Sports Books Blog

John, please leave my sport alone!

Randall — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:14:25 +0000

I hadn’t got John Inverdale down as a satirist. He seems the sort of bloke you’d like to have a drink with; the sort who knows his sport and doesn’t mind telling you; the sort who impresses you with his knowledge until, that is, he strays into an area you know quite a bit about.There’s a lot of people like this in the media. I read them all the time. There can be no doubt that when I was a sports reporter, I was one myself.

John strayed into one of my areas this week – athletics. It’s always been my favourite sport. And I’m afraid John showed that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

He’s just taken over as presenter of the BBC’s abysmal coverage of athletics and, quite rightly, he’s very enthusiastic about it.

They always say in journalism, particularly broadcasting, that you should never ask a question to which you don’t know the answer. But John was prepared to do that at the European championships in Barcelona and some of the questions were quite interesting. Interesting, that is, if you knew nothing about the sport and had switched on hoping to watch Flog It!

But you can’t blame him for that. He’ll get out of it in time to take up his new career as a satirist. For his piece on the Sports Journalists Association website http://www.sportsjournalists.co.uk/blog/?p=2663 can only follow in the long tradition of That Was The Week That Was and Spitting Image. Not up there with those late, great TV shows, but striving to be in the same vein.

Having come late to athletics, although he says he has watched it for 40 years, John is full of reforming zeal. The sport hasn’t changed in those years he claims, unlike every other sport.

Ignoring the fact that football, rugby and cricket have changed about as much as athletics in the last 40 years, and not always for the good, he suggests we look at motor racing, that paragon of earnest and fair competition, and rugby.

We can listen to the referee in rugby these days, says John, so why shouldn’t we listen to a coach talking to his athlete?

The fundamental reason is that a coach communicating with an athlete is actually against the rules. It could fall under the “outside assistance” rule, and while no referee appears to have enforced the rule since Dorando Pietri was disqualified for being given a hand across the line at the first London Olympics, wiring a coach for sound by a broadcaster as Inverdale wants might, just might, draw extra attention to it.

The other obvious reason is that no athletics coach talking to their athlete would want their tactics and instructions being relayed to the opposition.

Then John’s satire gets a little too surreal for me. Let’s have runners in the steeplechase wearing cameras in headbands. My mind started to boggle here.

And let’s have them talk to the media (ie John and his matey BBC chums) just before they go off to run, jump or throw. Not before the Olympics, of course, but surely they could do it before Diamond League meetings?

John comes to athletics from rugby. Maybe he should have worn a little camera and a tiny microphone so we could see and hear what happened when he suggested to England rugby coach Martin Johnson that his players should wear cameras and make themselves available to the BBC before the “less important” autumn internationals. Or maybe that conversation has yet to take place?

And let’s hope that John takes over from Gary Lineker and wears his microphone and camera when he asks Sir Alex Ferguson if his players will have a little chat as they go out for an “unimportant” Carling Cup match. And let’s mike up Wayne Rooney and hear what he says to referees. I’m sure Sir Alex would allow that.

Or maybe not. John says that because Frankie Dettori is happy to do an interview a minute before a big race, the same should apply to an athlete. But in this case the athlete is the horse and I doubt anyone would get an interview with Harbinger before a big race even if he could talk. The jockey is like the coach and athletics coaches will talk until the cows come home at any time of the day or night.

I suggest that before John ‘reforms’ my sport and turns it into a TV game show, he should reform his own little area. First sort out the BBC’s coverage, John.

From the gabbling commentators who won’t let the pictures speak for themselves to the experts in the studio who tell us the bleedin’ obvious.

Michael Johnson is always excepted from that criticism, and, surprisingly in Barcelona, so is Colin Jackson. His answer to John’s question asking how athletes breathe when hurdling was a classic. I know now that Andy Turner is not a noisy hurdler. I did know how athletes breathe, though.

