. Since then, football has been claimed as the fastest growing participation sport for women globally. An estimated twenty million women play the game around the world, and that figure is on the rise. However, the history of women's participation goes back to at least 1895 and in our enthusiasm for the present, the memory of that longer history can be overlooked or forgotten. A Beautiful Game examines contemporary women’s football internationally, with case studies from England, the United States, China and Australia. In each case study, Jean Williams considers the evolution of the women’s game against a backdrop of issues, such as media representation, access to facilities, lack of resources, coaching, sponsorship, talent identification, training and professionalisation and contentious questions, such as women's absence from the highest levels of professional football, combining source material from archives, oral history and artefacts. A Beautiful Game analyses the status and image of the women’s game from the late nineteenth century to the shifting social values of the present.

The author Jean Williams (a Senior Research Fellow in Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, teaches the MA in the History and Culture of Sport and Leisure and the FIFA-sponsored International Masters in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport) is a bit of a boffin and must love her football - while the two things rarely occur in the same place (I'll get to philosophyfootball in a future blog) thesimplestgame thought'd it be worth a mention.

It's very good. Like very, very good, fascinating to be honest. Jean Williams has done her homework, and while at times it reads like a boffin wrote it, it always reads like it was a fan too. It's well worth a look.

A far longer, far more in-depth and comprehensive review will be posted on M/C Review very soon. It even gave me an opportunity to recall the famous line from Bill Forsyth's 1981 film "Gregory's Girl"...if women were meant to play football... ...read the review M/C Reviews

or buy the book at Footprint Books NSW

The Season Ticket

2008-04-21T17:42:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Tulloch (the man, not the horse) has written a whole bunch of award winning short stories, four novels, won numerous prizes and awards including New Zealand’s lucrative Betty Trask Award (2000) for his debut, The Season Ticket, and the JB Priestley Award for The Lottery (2003). In 2004 he was on the TLS list of the twenty best young writers. He’s recently co-written a piece of children’s fiction with his wife.

The Season Ticket, the book this blog is interested in, is a tale of two wee Geordie boys trying to raise the cash for a seat at St. James’s Park for a season.

Sewell and Gerry live in Gateshead, home of one of Europes biggest shopping centres and all those clipped and busy industrial city streets. Like George and Lenny in Steinbeck’s book, Sewell has strength and Gerry is wee and wily. They never go to school and they’ve never got any money. Looking at the superstructure that houses their beloved Noocastle United they decide to raise the enough cash to watch the games. But the best laid plans of their almost impossible goal sets them on a frequently funny and sometimes heart crushingly poignant series of adventures.

Tulloch also penned an excellent film adaptation of the book called, Purely Belter. Directed by Mark Herman (Brassed Off and Little Voice), it even featured a cameo from Noocastle’s favourite son, Alan Shearer.

While the film unfortunately suffered from comparisons with Herman’s other more successful and popular works, the book stands on its own as an excellent read, whether you’re interested in football fiction or not. It offers a finely tuned perspective on the fragility of the human condition, but more importantly (for this blog in particular) it offers a stunning insight into the hope that football gives us.

Besides the top drawer wallow in financial excess enjoyed and perpetuated by big clubs and Roy Keane’s, prawn sandwich munching and happy to pay through the nose for it, fans, the most romantic of footballing notions resolutely survives. No matter the volume of love, devotion or cash we pour over it, each new season and each new signing enflames our limitless hope and grants us the power to believe irrational promises can be fulfilled. The Hope That Kills Us right enough.

Like many of his contemporaries (as far as I know) Tulloch’s only ever written one piece of football fiction. There must be a reason for that. I’d love to know what it is. Nevertheless, I hold out the hope that he will write another.

Drawing a line between magicians

2008-04-20T04:12:00.000-07:00

A football fiction connection between Pele and Shakespeare? Of course there is. Cynics reading this might think I’m playing the long ball here, but the move is there and the passes have been strung together…

Keeper rolls it out. The bold Bill put quill to parchment in 1601 and knocked out the comedy, The Twelfth Night. Loosely put, it’s about a lovely wee lassie who, pretending to be a boisterous, though we’d have to say fairly effeminate, boy falls in love with a boy. Opportunities for revelations of her gender are forbidden, obviously, and she can’t find a way to tell him without coming across as a boy who prefers other boys and he’s no buying it. This kicks off a two-halved game of uncomfortable moments, comic problems and general hilarity. People wouldn’t still be telling it if it wasn’t a good story regardless of what you think of the premise.

