The Silence of the Stands: Finding the Joy in Football's Lost Season

The Silence of the Stands: Finding the Joy in Football's Lost Season PDF Author: Daniel Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1399404059
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023 - FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Powerful and poignant' Henry Winter 'Empathetic and poignant ... the game's answer to A Journal of the Plague Year' Harry Pearson 'The Durham City midfielder wore the resigned look of a man trying to find a jar of harissa in Farmfoods. Up front for Jarrow, a centre-forward darted around frenetically, as if chasing a kite during a hurricane...' When football disappeared in March 2020, writer and broadcaster Daniel Gray used its absence to reflect on everything the game meant to him. That bred a pledge: whenever and wherever fans were allowed to return, he would be there. The Silence of the Stands is the result of that pledge: a joyous travelogue documenting a precarious season, in which behind-closed-doors matches and travel restrictions combined to make trips to Kendal and Workington seem impossibly exotic. Offering a poignant peek at a surreal age and a slab of social history from the two-metre-distanced tea bar queue, this is the moving, heartfelt and surprisingly uplifting story of a unique season that no one wishes to repeat.

The Silence of the Stands: Finding the Joy in Football's Lost Season

The Silence of the Stands: Finding the Joy in Football's Lost Season PDF Author: Daniel Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1399404059
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Get Book Here

Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023 - FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Powerful and poignant' Henry Winter 'Empathetic and poignant ... the game's answer to A Journal of the Plague Year' Harry Pearson 'The Durham City midfielder wore the resigned look of a man trying to find a jar of harissa in Farmfoods. Up front for Jarrow, a centre-forward darted around frenetically, as if chasing a kite during a hurricane...' When football disappeared in March 2020, writer and broadcaster Daniel Gray used its absence to reflect on everything the game meant to him. That bred a pledge: whenever and wherever fans were allowed to return, he would be there. The Silence of the Stands is the result of that pledge: a joyous travelogue documenting a precarious season, in which behind-closed-doors matches and travel restrictions combined to make trips to Kendal and Workington seem impossibly exotic. Offering a poignant peek at a surreal age and a slab of social history from the two-metre-distanced tea bar queue, this is the moving, heartfelt and surprisingly uplifting story of a unique season that no one wishes to repeat.

Saturday, 3pm

Saturday, 3pm PDF Author: Daniel Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472925122
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Overpaid players. Sunday lunchtime kick-offs. Absurd ticket prices. Non-black boots. Football's menu of ills is long. Where has the joy gone? Why do we bother? Saturday, 3pm offers a glorious antidote. It is here to remind you that football can still sing to your heart. Warm, heartfelt and witty, here are fifty short essays of prose poetry dedicated to what is good in the game. These are not wallowing nostalgia; they are things that remain sweet and right: seeing a ground from the train, brackets on vidiprinters, ball hitting bar, Jimmy Armfield's voice, listening to the results in a traffic jam, football towns and autograph-hunters. This is fan culture at its finest, words to transport you somewhere else and identify with, words to hide away in a pub and luxuriate in. Saturday, 3pm is a book of love letters to football and a clarion call, helping us find the romance in the game all over again.

Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters

Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters PDF Author: Daniel Gray
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408834375
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Daniel Gray is about to turn thirty. Like any sane person, his response is to travel to Luton, Crewe and Hinckley. After a decade's exile in Scotland, he sets out to reacquaint himself with England via what he considers its greatest asset: football. Watching teams from the Championship (or Division Two as any right-minded person calls it) to the South West Peninsula Premier, and aimlessly walking around towns from Carlisle to Newquay, Gray paints a curious landscape forgotten by many. He discovers how the provinces made the England we know, from Teesside's role in the Empire to Luton's in our mongrel DNA. Moments in the histories of his teams come together to form football's narrative, starting with Sheffield pioneers and ending with fan ownership at Chester, and Gray shows how the modern game unifies an England in flux and dominates the places in which it is played. Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters is a wry and affectionate ramble through the wonderful towns and teams that make the country and capture its very essence. It is part-football book, part-travelogue and part-love letter to the bits of England that often get forgotten, celebrated here in all their blessed eccentricity.

This is Scotland

This is Scotland PDF Author: Daniel Gray
Publisher: Luath Press Ltd
ISBN: 1910324353
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
A Scotsman and an Englishman, a camera and a notebook... McCredie's lens and Gray's words search out everyday Scotland - a Scotland of flaking pub signs and sneaky fags outside the bingo, Italian cafes and proper fitba grounds. A nation of beautiful, haggard normality.