John was one of those who kept up the pretence that Jonathan Edwards really does like Philips Idowu. He said something like he was sure Edwards wanted to commentate on Idowu’s medal ceremony.

Why didn’t he tell us a little of the history between the two? How, after Idowu finished with “only” the silver medal at the Beijing Olympics, Edwards – still proud of his triple jump world record set 15 years ago – told BBC viewers: “He got under my skin… showed no respect. I’ve had plenty of texts saying ‘pride comes before a fall’.”

And then we come to the interviews. John wants athletes to be interviewed a minute or so before entering the arena. Please, please, don’t let the interviewing be done by Phil Jones.

I’m sure he’s a very nice man and when he started out doing the job, he was a breath of journalistic fresh air. But there are only so many things you can ask athletes when they are still panting from exertion, and Phil doesn’t even bother ask most of those things.

I often have a go at the BBC’s athletics coverage in this blog but coverage of the sport as a whole, across the media, is suffering these days. When I started writing about athletics in the mid-1960s, each quality paper had a heavyweight correspondent who knew his stuff (they were always men).

Now it’s as if the sports editor has shouted to the subs’ desk: “Anyone want to cover the athletics?”

With the notable exception of the Independent’s Simon Turnbull, who has been covering the sport for 25 years, the broadsheet reporters seem to be expected to learn about a complex and multi-faceted sport while on the job. Thus you have Anna Kessell in the Guardian reporting that Bingham and Rooney won their 400m medals from the outside lanes. Bingham was in lane eight, the outside lane, Rooney was in lane one, the inside lane. If you can’t get that right, how can you expect readers to trust the rest of your knowledge?

Whenever I have read athletics in the Times or Telegraph recently I have been deeply unimpressed by the lack of insight and knowledge.

Mind you, the venerable athletics correspondents of my early years covering the sport sometimes employed dubious methods to relay their knowledge to their readers. I remember the distinguished Times correspondent in 1969 (Neil Allen, since you ask) enquiring of Britain’s top hammer thrower Howard Payne what he needed to do to improve.

Howard, who was based in Birmingham and thus one of the athletes I needed to be close to as I worked for the Birmingham Post, replied to the effect that he needed to sit a little more on delivery and extend his arms. I quoted him the next day.

Then I picked up the authoritative Times and read: “When Payne learns to sit a little more on delivery and extend his arms, he will throw further.”

What’s all the fuss about Spain?

Randall — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:46:23 +0000

I wasn’t going to blog about the World Cup: England’s dire displays have been ruminated over at length and everyone seems to think Spain deserved to win. Which they did.

But here goes. It seems I am in a minority of one in not being entirely smitten by Spain’s style of football (which also applies to that of Arsenal and Barcelona.) When they play at high speed and get their angles right they are breathtaking to watch. But when they play tippy/tappy around the edges of a team intent on stopping them it gets very, very boring.

They were immeasurably better than England, but Spain still followed the mainly defensive trend that marked out the 2010 tournament as one of the less attractive of the 19 staged since 1930.

They played with two mainly defensive midfielders, as did Brazil, Holland et all… in fact everyone except England and Argentina it seemed.

Alonso and Busquets may be more accomplished than Van Bommel or De Jong, or Gilberto Silva and Melo but they still sat back close to their defenders and left the attacking to a bunch of midgets. Spain looked better when Fabregas took over from Alonso and when they had genuine width in Jesus Navas (another name to delight small boys) rather than Ramos, who admirable though he was, still looked like a right back trying to be a right winger.

Add to that the fact that Villa is a support striker rather than a centre-forward and you can tell why Spain scored only eight times in seven matches – and Villa got five of those. For a team which boasts that it has such a wonderful midfield they really don’t score enough to join the great World Cup winners.

It might have been different, of course, had Torres been fully fit but they didn’t replace him like for like. They used the hyperactive, wind-up toe that is Pedro instead and he committed one of the great acts of selfishness in the semi-final when he should have passed to Torres but preferred instead to try and beat the last man only to lose the ball.