Pass.Recently I caught the latest interpretation on the telly. It’s called She’s the Man and it’s pish. Except for one thing – it’s about football. Which, I would argue, entitles it to a spot, allbeit at the shite end, on the DVD shelf in my football fiction library.

Essentially it’s a vehicle for some young empty-headed Hollywood starlet to play a boy playing football and more importantly shine. Euphemism about polishing poo aside, for me, a football fiction fan, the inclusion of the glorious game suggests a positive future for this wee genre.

This notion is readily supported. Goal!, despite an absolutely stinking sequel, did really well. ....Jimmy Grimble is very likable. A couple of Dougie Brimson’s books are being turned into films as you read this. He told us that himself (see his interview in an earlier blog). Then there’s that clever eedjit Will Ferrell’s Kicking and Screaming and less recently Vinnie Jones’Mean Machine, a remake of a Burt Reynolds film which was originally an allegory for the Nixon administration (apparently).

Header. There are a host of others too - Disney’s made for TV monotony Her Best Move, the Olsen Twins had a crack at the soccer film before they started messing around with Heath Ledger (sharp intake of breath); it’s a dreadful number called Switching Goals. There are plenty mediocrities - Sean Bean’s banal effort When Saturday Comes is a great example.

John King’s Football Factory Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch and Jonathan Tulloch's The Season Ticket warrant future blogs of their own.

(And just when you thought the thread was getting away from the needle…)
Knocks it down. None of these films have gained the cult classic status of the incredible satire Mike Basset or the unrivaled success of Knightley’s career-launching Bend it Like Beckham which also spawned a reasonably successful novel tie-in; arguably the only bona fide example of football fiction in this post.

Pele’s legendary “I juggled oranges in the market" crack in his unforgettable movie debut role in Escape to Victory stands today as a major part in probably the best football film ever. Shoots and scores.

With the all drama, intrigue and eh, plot sophistication, it’s entirely possible (with a room full of monkeys) it could’ve been knocked out on a laptop by a silky skilled Shakespeare had he been alive today. Whose to say? If JC Thring, the inventor of the rules of the game, had been born 300 years earlier, wild Bill could just as easily have scratched his inky feather across …Victory and had it played to the final whistle at the Globe back in the day.

Whether it’s Pele or Shakespeare, Dougie Brimson or the Olsen’s, if football is gaining popularity enough for film people to take notice of its value, it means the market for football fiction cannot be too far behind…hopefully.

Karren Brady singing the Blues

2008-04-15T04:40:00.001-07:00

Karren Brady is a bit of a football fiction all-star. Not because she wrote a couple of pieces of lipstick football fiction, she's the chairman of Kerrang! allegedly the world's biggest selling weekly rock magazine, and a non-executive director at Channel 4, Mothercare and Sport England.

Most famously though she is the Managing Director at the EPL's very own Birmingham City FC. When appointed at the ripe old age of 23 she became the youngest Chief Executive in the U.K. Her rise to fame started in advertising before she moved onto brutal tabloid nonsense papers like the Daily Sport - obviously where she refined her flair for a pungently perfumed phrase -and that was before she turned her hand to football clubs and novel writing.

She was arrested recently on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting. It's been reported in uk tabloids that the police are investigating illicit payments made to agents among other things.

Most controversially, despite her marriage to a Luton Town player and her job with the Brummies Football Club, she's a Gooner... apparently. It's scandalous I tell ye.

But keep the naughtiness with the old shares fraud and the paperbag payments in mind for a moment. The run down on the book I've chosen to review this week will help you understand why.

Brady's novels aren’t necessarily what discerning readers would readily call football fiction. But the field is a small one and there's room for everybody. Besides Karren Brady is in the business, and better than most, she knows there can be little difference between a good buy and a bad one.

