Book description
Any serious football fan will know, anyone who doesn't go to every
game, home and away, from Arsenal to Vladikavkaz is a part-time
supporter. Kevin Sampson gets to 90% of Liverpool's matches. His sharp,
perceptive and very funny account of the agonies and ecstasies of
following a sleeping giant will touch even the most recalcitrant Man
Utd. fan, most of whom will recognise the ailment. His journeys take us
from a pre-season friendly at Crewe to Chelsea, Celtic, Newcastle, and
beyond. We meet Blackburn fish-ticklers and Bolton riot police; one-eyed
barmaids and stewards with circular noses ; angry British Rail ticket
inspectors and non-kinky masseuses. We follow the romantic progress of
his bachelor friends Jegsy, and aging lothario and Danny, a shy
bricklayer who's looking for a young Nessie Shankley. Most of all we
follow the hopes and dreams of the football fan in all of us, a man of
36 who still falls asleep at night selecting his ideal 11 and awaiting
the call from Roy Evans. This is a wry and wonderfully observed book for
football fans everywhere. Kevin Sampson lives and writes on
Merseyside. His acclaimed first novel,
Awaydays,
is about football violence and Joy Division. His second, Powder,
about sex, drugs and insanity in the music business, will be published
by Jonathan Cape in 1999. Extra Time
is his first non-fiction book.