I liked the look of Llorente when they used him against Portugal in the last 16. Even the most attractive team needs a hard edge and he gave that to Spain.

Although Spain beat Germany 1-0 (again!) in the semi-final I preferred the way Germany played, and in Thomas Müller they had, in my opinion, the player of the tournament. The powers that be chose Forlan of Uruguay who did have a great tournament but Müller looks a potential superstar.

He’s also a very perceptive 20-year-old. He was the one who remarked that England had too many ‘alpha-males’ in their team. Yet, badly, as they played, England might have rescued the 4-1 defeat by Germany in the last 16 had the referee not made the appalling blunder which saw Lampard’s goal not stand. That would have made it 2-2 and England might not then have naively chased the game and left such huge gaps.

Although Fabio Capello seems to have recovered some of his standing I think England’s failings must be laid at his door. He’d never managed a team at a tournament before so whose advice did he seek? Did he go to the successful Italian coaches his own generation? Did he talk to people like Bobby and Jack Charlton about how the England players responded at the 1966 finals?

Why did he persist in playing Lampard and Gerrard in the same team when history shows that they are too similar, wanting to play in the same areas? Capello’s answer was to station Gerrard on the left but he didn’t stay there and the result as a misshapen mess. It seems to me that successive England managers have been trapped by their own egos.. the ‘I’m the only man who can sort this out’ syndrome.

Yet Capello, of all people, ought to know that when Italy had a similar problem at the 1970 World Cup when they had two great play-managers in Sandro Mazzola and Gianni Rivera they didn’t try to shoe-horn both into the team. They played one or the other, and that’s what ought to have happened (and happen in the future) with Gerrard and Lampard. I prefer Gerrard because he’s more athletic but I’d go with Lampard as long as it was one or the other.

That way, if Capello insists on playing 4-4-2, you can have genuine width on both sides of the pitch. I’d have pushed Rooney up front, supported by Gerrard with Barry and Carrick (from the 2010 squad) in central midfield and Lennon and Milner on the flanks.

But I’d have taken Rodwell from Everton for the midfield. He’s not 20 until next March but whenever I’ve seen him play he’s looked like the man and the others have looked like the boys. He can play in the centre of defence as well and goodness knows we needed someone there.

Whoever convinced Capello that Upson is an international central defender (presumably the same person who persuaded him that Terry is) needs to lie down in a quiet room. It would have made more sense to have chosen Dawson of Spurs.

The debate will go on and on but as long as the Premier League holds all the cards (and they do) the England team will suffer. Only when the money runs out and clubs are forced to groom their own English talent will things look up. Shouldn’t be long then!

The LBF and the IPL

Randall — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:38:31 +0000

Just returned from the London Book Fair which was a very strange experience. The volcanic ash cloud from Iceland kept most foreign exhibitors away and meant that most people suffered like I did from appointments being cancelled. Lack of foreigners is not entirely a bad thing, of course. People from the far east seem enamoured with those wheelie suitcases which can cause extreme ankle pain if they do not look where they are going. Also there was a dearth of people wandering along extremely slowly or standing in the aisles blocking the way.

But not having appointments because people can’t travel from France or Spain or Italy is very odd. I expected to forfeit meetings with people from India or Australia but not France… that’s next door. Gerald Wratten, our South African distributor, was at the fair but that’s because he came over in the middle of the previous week to help his wife carry her shopping.

Weird not to have people from India to talk to about the IPL phenomenon. I’ve been watching some of it on ITV4 and expected to dislike it entirely. Cricket, I reckon, should be played in whites, and by whites I mean creams, not the horrible bright white stuff the England team has been wearing. I’ve never liked coloured clothing, or pyjamas as someone called them. But that apart the IPL is very exciting. It’s a bit like baseball except the ball is easier to hit and, boy, does it get hit.

I feel sorry for the bowlers but some of the hitting is sensational, as is some of the fielding. One day cricket has improved fielding immeasurably and the IPL seems to have taken it up another couple of notches.