The story of her first novel United goes something like this… The protagonist, a sexy wee lassie called Sara, has it all. The glam, the lifestyle, the first division footballer... no sorry that's a different story. She does though, Sara has it all and then her bloke buries his slippers, all be it, like everything else in the book, most tragically. Then she takes the helm at a football club she’s inherited, where fantastically, (remember the naughtiness) she discovers a web of corruption that’s running rampant through the club. Its all unashamedly secret and there’s danger at eh, every turn. Every now and then there’s some wanton lovin' to keep you interested.

I have to be honest I couldn't spoil this one even if I wanted to. A month in the sun couldn't spoil it. I can’t even remember what happens at the end. I do remember that any real twists and turns happened on the park, but they were in such very short supply that I'm not even sure it was the same book.

But its the life imitating art's imitation of life angle that adds another dimension. And reminded me of her work's place in the genre.

Karren has written four books all up; a factual account of her first season at Birmingham City, cleverly called Brady plays the Blues particularly so now she's singing them, the two novels, United and Trophy Wives and her latest non-fiction effort Playing to Win is a kind of self-inspired, self-help piece about successful women in business.

They might not be books you’d add to your football fiction collection but they are topical and hey, it’s all part of the wee, and sometimes inglorious, world of football fiction.

The Simplest Game interviews…Dougie Brimson

2008-04-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

The last blog was all about the work of ‘hoolie-lit’ hero, football fiction and non-fiction writer, Dougie Brimson. You’d be hard pushed to find a harder working novelist. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about being a football writer and better still, makes a lot of sense while he’s at it… (if you need more background check out the previous blog )

The Simplest Game: Why do you choose to write about football? What is it about football (and related issues like football violence) that appeal to you as an author?

Dougie Brimson: Well the primary reason is that I'm a football fan and so as I tell anyone who wants to write, the golden rule is write what you know. But the truth is, I never, ever set out to be a writer. It kind of just happened.

In 1995, as EURO 96 approached and the country was already going hooligan crazy, there was nothing which discussed the issue from the perspective of those who were being perceived as the problem and so, having spotted a gap in the market, we (my brother and I) set out to fill that gap. As time progressed, I was asked my opinions on all kinds of issues and so continued to put my thoughts into print. And in most cases, as anyone who has read any of my books will know, the bulk of them are just that, my opinions. It just so happens that they seem to strike a chord with other people.

TSG: With 12 books in 12 years (including 10 in 7), you're clearly a very prolific writer. What drives you to write?
DB: It's 13 actually! (Humble apologies, Dougie) The main reason I write is because I have a lot to say and no other way of saying it! That said, I do think the market for books like mine is slowing to a trickle so it's unlikely I'll do another non-fiction book for a while.

TSG: One of the best qualities about your fictional work is how vivid it is, especially the fight scenes, you put the reader right amongst it, how do you think you are able to do this?
DB: Thanks very much. It comes back to the point I made previously, write what you know. That's not to say I was some kind of major scrapper in my time, but I have vivid recollections of certain incidents and that really does help when you're constructing a scene.

TSG: There seems to be a general belief that men prefer reading non-fiction over fiction – it’s been put forward as one of the reasons for the dearth of football fiction. Do you think this is true and do you think your non-fiction books made it easier for your audience to access your fictional work? And do you think there is a defined market for football fiction?
DB: Absolutely. I think I was very lucky to be given the opportunity to write fiction because it's something I really enjoy doing and I would love to do some more. However, the sad reality is that the market for football fiction is very small and whilst my books, The Crew and Top Dog, as well as The Football Factory and Awaydays have all sold really well, for some reason we have seen very few writers follow the fictional path and I have no idea why.
I've spoken to a number of agents about this very thing over the years and they've all said that whilst there is clearly a market for ‘Lad-Lit’ -within which ‘hoolie-lit’ surely falls- when it comes to fiction publishers have become fixated on SAS/Army type books or the type of drivel which simply apes Chic-lit and makes blokes sound like limp wristed tossers.

I personally think this is insulting to the average male, yet until we can get the publishing community to take a gamble or get readers to start badgering publishers for more fiction related to the great game, it'll never change. Hopefully, when the film adaptations of The Crew and Billy's Log hit the cinema's, it will kick start an upsurge in interest and a change in thinking. I hope so anyway.

TSG: So do we. Another theory is that footballers are better at expressing themselves with a ball than a pen, why do you think there is so little fiction about a sport which is so popular?
DB: I think if we relied on players for fiction we'd be in trouble anyway! Most would struggle to write their name let alone construct a novel!