Extra Time

Extra Time PDF Author: Daniel Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472980387
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
FEATURED IN THE SCOTSMAN'S SPORT BOOKS OF 2020 A collection of lyrical sweet-nothings whispered to late goals, local radio commentators, referees falling over and 47 other reminders of why we love football. Despite its flaws and excesses, modern football is still sprinkled with simple yet beguiling delights. In his previous book Saturday, 3pm, Daniel Gray captured many of them. Now he is back with a further 50 short essays of prose poetry dedicated to the game's charming, technicolour minutiae. From club lottos to undeserved wins, and from pitch-invading animals to the roar after a minute's silence, Extra Time is another romantic celebration of football fandom and its shared joys, habits, eccentricities and peculiarities. It is a salute to keepers going forward for corners, match balls landing on stand roofs and goals scored in quick succession. These chapters offer a gleeful antidote to disillusionment with modern football, VAR and all. They are reminders of why we care and justifications for our devotion. Each warmly evokes this sport's blessed capacity to offer escape and diversion. Let us share the delight once more.

The Football Girl

The Football Girl PDF Author: Thatcher Heldring
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0375987142
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
For every athlete or sports fanatic who knows she's just as good as the guys. This is for fans of The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, Grace, Gold, and Glory by Gabrielle Douglass and Breakaway: Beyond the Goal by Alex Morgan. The summer before Caleb and Tessa enter high school, friendship has blossomed into a relationship . . . and their playful sports days are coming to an end. Caleb is getting ready to try out for the football team, and Tessa is training for cross-country. But all their structured plans derail in the final flag game when they lose. Tessa doesn’t want to end her career as a loser. She really enjoys playing, and if she’s being honest, she likes it even more than running cross-country. So what if she decided to play football instead? What would happen between her and Caleb? Or between her two best friends, who are counting on her to try out for cross-country with them? And will her parents be upset that she’s decided to take her hobby to the next level? This summer Caleb and Tessa figure out just what it means to be a boyfriend, girlfriend, teammate, best friend, and someone worth cheering for. “A great next choice for readers who have enjoyed Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen and Miranda Kenneally’s Catching Jordan.”—SLJ “Fast-paced football action, realistic family drama, and sweet romance…[will have] readers looking for girl-powered sports stories…find[ing] plenty to like.”—Booklist “Tessa's ferocious competitiveness is appealing.”—Kirkus Reviews “[The Football Girl] serve[s] to illuminate the appropriately complicated emotions both of a young romance and of pursuing a dream. Heldring writes with insight and restraint.”—The Horn Book

Homage to Caledonia

Homage to Caledonia PDF Author: Daniel Gray
Publisher: Luath Press Ltd
ISBN: 1909912123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The Spanish civil war was a call to arms for 2,300 British volunteers, of which over 500 were from Scotland. The first book of its kind, 'Homage to Caledonia' examines Scotland's role in the conflict, detailing exactly why Scottish involvement was so profound. The book moves chronologically through events and places, firstly surveying the landscape in contemporary Scotland before describing volunteers' journeys to Spain, and then tracing their every involvement from arrival to homecoming (or not). There is also an account of the non-combative role, from fundraising for Spain and medical aid, to political manoeuvrings within the volatile Scottish left. Using a wealth of previously-unpublished letters sent back from the front as well as other archival items, Daniel Gray is able to tell little known stories of courage in conflict, and to call into question accepted versions of events such as the 'murder' of Bob Smillie, or the heroism of 'The Scots Scarlet Pimpernel'. Homage to Caledonia offers a very human take on events in Spain: for every tale of abject distress in a time of war, there is a tale of a Scottish volunteer urinating in his general's boots, knocking back a dram with Errol Flynn or appalling Spanish comrades with his pipe playing. For the first time, read the fascinating story of Caledonia's role in this seminal conflict. REVIEWS: As seen on STV Documentary 'The Scots Who Fought Franco'. 'Daniel Gray has done a marvellous job in bringing together the stories of Scots volunteers - in [this] many-voiced, multi-layered book' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY'...moving and thought-provoking.' THE HERALD' A new and fascinating contribution' SCOTTISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 'Book of the week - Gray deserves applause for shining a light on a lesser-known aspect of the nation's character of which we should all be proud. 'PRESS &p; JOURNAL. BACK COVER: Thirty-five thousand people from across the world volunteered to join the armed resistance in a war on fascism. More people, proportionately, went from Scotland than any other country, and the entire nation was gripped by the conflict. What drove so many ordinary Scots to volunreer in a foreign war? Their stories are powerfully and honestly told, often in their own words: the ordinary men and women who made their way to Spain over the Pyrenees when the UK government banned anyone from going to support either side; the nuses and ambulance personnel who discovered for themselves the horrors of modern warfare; and the people back home who defied their poverty to give generously to the Spanish republican cause. Even in war there are light-hearted moments: a Scottish volunteer drunkenly urinating in his general's boots, enduring the dark comedy of learning to shoot with sticks amidst a scarcity of rifles, or enjoying the surreal experience of raising a dram with Errol Flynn. They went from all over the country: Glasgow, Edinburgh. Aberdeen, Dundee, Fife and the Highlands, and they fought to save Scotland, and the world, from the growing threat of fascism.