One thing I’ve noticed is that all the dancing girls seem to be caucasian. Is that because Indian girls don’t like to dance (anybody who’s ever watching a Bollywood film will know the answer to that) or is it because the authorities are worried about the public’s reaction to seeing local girls gyrating while wearing any clothes?

Whatever, that is one part of the razzamattaz that could easily be done away with alongside the anodyne interviews by former Australian cricketers.

I reckon, though, that by limiting the number of foreigners to four a team India is just about to produce a generation of new exciting cricketers.

Well done AP!

Randall — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:18:42 +0000

I didn’t back Don’t Push It in the National on Saturday but I could not have been more thrilled when the horse won the race and relegated my choices to third and fourth. The reason is obvious. At last AP McCoy had won the race… at his 15th attempt. It was just like watching Frankie Dettori win the Derby at last on Authorised. Although I backed that one.

McCoy is a great unsung hero of British sport; champion jockey 14 times in a row, collecting countless injuries of the sort that would make Didier Drogba give up. McCoy never goes down, Didier, unless he absolutely has to.

How McCoy didn’t win last year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award is beyond me. He became the first man to ride 3000 winners in what must be the most demanding sport there is. Ryan Giggs won after playing about 11 times for Manchester United in 2009.

McCoy didn’t even make the short list of ten which shows how the BBC really view racing. For all the expert analysis – take a bow Mick Fitzgerald – there is just as much emphasis on fashion, although on Saturday Ginger McCain (“call me ‘Bald McCain’) said there were so many good looking women at Aintree that he was considering making a comeback. ”I don’t know what at though,” he added.

Living in Cheltenham we get a unique look at the men and women who make up the National Hunt fraternity and while there are bound to be some nasty people in the sport I haven’t spotted them.

The jockeys seem to have a greater camaraderie than other sports although someone I know lives next to the Cheltenham course and has described how they come thundering past swearing at each other. Just look at the way trainers like David Pipe and Paul Nicholls rushed to McCoy as he walked Don’t Push It to the winner’s enclosure. And how one of McCoy’s first thoughts was for his rival and friend Ruby Walsh who suffered a broken arm in a fall just before the National.

It’s a hard sport which is why I had to smile last year when last year Richard Williams in the Guardian reckoned that downhill skiing was the hardest sport of all; particularly when his column was positioned next to an interview with Ruby Walsh.

A digital weekend

Randall — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:56:08 +0000

I spent the weekend at the Independent Publishers Guild annual conference (still bugs me that there is no apostrophe in the title) in Windsor at the weekend. I hadn’t been there since I worked there in the early nineties. It’s changed a bit.

The conference was fascinating – mostly about ebooks and the digital world that is about to overwhelm us. I couldn’t agree with the keynote speaker, Bill Thompson, who said newspapers will be dead soon, But other than that his lecture about what is going to happen was very informative, and just as important very funny.

Interestingly I had a meeting the day after the conference ended about turning one of our books into an iphone app. For once I knew what I was talking about.

The Guild’s fourth awards were held on the Saturday evening and while I have an inbuilt dislike of awards where you have to enter yourself (we didn’t enter) they were like the independent publishing sector’s oscars. One winner went on for far too long, even trying to talk when applause exploded to end her speech and some of the awards went to people you least expected.

I have a suggestion though for next year. It’s for the most unimaginative imprint title.

I reckon that would be a dead heat between Green Books, who won the environmental award amid speculation that they were the only environmental publishing company that considered adding to their carbon footprint by entering was worthwhile, and SportsBooks. Still it does what it says on the tin.

I did wonder why the man who collected the award on behalf of Green Books (based in Totnes in Devon, made such a play about printing his books within 150 miles of their offices. There is a very well known printer in Exeter and according to the AA that’s only 28 miles for a coughing crow.

Have you seen anyone reading an e-book?