Again, I think it comes back to the fact that publishers are reluctant to take a gamble with writers, even established ones. But to be fair, the key to fiction is always the story. If you don't have a good plot then no one is going to even think about publishing it let alone want to read it. And that's the challenge for the writers.

Check Dougie’s work out for yourself at http://www.brimson.net

The Simplest Game would like to thank Dougie for taking the time to consider a couple of 1-2’s in the wee world that is football fiction.

Whether you’re an Andy McNab fan or a sensitive metrosexual, if you’re interested in football writing of any sort his work is most definitely worth a look .

Football fiction, Hooligans and Dougie Brimson

2008-04-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

Green Street Hooligans (just Hooligans in the UK), Frodo Baggins ferocious break away from hairy backed hobbit love was inspired by the actions, notions and imaginations of Dougie Brimson.

It’s a tight, tidy, fiercely violent film about an American fish out of water falling in with a West Ham crew. Froddo finally gets the doing he deserves. Instead of crying to his sidekick Sam about it, he takes it on the chin. While the film’s links to football are less exposed than his numerous black eyes and split lips, they are in there. It’s also a subject very close to Brimson’s heart.

On the back of 12 books in as many years it would seem that Dougie is one of the UK’s most prolific authors, let alone football writers. Currently being held up as a leading light for ‘lad’ culture, Brimson’s site http://www.brimson.net/ shows he has a bit more on his plate, and in his mind, than yer average knuckledusted, fightin’ for the phukin’ buzz minded ‘lad’.

Easy to read, accessible and entertaining, he’s one of the few football fiction writers to turn his love for the game into a highly successful writing career, well at least one that goes beyond writing about fighting – ’cause let’s face it you don’t write 10 books about football hooligans without some level of passion for the rougher edges of pugilistic artistry.

Though, now he’s into the film industry it might be a different story from here.

I’ve now read a couple of his non-fiction thuggery anthologies and all three of his fictional works The Crew, Top Dog and his wee comedy number Billy’s Log. The books are all similar to Green Street in that they aren’t so much about the football in so much as they are about fans. Football serves as a backdrop for more visceral foreground shenanigans. Namely graphically brutal and well-choreographed scrapping.

Billy’s Log (the exception) is a light-hearted look at a single fan’s search for lager and love. The other two are diamond rough and ready, organised crime, perfect for tv, thrillers.

In the The Crew, protagonist Billy Evans is motivated hard man with a plan, a dodgy car business and a nice, if dangerous, little earner up his sleeve. In Top Dog Evans continuing story centres around his firm taking over security at Upton Park, EPL team West Ham’s stadium. It’s a Hammers house of horror take on the lunatics looking after the asylum.

I have a couple of close friends, life-long West Ham supporters, who especially appreciated the story as well as the sentiment.

His non-fiction back catalogue, from what I’ve read of it, are reasonably, and sometimes questionably, argued accounts of football thuggery which perpetuate the questions Government keep asking of their own security systems and problematise the systemic horizontal violence brought on by the Government decisions which created the issues in the first place.

There are many books about football hooliganism or ‘polarised fans’ (an expression I learned recently (thanks jt.)) their inclusion or perceived merit as football fiction will be discussed in a future blog. Brimson’s place in football fiction however is well established and one to be considered if you’ve an interest in the game at all.

Charlie Nicholas gives me the boak

2008-03-30T23:41:00.000-07:00

Big T is a very smart, insightful, friend of mine. He’s made a lot of sense to me on a whole range of subjects and I hold his views on the world in high regard. Following my invitation to look at my blog, he offered comment and I asked if I could put some of it up here, because, true to form, he has struck on the ideas at the very heart of my electronic purpose…

Big T said…
I found your comments on football books interesting…it is true that there is a surprising dearth of decent football authors, especially, as you said, football is such a popular sport. Perhaps, on reflection…referring to your point on Charlie Nicholas and the thousands of other incoherent, mumbling, stammering, uncommunicative, inarticulate and unintelligable players and ex-players, … the vast majority of football players, and therefore ex-players, coaches and managers are more adept at expressing themselves with a football at their feet than a pen in their hands…in my opinion at least, football is more than a sport; it is an art of expression,

Wise words. Galeano couldn’t have put it better. Despite having the demonstrative Harper/Slater (sensible,steady writer-observer/pish-talking exfootballer) team, my response to Big T was...

