Detached from the world…still chasing the ball

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.

The Hand of God and the 2008 Euros.

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?

the pish part of a PhD?

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…