Randall — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:58:17 +0000

I am not a Luddite, far from it. I have a Blackberry (whatever did I do before?), a shiny new iPod (although after loading my entire CD collection I still have 145GB of memory left), a MacBook pro, two other big Macs, various back up devices, a digital camera, a Humax FreeSat box – the sort of modern paraphernalia that a chap cannot do without. I haven’t got an iPhone yet because I’d rather have something that delivers my emails not that I can use as a light sabre, but I can’t wait to see an iPad.

But I cannot get e-books. Many years ago when I joined the Independent Publishers Guild (no apostrophe, but what can you do?) the chairman came up to me and got very excited about e-books. I said, from a position of total ignorance, that they would never take off. Four years later he told me I was right. Now I’m not so sure.

There was a letter in the Guardian the other day from a pensioner saying that she couldn’t do without her Amazon Kindle, how nifty it was and how she didn’t have to lug around a great parcel of books when she went anywhere. The cynic in me thought it might have been written by Amazon but I imagine the Guardian checked.

I’ve seen what a Sony E-reader looks like – very nice and sleek and desirable – but only in Waterstone’s hanging up ready to be bought and I’ve not seen Amazon’s Kindle and that’s the point.

I’ve never seen anybody reading either, not on a train or a bus or anywhere. Not even on TV.

Yet logic says people must be buying them and downloading e-books.

My only experience with this is signing up for a firm that wanted to sell our books as e-books only to be let down.

Yet in a throwaway society e-books are bound to take a considerable percentage of the market in time, although the fact that there are only two dedicated devices on which to read e-books – the iPad can do many other exciting things as well although the lady in the Guardian thought it was going to be too bulky (it must have been written by someone at Amazon) – tells its own story. I’m sure though that this will change although I think there are certain safeguards that need to be put in place.

First, somehow, the seller of the e-book ought to be separated from the seller of the device that displays them. Fine for Waterstone’s to sell Sony readers but not fine for Amazon to be both seller of Kindles and what goes on them.

I am wary of giving Amazon even more control. In many ways they bully the book trade and with e-books it appears they go one step further. Apparently they can sell you an e-book and then remove it from your Kindle without your permission. I assume that when you buy an e-book from them that you are signing up for this but surely this will be tested in the courts.

The upshot of all this is that SportsBooks will be doing something about the lack of e-book facilities we offer. No, we are not bringing out our own e-reader but watch this space.

Sorry I haven’t blogged lately

Randall — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:56:52 +0000

Forgive me Father for it is a long time since my last blog. In fact this is the first since November so if there are any readers left, my apologies.

My only excuse is that we have been very, very busy at SportsBooks with German Aczel’s book of World Cup caricatures – World Cup 1930–2010. We think it’s a great book and so does the rest of the world it seems. We’ve already sold it to France, Greece, Indonesia and South Korea and we are talking to Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Germany and New Zealand.

So it’s been hectic but very fulfilling.

We knew it was going to be something different when I went to the Frankfurt Bookfair. Usually books on sport don’t travel very well across boundaries. Occasionally you get boxing books from the US or football books from Europe, Calcio and Brilliant Orange and others I’ve obviously forgotten.

But normally at the Frankfurt Bookfair the circle of sports book publishers is small and we try to sell each other our wares. But it was always going to be different last year, especially when a publisher from Uzbekistan expressed interest in A Develyshe Pastime. Then there was the German company interested in Modern Football is Still Rubbish which comes out in March.

And so it proved. We had 50 enquiries about Aczel’s brilliant drawings, all but six of them without appointments.

Once I was at a Chinese seminar (I was not only there for the promised buffet lunch; we are all going to have to learn Mandarin now) and German who was manning the stand along with his sculpture of Pele (see the photo on the News page) phoned me six times, such was the interest.

When I got back to the stand there was a Chinese publisher waiting and other nationalities queueing up.

We haven’t sold the book to China yet but there’s still time.