You're right big man. It is about expression. Football, writing, writing about football, the whole lot. You're right too, it's no for me to judge these people outside of their field of expertise. I wasnae being disrespectful, well I was a bit, more than a bit in some cases. I definitely was about Charlie Nicholas (and Robbie Slater)- watching him commentate gives me the boak (feel sick). He has a tremendous ability to make moments of balletic fluidity on the park sound like a bull in a china shop stramash. Don't get me wrong I wish I could play football like some of the people he talks about. I wish I could write like he played.

I've been struggling to get a handle on why there are so few works of fiction regarding such an immensely popular sport. It was the running theme of my Masters and one that’s set to plague my PhD.

The ‘players-writers’ theory is just one notion I would put forward. Another, there isn’t a market. No demand, no supply. It's something else I need to consider before I set about adding paper to shelves that might never get emptied.

Big T had been thinking about the supply and demand question too…
the digestors of football material are mostly visual predators. Seeking the pleasure and fun of a beautiful move, a pass, a goal, a tackle through voyeurism as a spectator. However, it's true that as much excitement can be derived by listening to a match on the radio, sometimes depending on who's commentating, often depending on the occasion, but always, I'm sure, the words in the air are converted to images in the brain for us to feast on…the ordinary punter would rather see something than read about it. …to read about football is a secondary interpretation or derivative of the original goal. (I'm sure you'll excuse the terrible pun).

Big T also believes there is a football fiction market for ‘discernable punters’. I hope he’s right. I know he’s right about the other stuff - how we view football and derive so much from it. Like I said at the start, I agree with him. I want to be able to think about football fiction differently and he helped me do that.

I'm looking for people to say, “Big man, you are talking pish.” I'm no looking for expert advice, though I'd gladly take it, I'm looking for arguments to reinforce my views or tear them down. It all helps me move forward.

Thanks again Big T. If any one out there has any thing to add, please do.

The Hope That Kills Us

2008-03-24T19:35:00.001-07:00

Besides bringing attention to my own work I wanted to use this blog to highlight football fiction and the worthy (and unworthy) of their place in the sub genre. I’ve already made a glancing header at a couple of really very good examples.

The one for the day is the magnificently titled The Hope That Kills Us. It’s a feckin’ belter. Here’s the official line on what it is…

'Scottish football is the weirdest of organisms, simultaneously compelling and repulsive in equal measure. The Hope That Kills Us brings together specially commissioned stories from some of Scotland's best contemporary writers. Each story examines, from its own unique viewpoint, the participants, observers, experience and emotion that feed our nation's obsession with football.

Unlike so much stuff in our worlds today, it does exactly what it says on the label. The Hope… wonderfully reflects football’s integral part in our culture. The joy, the sorrow, the nightmare’s, the humour, the misery, the people. It’s magic. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The people who put it together commissioned 8 leading lights in Scottish fiction for contributions and looked to writers groups in local communities, Uni’s and even some operating from big hooses like Glenochil to add an additional 5 - the paperback edition includes a couple of further additions.

There are too many highlights to mention here. There’s not a dud among them. Des Dillon’s emotive farmer’s tale, Heatherstone’s Question, Gordon Legge’s Hand of God Squad, an exquisite tale of what it is to follow our national team and This is My Story, This is My Song, Laura Hird’s take on the football widow’s revenge are sublime. They are not the only ones though.

I’ve cited both Billy Cornwall’s Jesus Saves and Andrew C Ferguson’s Nae Cunt Said Anything in my theoretical piece for my MA, purely because of their depiction of the game from the pitch. Ferguson’s story is a personal favourite. It’s about hard faced giant sized faeries and wishfully gifted players wasted with drink, how could it not be?

