Skip to main content

Steven Gerrard autobiography puts Donald McRae in line for another award

Donald McRae, twice winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize, is an early favourite to be among the winners at the 2016 Cross Sports Book Awards.

 The South African-born writer, whose interviews in The Guardian newspaper are always worth reading, collaborated with former Liverpool and England captain Steven Gerrard on his autobiography, My Story.

The book is notable for some frank opinions on colleagues and opponents, referees and managers, but also for Gerrard's ability to look inside himself and describe how he was affected by the ups and downs of his career.

After completing the book, published after the player said his farewells to Liverpool before moving to conclude his career in America, McRae commented: "Gerrard leads us through every exhilarating high and bruising low of his 27 years at Liverpool. It is a career full of contrast and drama.

“There is depth and pathos, too, because Steven Gerrard is a one-club man who joined the Liverpool academy at the age of eight. While English football has turned itself inside out, undergoing enormous upheaval, often fuelled by greed and selfishness, Gerrard has stayed constant.

“Many of the goals are incredible while the biggest games are riveting. His very public long goodbye is often painful, always moving. But the grittier, far more private details are the most powerful."

My Story has been installed 5-2 favourite with bookmakers Bet365 to take the prize in the autobiography section after the release of a longlist in this category.

Second favourite at 3-1 is Winner: My Racing Life, the autobiography of just-retired 20-times champion jockey, AP McCoy, written with the help of best-selling writer and broadcaster, Charlie Connelly.

Last in the Tin Bath, the autobiography of former cricketer, umpire and England coach David 'Bumble' Lloyd, which was ghosted by sports journalist Richard Gibson, is third favourite at 7-2.

Also among the contenders are Sunderland manager Sam Allardyce's Big Sam, former Formula One world champion Nigel Mansell's Staying on Track and another life story from the world of motor racing, Formula One and Beyond, by controversial administrator Max Mosley, the former president of the sport's governing body, the FIA.

The list will be reduced to a shortlist of six titles in the spring and the winner announced on 1 June, along with the other winners in 12 categories, including football, rugby, cricket and cycling books of the year.

The full longlist for Autobiography of the Year 2016:

My Story, by Steven Gerrard (Penguin)
Staying on Track: The Autobiography,  by Nigel Mansell (Simon & Schuster)
Last in the Tin Bath: The Autobiography, by David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd (Simon & Schuster)
Where Am I?: My Autobiography, by Phil Tufnell (Headline)
Bomb: My Autobiography, by Adam Jones (Headline)
Big Sam: My Autobiography, by Sam Allardyce (Headline)
Formula One and Beyond: The Autobiography, by Max Mosley (Simon & Schuster)
Second Innings: My Sporting Life, by Andrew Flintoff (Hodder & Stoughton)
Carry Me Home: My Autobiography, by Ben Cohen (Ebury)
Interesting: My Autobiography, by Steve Davis (Ebury)
Winner: My Racing Life, by A.P. McCoy (Orion)
The World of Cycling According to G, by Geraint Thomas (Quercus)

All these titles are also available from Waterstones and WHSmith

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