Goodbye Margaret

Randall — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:46:10 +0000

Oh dear this blog has to be another obituary. First David Burnside, now Margaret Potts, wife of the legendary manager who took Burnley to the League title in 1960. It should be less of a surprise. David was only 69 and Margaret was 86. But it isn’t. Margaret seemed indefatigable.
The last time we met was in her garden in Read, close to Burnley. She loved gardening, wearing an old jacket of Harry’s as she tended her plants. We were sitting in winter sunshine in a garden sheltered by a hill. My wife and I had a standing invitation to drop by whenever we were passing. But to get to Read you have to make a serious detour. We never did although we did correspond.
The book we published with her – Margaret’s Story – Harry Potts – is both a football book and a love story. Dave Thomas wrote about Harry and Burnley and the football and helped Margaret with her side. She had a remarkable memory and squirrel-like habits, keeping things like the tickets for the banquet after Burnley lost to Spurs in the FA Cup, even the ribbon and menu from the Wolves’ banquet she and Harry had been invited to on the same night. Then there were the photographs.
Margaret and Harry met in 1947 when she was a nurse in Wales and was stranded in Manchester because of snow. Someone told her the Burnley football team had a coach taking them home and she was given a lift.
They were married until Harry died in 1996 and it is especially sad that she will not be part of Burnley’s celebrations next May which will mark the 50th anniversary of Burnley’s one title triumph.

Everton v Aston Villa – 50 years on

Randall — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:04:00 +0000

I went to a big football match yesterday – Everton v Aston Villa – and I found all sorts of strange emotions returning. I don’t go to football much these days; that was only the second time in a year, partly because I’m not so much in love with the game any more. Once I was obsessed with it. I knew every little last and lost fact. And when I grew older I became a football reporter and watched big games all the time, sometimes three or four a week. For 30 years.
That’s partly why I don’t go. Football isn’t as entertaining or perhaps it’s because as it’s no longer my job I don’t concentrate on it so much. Besides I can’t watch football as a fan. Too long trying to analyse it I suppose, When everyone else is jumping up in excitement I’m sitting there wondering who crossed the ball, who failed to track and runner and so on.
I watch it on TV but I cancelled my Sky subscription because I couldn’t stand the over-hyping that they do so badly. Every match is bigger than the next, everything is puffed up far beyond it’s normal size.
But yesterday brought back why I like football and why I might start going again, semi-regularly at least. I was in Liverpool for a book signing. David Cregeen and Jonathan Mumford, the authors of ‘Tales from the Gwladys Street’ were signing the book (along with the old Everton full back John Bailey, in the Bluekipper lounge after the match and it was a chance to see Villa, the team I support (soft of).
We were eating lunch beforehand and watching Arsenal v Tottenham on Sky. The derby of the millenium or some such according to Sky. The teams were lining up to go out onto the pitch and I suddenly realised that this was just what they did on parks all over the country. OK so not all teams march out to play for 60,000 people and the cameras, but the only thing that separated these players from the thousands of others was that they were better than most, quite a lot better. Of course they were being paid huge sums of money but I suspected most of them would still be playing football on a Saturday even if they weren’t so good.
Then came the match. In truth it wasn’t that good. The teams seemed more concerned with cancelling each other out (another reason for not going to matches much) but the experience of being in a crowd, of being there for the same purpose as thousands of others prompted a camaraderie that brought back memories.
I first went to Goodison Park 51 years ago. I was visiting my Auntie Dot and Uncle Fred for the Easter holidays and they lived in Bromborough. So I was able to pop across the Mersey on the ferry (lads of that age would not be allowed to go alone nowadays) and watch Everton. Well, you wouldn’t go to Anfield as a football mad teenager because they were in the Second Divison. I saw Everton three times (and Tranmere Rovers, the team my uncle supported, twice). Those Everton players are still in my memory bank and the ground, the crowd and the Liverpool Echo special editions are not far behind. Later when in my 20s I remember a group of young supporters chasing me outside the ground because they thought I was Bob Latchford. On a good day I’m 5ft 11ins and Bob is 6ft 2ins but we both had similar beards at the time.
So yesterday was Everton and Villa again and not even the scouser sat behind me could spoil it. He was one of those one-eyed fans who follow teams up and down the country. Nothing wrong with that. I used to be one. But this one-eyed supporter knew nothing about the game. His mate did which is why, every so often, there was a quiet interjection. Yes it was handball, yes it was a foul, yes he was off-side.
To the one-eyed scouser everyone was a ‘dickhead’. He took a dislike to Steve Sidwell, because he is ginger I suspect. I did wonder whether I should report him to a steward for racist remarks but I couldn’t decide whether he was being racist or not! Twice he called Villa’s Gabriel Agbonlahor an “Ethiopian’, which I’m sure he didn’t mean in a kindly fashion. Agbonlahor’s parents are from Scotland and Nigeria so why ‘Ethiopian’?
He was up on his feet spitting rage when Diniyar Bilyaletdinov, Everton’s Russian winger, was sent off and while I wasn’t upset I agreed with him, until I watched Match of the Day and realised the referee was correct. After that the one-eyed fan turned his attention to the referee and when Carlos Cuellar got a red card for two bookings he sided with the Villa player.
The signing was good too. When Duncan McKenzie, the ex-Everton and Nottingham Forest striker who could throw a golf ball huge distances and jump over a Mini (not at the same time) had sold 25 copies of his autobiography at a Blueskipper do. We almost doubled that. “That’s because a football biography is about the player,” Steve Jones who runs the bluekipper website told David Cregeen, “but your book is about us.”
As indeed it is.

