Saturday, 3pm: 50 Eternal Delights of Modern Football

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.

Saturday, 3pm is Daniel Gray's third football book, and fifth book overall. His first, Homage to Caledonia was turned into a television miniseries when Gray was just 27, and he continues to present history on Scottish TV. His previous book, Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters: Travels through England's Football Provinces, won widespread acclaim across the football and literary press. He writes a travel column for The Leither magazine, and his work has appeared across various newspapers and on BBC radio.

Each is a precision-tooled delight... even apparently obvious subjects are described with such lyricism that the everyday is routinely transformed into the sublime... here is a book that contains nothing but pure, unadulterated joy * When Saturday Comes magazine * Delightfully written...countless little gems of recognition and satisfaction, many of them very funny... a lovely little thing * The Daily Telegraph * Lovingly crafted prose-poetry...a wonderful antidote to the money-sodden excesses of the modern game * Late Tackle magazine * I love this book, I had enormous fun reading it...a great book * Matt Williams, Simon Mayo Drivetime show, BBC Radio 2 * Really nicely written. A brilliant book. Romantic, very recognisable things. * James Brown, TalkSport * The author has compiled some wonderful things about our national game...I love this book. Wonderful. A delightful book. * BBC Manchester * A loveletter to nice things about football...fifty perfect little essays. A beautiful book. * BBC Tees * A wonderful book. * Off the Ball, BBC Scotland * I commend this book. Two pages are worth ten cliche-ridden football books. It evokes the nodal points of football memory. * Archie McPherson, BBC Scotland * Full of eternal delight. I loved it to pieces. Hymns that evoke the essence of the game. A fantastic book. * The Anfield Wrap * If you've ever wondered why people love football, the answers lie within...a damn good read. * Val McDermid * A warm, smiling celebration of football's quirks, and of ours. Never mind how good a writer Daniel Gray is: what an eye he's got. You'll never watch a game again without liking some daft little moment and wishing you could share it with him. * Michael Grant, The Times * A sonnet to football, whimsical and deeply rewarding. * Stuart Roy Clarke, Homes of Football * A real midget gem of a book that fits perfectly into a jacket pocket for reading on the way to the match, or indeed during it if you're an England fan. * Harry Pearson, author The Far Corner * Gray beautifully articulates the pleasure offered by such pursuits as jeering passes that go out of play, listening to the results in the car, and spying a ground from the train window...his prose is exquisite...a physically slim but spiritually hefty treat. * Pitch & Page Books of the Year 2016 *