My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes

Author:

By Gary Imlach

Awards:

William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award Winner 2005

Format:

Hardback (Paperback)

Availability:

In print, usually dispatched within 48 hours.

Price:

£15.99 £13.59 (Save 15%)

Tagged with:

Football, Biography, Stewart Imlach, Everton FC, Nottingham Forest FC, Scotland

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Further Details

• Published: 21st Sep 2005
• ISBN: 0224072676
• Pages: 240

From Word of Sport:

Easily the pick of the 2005 crop of football books and a deserved winner of the 2005 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award.

We approached the book with a degree of trepidation as it looked as if it might just be a sentimental memoir brought about by the death of the author's father. How wrong we were. There's no doubt that the emotional element of a son trying to 'find' his father but the book doesn't suffer because of that; it's enhanced by it.

The book weaves the personal story of Stewart Imlach, with that of the game generally. It's wonderfully evocative of the era and captures the time perfectly - even for those of us who weren't there in person. It's such a far cry from today's game that it scarcely seems appropriate to mention the two in the same sentance. Suffice to say that it wouldn't harm any of today's players to read this.

This is the standard against which football books should now be judged. Read and enjoy.

From the Publisher:

Stewart Imlach was an ordinary neighbourhood soccer star of his time.

A brilliant winger who thrilled the crowd on Saturdays, then worked alongside them in the off-season; who represented Scotland in the 1958 World Cup and never received a cap for his efforts; who was Man of the Match for Nottingham Forest in the 1959 FA Cup Final, and was rewarded with the standard offer - £20 a week, take it or leave it.

Gary Imlach grew up a privileged insider at Goodison Park when Stewart moved into coaching. He knew the highlights of his father's career by heart. But when his dad died he realised they were all he knew. He began to realise, too, that he'd lost the passion for football that his father had passed down to him. In this book he faces his growing alienation from the game he was born into, as he revisits key periods in his father's career to build up a picture of his football life - and through him a whole era.

Stewart Imlach travelled a long way from the tiny Scottish fishing community of Lossiemouth to the World Cup in Sweden. But in one sense he didn't move at all. He played in the last days of the maximum wage, when footballers were serfs, owned by their clubs - and the men who played the game and those who watched it led fundamentally the same lives together in the same communities.

More than forty years on, such an era seems barely imaginable. My Father and Other Working-Class Heroes brilliantly recaptures that world and the way it changed, blending the personal and the historical into a unique soccer story.

From the Critics:

“A remarkable book... Imlach is a gifted writer, pungently aware, admirably combative, knowledgeable and compassionate”

Brian Glanville, Sunday Times

“One of the most deserving William Hill winners in the award's history.... The book of the year”

Chris Maume, The Independent

“The most emotionally charged and moving sports book I think I've ever read”

Harry Ritchie, Daily Mail

“If I could have my memories of Stewart Imlach surgically extracted, I would wrap them carefully, put them in a box, and send them to his son. Unlike me, Gary Imlach never saw his father play football...But that has not prevented the son from producing one of the best sports books of recent years. A book to treasure”

Richard Williams, The Guardian