Skip to main content

Crawley at Old Trafford stirs memories of FA Cup magic


FOOTBALL BOOKS

Crawley’s historic date with Manchester United in the FA Cup this weekend will restore a little of the great competition’s faded magic as the Blue Square Premier team attempts to pull off the unthinkable at Old Trafford.
It also brings to mind a couple of books about the FA Cup to entrance those football fans who believe that the world’s oldest knockout competition ought to be celebrated with enthusiasm rather than be left to wither as the Premier League and the Champions League grow ever more gargantuan.
Paul Harrison’s FA Cup Giantkillers, published by The History Press, recalls the finest hours of minnows through history, from the victories of Boston Town and Spennymoor United in the 1920s to the more recent exploits of Tamworth and Burscough.
Football historian Harrison has combined much research with good use of photographs, newspaper cuttings and memorabilia to produce a lavishly illustrated book that takes an affectionate look at the who secured famous victories for non-League sides against Football League clubs.
Some of the stories -- such as that of Tottenham, for example, who were the first non-league side to win the FA Cup -- are well known. Others, such as Chilton Colliery‘s defeat of Rochdale in 1925, are now largely forgotten.

Follow the link to buy FA Cup Giantkillers.

Apart from those days in which the mighty were felled, the magic of the FA Cup was largely encapsulated by the day of the final at Wembley, which would enjoy unrivalled attention in the pre-Premier League era.
For decades the only domestic fixture to be screened live on television, the Cup Final at its peak of popularity was a broadcast event that took up much of the day, with coverage occupying considerably more airtime than the couple of hours it took to decide the outcome.
It is that era towards which journalist Matt Eastley paid homage in From Bovril to Champagne, which focuses in particular on the 1970s, which many regard as the greatest decade in the history of the competition, which began with the first final to be replayed, after Chelsea and Leeds finished 2-2 at Wembley, and ended with Arsenal’s extraordinary 3-2 victory over Manchester United.  The period also included Sunderland’s downing of Leeds in the 1973 final and Southampton’s win over Manchester United in 1976.
Eastley, a regular contributor to the football nostalgia magazine Backpass, interviewed football fans from many parts of the world who had attended finals in the 1970s and invited them to recount their stories.
Setting their memories in context by interweaving the news reports of the day as well as the television programmes and pop songs that were popular, the author attempted to recreate the atmosphere of an era in which the FA Cup Final was a unique and momentous event, when the nation really did stop for a football match.  Many who have read it believe he succeeded in his goal.

Follow the link to buy From Bovril to Champagne: When the FA Cup Really Mattered 

Home


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Leave a comment or submit your own sports book review

Popular posts from this blog

2018 Cross Sports Book of the Year Awards: all the winners are named

Brave Paralympian Martine Wright scoops Autobiography prize Add caption The inspiring story of the GB Paralympic athlete Martine Wright has been named Sports Autobiography of the Year at the 16th Sports Book Awards and will be a strong contender for overall Sports Book of the Year for 2018, which will be decided by a public vote. Written in collaboration with journalist Sue Mott, Unbroken , published by Simon & Schuster, tells the remarkable story of Martine’s incredible fight back from the horrors of the July 7 atrocities in London in 2005, when she was sharing a carriage on a tube train on the Circle Line with a suicide bomber, who detonated his device just outside Aldgate station. Seven passengers around her were killed among 52 who lost their lives that day but she survived, albeit at the cost of both her legs. Martine, who took up wheelchair tennis and sitting volleyball as part of her rehabilitation, represented Great Britain in the latter at the 2012 Paralympics...
19 comments
Read more

Secrets of Mickelson the Master

No instruction manual could teach a golfer to play the extraordinary trees-to-green shot that Phil Mickelson produced at the 13th on the way to winning his third US Masters in Augusta. There is much a player can learn, nonetheless, from the winner of the 2010 green jacket and his phenomenal skills with wedge and putter in Mickelson's Secrets of the Short Game , which can now expect a spike in sales. Mickelson believes that even a golfer of only average ability can become a highly effective short-game player by paying proper attention to mechanics and set-up and combining that scientific approach with a willingness to be imaginative. Published last autumn, the 224-page manual passes on some of the wisdom Mickelson has acquired over 35 years, since his first steps in the game as a small boy. By holding off Britain's Lee Westwood, Mickelson joined the company of Nick Faldo, Sam Snead and Gary Player in having won three Masters titles.  But for the presence of four-times win...
Post a Comment
Read more

No Nonsense: Joey Barton's autobiography on the William Hill Sports Book of the Year longlist after just one day in the shops

Joey Barton Controversial footballer Joey Barton's autobiography No Nonsense has been included on the longlist for the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year even though it was published only yesterday. Written in collaboration with Michael Calvin, the award-winning author and sports journalist, Barton's book promises to deliver a candid account of a life never far from the headlines on and off the field. Calvin is the third writer to work with the player, who began the project in 2014 with Times journalist Matthew Syed and made one attempt to write it himself, which he did not sustain beyond nine chapters. There is much detail, some of it quite harrowing, about his upbringing in hard-edged working class Liverpool, where many of his associates and even family members were involved in crime at one level or another.  His brother, Michael, and his cousin, Paul Taylor, are serving jail sentences for the murder of an innocent black teenager. The book has no short...
18 comments
Read more