Family

Family PDF Author: Michael Calvin
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473553733
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
From the award-winning author of NO HUNGER IN PARADISE Outside the global spotlight, footballers don't drive Aston Martins or pose for underwear ads. This is war. This is life. This is football. Michael Calvin turned up for the first day of pre-season training at Millwall FC. 333 days later, he sat among the subs at Wembley. Over the course of a season, he witnessed the intimate everyday life of a football club far from the glitz and glamour of the Premier League, and the unique characters that come together every day on the field. These are dedicated, hard-working family men, close to their roots, 'playing for the people who hate their jobs, who'd love our lives.' Forget about the over-hyped circus of the Premier League. This is the beautiful game in all its raucous glory: essential reading for anyone whom football is a way of life.

Stramash!

Stramash! PDF Author: Daniel Gray
Publisher: Luath Press Ltd
ISBN: 190991228X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Fatigued by bloated big-game football and bored of a samey big cities, Daniel Gray went in search of small town Scotland and its teams. At the time when the Scottish club game is drifting towards its lowest ebb once more, Stramash singularly falls to wring its hands and address the state of the game, preferring instead to focus on Bobby Mann's waistline. Part travelogue, part history and part mistakenly spilling ketchup on the face of a small child, Stramash takes an uplifting look at the country's nether regions. Using the excuse of a match to visit places from Dumfries to Dingwall, Gray surveys Scotland's towns and teams in their present state. Stramash accomplishes the feats of visiting Dumfries without mentioning Robert Burns, being positive about Cumbernauld and linking Elgin City to Lenin. It is ae fond look at Scotland as you've never seen it before. REVIEWS: 'There have been previous attempts by authors to explore the off-the-beaten paths of the Scottish football landscape, but Daniel Gray's volume is in another league' - THE SCOTSMAN 'Truly splendid' - ARTHUR MONTFORD 'An excellent book about the country's smaller teams - [Stramash] captures the vague romance that still clings to these smaller Scottish clubs. It will make a must-read for every non-Old Firm football fan - and for many Rangers and Celtic supporters too' - DAILY Record' As he takes in a match at each stopping-off point, Gray presents little portraits of small Scottish towns, relating histories of declining industry, radical politics and the connection between a team and its community. It's a brilliant way to rediscover Scotland' - THE HERALD' A great read, because Gray doesn't write about just football, he uses football as an excuse to explore the histories of small towns in Scotland' - THE SKINNY 'Why do the Gers and Hoops have retail outlets in the capital? Why do buses depart for Glasgow on a Saturday morning from every corner of Scotland? Gray's book is a splendid attempt to answer these questions, and more besides - The result is sociology at its best, which is to say eminently readable - Stramash may turn out to be a memoir of the way we were, and an epitaph' - SUNDAY HERALD' I defy anyone to read Stramash and not fall in love with Scottish football's blessed eccentricities all over again - Funny enough to bring on involuntary laugh out loud moments' - THE SCOTTISH FOOTBALL BLOG

Scribbles in the Margins

Scribbles in the Margins PDF Author: Daniel Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408883937
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARDS! We lead increasingly time-poor lifestyles, bombarded 24/7 by petrifying news bulletins, internet trolls and endless noises. Where has the joy and relaxation gone from our daily lives? Scribbles in the Margins offers a glorious antidote to that relentless modern-day information churn. It is here to remind you that books and bookshops can still sing to your heart. Warm, heartfelt and witty, here are fifty short essays of prose poetry dedicated to the simple joy to be found in reading and the rituals around it. These are not wallowing nostalgia; they are things that remain pleasurable and right, that warm our hearts and connect us to books, to reading and to other readers: smells of books, old or new; losing an afternoon organising bookshelves; libraries; watching a child learn to read; reading in bed; impromptu bookmarks; visiting someone's home and inspecting the bookshelves; stains and other reminders of where and when you read a book. An attempt to fondly weigh up what makes a book so much more than paper and ink – and reading so much more than a hobby, a way of passing time or a learning process – these declarations of love demonstrate what books and reading mean to us as individuals, and the cherished part they play in our lives, from the vivid greens and purples of childhood books to the dusty comfort novels we turn to in times of adult flux. Scribbles in the Margins is a love-letter to books and bookshops, rejoicing in the many universal and sometimes odd little ways that reading and the rituals around reading make us happy.