Forever Young: The Story of Adrian Doherty - Football's Lost Genius.
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| Oliver Kay is chief football correspondent at The Times |
Kay, the newspaper’s Chief Football Correspondent, was named
as the overall winner after sports book fans were asked to vote for their
favourite among the nine category winners selected by the judges and announced
at a ceremony at Lord’s Cricket Ground last month.
Forever Young, which charts the tragically short life of
former Manchester United player Doherty, was written with the co-operation of
Doherty’s family in Belfast and Kay thanked them in a tweet on learning the
news, declaring himself to be “amazed and delighted”.
Read The Sports Bookshelf's review of Forever Young
Read The Sports Bookshelf's review of Forever Young
Doherty, a maverick character among United’s golden
generation of Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul Scholes and the Neville brothers, was rated by
his peers as the best of them all, a player with natural ball skills and lightning
pace.
Sadly, his career was cut short before it had really begun
by a knee injury but the path he followed after football was not typical and
assumptions made about the circumstances of his death proved to be wide of the
mark.
Forever Young, which was Football Book of the Year with the
judges, polled highest with the public among a strong field that included controversial
footballer Joey Barton, whose No Nonsense won the Autobiography of the Year category.
No Nonsense was written in collaboration with Michael
Calvin, the distinguished sports writer who was ghostwriter when rugby player Gareth
Thomas won the overall prize in 2015 with Proud, and who won in his own right
the year before with The Nowhere Men, his widely acclaimed insight into the
life of football’s largely anonymous army of talent scouts.
The other category winners included Find a Way by Diana Nyad,
which was judged International Autobiography of the Year, telling the story of
how she became the first person to swim the shark-infested waters between Cuba
and Florida with no cage for protection.
British and Irish Lions second row forward Paul O'Connell’s
The Battle won the Rugby Book of the Year award, whilst Tour de France cycling
legend Chris Boardman secured the Cycling Book of the year with Triumphs and
Turbulence: My Autobiography.
Broadcaster and former cricketer Mark Nicholas won The
Cricket Book of the Year for his memoir called A Beautiful Game. And The Sun
Shines Now, by Adrian Tempany, which deconstructs the dramatic changes that
have taken place in English football in the 25 years since the Hillsborough
disaster, was awarded New Writer of the Year.
The Lane by Adam Powley, Martin Cloake and former Tottenham
Hotspur captain Steve Perryman, was named Illustrated Book of the Year.
Biography of the Year was Robert Wainwright’s story of The
Maverick Mountaineer, the eccentric climber George Finch.
A special award for Outstanding Contribution to Sports
Writing was presented on the awards night to arguably the most outstanding
writer of our generation, Hugh McIlvanney.
The complete list of category winners:
Cross Autobiography of the Year - No Nonsense: The Autobiography
by Joey Barton (Simon & Schuster)
The Times Biography of the Year - The Maverick Mountaineerby Robert Wainwright (Atlantic Books)
The Professional Cricketers’ Association Cricket Book of the
Year - A Beautiful Game by Mark Nicholas (Allen & Unwin)
Maserati Cycling Book of the Year - Triumphs and Turbulence:My Autobiography by Chris Boardman (Ebury Press)
Specsavers Football Book of the Year - Forever Young by
Oliver Kay (Quercus)
Thomson Reuters Illustrated Book of the Year - The Lane by Adam Powley, Steve Perryman
& Martin Cloake (Vision Sports Publishing)
Artbuthnot Latham Rugby Book of the Year - The Battle by Paul O’Connell (Penguin
Ireland)
Freshtime New Writer of the Year - And The Sun Shines Now by
Adrian Tempany (Faber & Faber)
Best International Autobiography Award - Find A Way by Diana
Nyad (Penguin Randomhouse).
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