Great Fair, sad day

Randall — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:25:05 +0000

Back from Frankfurt, knackered as usual. For SportsBooks it was a great fair but brought back down to earth on the Sunday morning when I had a phone call to tell me David Burnside was dead.

I met David only the once although I saw him play many times. For those of you without my anorak tendencies when it comes to sport I will tell you that he was an inside forward with West Brom, Wolves, Plymouth and Southampton. He was a very skilful player who, by his own admission, went backwards when he started to listen to coaches. He was close to getting into the England 1966 World Cup squad, although Alf Ramsey went to watch him and decided he played too many long passes. Never mind that they dropped to the feet of the player for whom they were intended.

I was going to publish David’s autobiography next year and I can’t believe that the energetic, funny and, in many ways contradictory, man I met has passed away. I was going to publish the book anyway – anybody who plays five years for Plymouth Argyle deserves a book written about them – but had I been wavering his story about how he joined West Brom and why he left Wolves would have clinched the deal.

He was from Bristol and like his Dad was a Bristol City fan. He was taken as a 15-year-old schoolboy star on a visit to Ashton Gate whereupon he encountered the grizzled old Arsenal and England hatchet man Wilf Copping seeing out the last of his playing days.

“Are you the young man who will eventually replace me?” asked Wilf.

“Well, I hope so,” said a nervous young David Burnside.

“Then, you’ve got to be hard,” said Copping.

“He started to nutt the dressing room door,” David told me. “I decided I’d better join West Brom.”

There aren’t many players brave enough to play for West Brom and their local rivals, Wolves, but David Burnside did and both sets of fans loved him. He decided to leave First Division Wolves at the height of his powers, preferring instead to sign for Second Division Plymouth and Wolves’ legendary centre-forward Derek Dougan told him he was an idiot.

“It was because my youngest son came home from school one day and said he’d learned his seven times table. And he went ‘one seven is seven’ right up to ‘seven sevens are’ and then he said ‘forty-noine’ with the ‘noine’ said in a Black Country accent. I thought ‘I can’t have my son talking like this.’”

And this was from a man, who at 69 despite having played in the Midlands, London, Plymouth and Hampshire still talked with a ‘Brissel’ accent. Yes, he was only 69 and even though I didn’t know him at all well I felt very, very sad when that phone call came last Sunday.