The Footballer Who Could Fly

[Ray 111]

Just finished reading this book and is a great read, whatever your age. I recommend it to all who have not read it. The author, Duncan Hamilton, has written others, including a very good book on Brian Clough.

A quick search on Amazon will bring it up.

Something to warm the cockles and pass the time until our next game.

Cheers all.

[Ray 111]

To give a bit more insight, see what follows..

''Without football,we were strangers under the same roof. With it, we were father and son.’

Longlisted for the 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year, Hamilton tells of how he was inspired by his father''s devotion to Newcastle United and the heroes of yesteryear, such as Jackie Milburn, Bobby Charlton and Duncan Edwards, Hamilton recreates a distant, bygone age and charts the progress of post-war British football to the present day. From the hardscrabble 1940s and the ‘never-had-it-so-good'' 50s, right through to how the dowdy-looking First Division of the 80s transformed itself into the slick, money-driven Premiership that is so familiar to us today. Hamilton writes about the some of its most sublime players, from George Best to Lionel Messi, and some of its most respected managers, from Bill Shankly to Sir Alex Ferguson.

But at the heart of The Footballer Who Could Fly, is Hamilton’s exploration of the bond between father and son through the Beautiful Game, and how football became the only live connection between two people who, apart from their love of it, were wholly different from one another.

From the two-time winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year comes a personal and affecting story that beautifully captures one of the most important three-way relationships in a man''s life. Father and son and football.

[lake district canary 4,531]

Can echo the sentiments expressed about this. Living a fair way away from my parents who had moved away in 1980 - and having less in common with them the longer time went on, the one thing I could always talk about with my Dad was the fortunes of Norwich City.  It was also one of the things I missed about him passing on - being able to talk about the football, it was a real connection over the years.  I used to regularly travel to Norwich in those days and the phone conversations with my Dad always turned to Norwich. I would report on how the city and the stadium had changed and he would keep up to date with as much info as he could to have something to say.  I''d send him programmes, videos of matches, I''d phone him from the stadium just after a match had finished and so the connection to childhood father/son relationship was helped by the dialogue about football over the distance and the years.  After he passed away six years ago, my mum, bless her, tried to take over the talking about football, which of course I appreciate, but it isn''t the same.  I''m so thankful for having such a great club to support for so many reasons.  I''ve met so many people who have lost interest in their own clubs after they have sold out to investors/speculators - sons who have stopped supporting the club their fathers and grandfathers took them to - often with family connections going right back to the 1920''s and even beyond. I can''t think of a better reason to keep a football club based in the family and community than the richness it gives families throughout the generations.  We throw that away at our peril.  Family is more important than football, but football is capable of being the glue that holds families together. Long may that continue.