I really like the novels, Boyracers and The Incredible Adam Spark, (http://www.alanbissett.com) so I was fair pleased when Alan Bissett’s picture of the mentality of the great green ’n blue divide, A Minute’s Silence lived up to expectation. It concisely captures the best/worst of the Central Scotland (my home) mindset while beautifically underlining what it is that brings football people together and makes us love it so…

“That connection in a pass, reaching somebody across empty green space…”(pg133)

“…fitbas a mystery eh. Its aw in the glances, the breathin, the beatin ae yer heart; that’s whaur it lives. Somethin tae dae wi bein alive. Mortal. Its no scarfs and fuckin badges thats for sure.”(pg134)

Obviously being about the Old Firm, it’s about what divides us as well – the simultaneously compelling and repulsive.

Editor Adrian Searle has done such a good job of stitching it all together, it looks like a Sunday morning size 5 Mitre ready for a kickabout in the park. Well rounded, well played and well, just about the best collection of football fiction I’ve managed to get my hands on so far.

Playing Football Fiction

2008-03-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for a publisher.
Seriously, I am. My masters is finished. I wrote a book for it. A novel about football. Well actually it's about 3f's. Football, fightin' and the things people do to each other when they love each other very much (and sometimes when they don't). It's about a lot more than that obviously, but it keeps things simple if anybody ever asks me.

It was shortlisted for the 2007 Queensland Premier's Literary Award Emerging Author category. Let me tell you, it's easier writing that down than it is telling people. Some astute judges really liked it and some very smart MA examiners did as well, so it's definitely got something going for it.

It's about a Scottish lad struggling in Australia - a subject close to my heart. It's about cultural bridges, or the lack of them, and how easy it is for immigrants to become entrenched in their own culture when they're living somewhere else.

For Scots in Australia, so far away from home, the view of the auld country can take on a purple heathered state of mind. The back-at-home ideology never leaves any of us, but in the hearts and houses of a stubborn few, it can become exaggerated. Scotland starts to look like it does on the top of a shortbread tin. A wee scottie dog wearing a tartan jacket at the feet of a piper wearing a serious pair of puffy cheeks in front of a castle, one of the famous ones, by the water on a warm summer's evening.

All that's missing is the malt.

Hey, I get like that sometimes myself. I hanker for a good fish supper, the patter and the pub. I'm in the process of buying a kilt as I write this. So I'm not saying I've moved on, but I've settled in. I don't think I'll ever stop wondering what it was that made it so hard though. I like the sun and the warmth and the beach and being able to take the bairns to the park without a raincoat or their wellies or lighting a fire when we get in. But like the one on the tin, I feel like there's something missing from the picture.

Hey, the book's not autobiographical by any means, all I'm saying is, I'm intimately familiar with the territory.

Some Tartan Hyde, was the original title, but it'll be The Simplest Game from here.

Like I say, I'm up for it. I'm actively looking for the pass into space, a publisher willing to pursue a unique perspective on football fiction and put it into print... so if ye know any body that might be interested...

Here's one for the kids

2008-03-02T19:09:00.000-08:00

See, the great thing about football is anybody can play it. It is the sport of champions, I mean more and more its becoming the sport of chequebooks but still we love it. Writing about it is a different story obviously, because reading about it can be, well, eh...challenging.

In my last blog I talked about what football fiction isn't. And had intended to discuss what it is, but I've very recently come across an example. An example which could be classified as being No' Bad, (which mean really quite good actually).

Football Fiction is a lot of things, it can be limited in scope and imagination and is already limited in availability. Rarer still are well-written examples, which seems kinda weird to me when the beautiful game is so popular.

Most examples of football fiction are kids books. Like Edward Megs Morrison.

Megs is a young talented footballer who arrives in Oz and struggles to settle until football and a friendly Hungarian help him find his way. Mark Schwarzer, the Aussie keeper, has attached his name to it and spent the entire northern hemsiphere summer punting it to anyone who would listen.

It's a good book for kids. There's a solid story, a likeable lead character, some football history and even some rare moments of football. There's a sequel on the way and like Mark says, anything that gets his son to read can only be a good thing.

It is sharper and more up to date, like on its toes, than the Johnny Warren versions of the boys own football book, but it amounts to the same thing at the end of the day. Still, it's there though innit? And that's the important thing. Have a look for yourself, the site is great. http://www.megsmorrison.com/

boys books?

2008-02-26T15:51:00.000-08:00

There is a lack of football fiction. There’s just not enough of it. And worse still not enough of it is good. I’ve been told by someone who knows books that boys, and those who foolishly believe they've arrived in a place called adulthood, prefer reading autobiographies. Ye know real stories. Stories based on fact. Like the two things are somehow inseparable.

If you were reading my autobiography you could bet your bahooki that there would be a few wee embellishments. Generally I think, while some measures of market analysis may reflect the male tendency towards reading other people’s life stories, I think it’s a load of pish.

Men probably do read autobiographies, but so do women, don’t they? If biography is the male choice, who’s reading James Paterson (titled in numerical order…Seriously). Who’s still reading Tom Clancy and Clive I-like-to-include-myself-in-my-stories Cussler novels? And who, tell me who, is reading Mathew Reilly’s ssheeick budoom Scarecrow stuff. What about John Birmingham’s hilarious Weapons series?

These are all works of fiction for boys. Girls may like them but they are for boys. Int they? And if they are for boys, then it follows that boys must read something other than autobiographies. Right?

To be honest I think people read. There are readers and there are non-readers. It doesn’t have anything to do with gender. Sure girls read girls books and boys read boys books, but having inappropriate genitalia for a genre isn’t going to stop someone from picking up a book, is it?

Autobiographies and biographies can be amazing, and that’s because people are amazing. Read The Long Walk to Freedom, Bill Clinton’s book, Biko and Malcolm X if you don’t believe me. They aren’t always good, but some of it can still be useful. I learned for example that Kenny Dalglish’s autobiography is just heavy enough to hold my office door open on its own. That’s where it will stay. I’d rather have someone else’s shite rubbed on my face than face reading it again.

In my research to date I have found within the confines of what would be considered football writing only a very small part of it is what would be pigeon holed as football fiction.

If you went to amazon.com and searched for books under football fiction there would be thousands of them. Most would be about that crazy gridiron game, Americans have misguidedly called football. There would be loads of instructional how tos for the dummies. Then there would be a plethora of autobiographies of football players, managers and commentators – people not necessarily known for their literary abilities. Have you ever heard Charlie Nicholas talk? Then in between the cracks there would be a handful of football fiction books and in amongst that handful there would be a couple of wee golden sweeties.

I’ve been asked to explain what football fiction is. It’s a question that requires consideration and context. I’m no lunging into any tackles just yet.

...millions of 'em and mostly bad...

2008-02-11T03:49:00.000-08:00

There are lots of books about football. Like millions. Not all of them good. In fact very few of them are good. Seriously how can they be when people like Wayne Rooney have already published an autobiography. It’s in pretty colours and there are plenty of pictures, (thankfully not too many of him), he even got a chance to learn his abc’s, but he’ll never have McIllvanney concerned though will he?

It hasn’t even got the same notoriety of Cascarino’s or that equally shy and retiring wee man, Merson. Merson's, of course, reads more like Blow than a football autobiography, it’s still not something I’d count as a good football book.

Maybe you do. And each to their own. My old man used to say that opinions are like arseholes. Everybody’s got one. Some are just bigger than others. Still that’s why we’ve got blogs innit? Save talking the ears of people in the boozer.

I’m interested in reading good football fiction. I don’t care what kind of story it’s hung out on, or badly cemented into, so long as it’s good.

The Damned United by David Peace for example is a feckin’ belter. Des Dillon’s Return of the Busby Babes isn’t. Nothing more to say on that one.

Peace’s book, on the other hand, is undoubtedly the best book about football there’s been in a long time. Read it in one sitting. Couldn’t put it down. I’ll do a full review in a future entry - I’d like to feature quality football novels as a regular thing, my only concern being that there won’t be enough of them to make it last.

I’ll be concentrating on fiction, but I don’t mind the odd non-fiction number. In Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano is a blissful run through some classic football moments, Jeff Connor’s Pointless follows East Stirling, the worst team in Scotland, at through another dismal season. It would be magical, if it wasn’t so heartbreaking. And Joe McGinnis’ book The Miracle of Castel Del Sangro is a pasta-fuelled Italian job, played in hail, rain and shine under the shadow of the mob. A good read considering Joe’s relatively late introduction to the game.

If you’re interested or you’ve read something you thought was worth picking up, I’m looking for recommendations. by returning the favour, I hope to help you cut to the chase too.