CHRISTMAS READS THAT WILL STAY WITH YOU
There are some quality books that are destined to stand the test of time...
WITH the pandemic leaving space to while away plentiful time spent at home, sports enthusiasts have the benefit of a bumper year for quality reads this Christmas. While there is the usual stream of autobiographies, of mixed value, 2020 has also produced its share of books whose worth will stand the test of time – important works that delve deep beneath the public façade of sporting endeavour.
From the bizarre machinations of the FAI in the John Delaney era to the insidious practice of systematic doping in Russia to the challenges faced by athletes when they step off the stage, there is content here that will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.
We go through the best of what’s on offer…
Champagne Football: John Delaney & the betrayal of Irish football by Mark Tighe & Paul Rowan (Penguin, €14.99)
AN obvious choice perhaps, but the correct one. Champagne Football was acknowledged as the best sports read of 2020 at the recent An Post Irish Book Awards.
But this is not merely a sports book. It is also about the importance of good corporate governance and a parable about what happens when an ego is allowed to get out of control. There is also an element of a thriller, with Mark Tighe skillfully drawing the scene as his newspaper, the Sunday
Times, fought the lastminute injunction to stop publishing the story about Delaney’s €100,000 cheque to the FAI; the flick which brought the whole house of cards down.
And a dark comedy flows through its pages, especially in the opening section which chronicles the jawdropping excess of Delaney’s 50th birthday party, or when the former chief executive threatens to bring down the whole FAI when he was taken to task by some board members for his partying at Euro 2012, a scene that reminded me of Henry Sellers roaring: ‘I made the BBC,’ in Father Ted.
Irish football fans who have yet to read the book, for fear of what it might do to their blood pressure, may find it under the tree in the coming days. And there’s plenty to get furious about, even if you only have a casual interest in the game. Reading about the appalling and shocking treatment of Sean Kavanagh, who set up the Homeless Street Leagues, may leave you flinging the book against the wall. That Delaney could be so vindictive and petty against someone who used football to bring some solace to those less fortunate really says it all about the former chief executive.
The whole drama surrounding the injunction and how Delaney eventually fell is conveyed superbly and is essential in understanding how t he former CEO clung to power for so long, despite everything falling apart beneath him. Unfortunately, Irish football will be feeling the legacy of this s period of excess for years and this s book will stand as a reminder why. y.
An uncomfortable glimpse into o how this country can work – but a necessary one. Not just the sports s book of the year.
The Dynasty by Jeff Benedict (Simon & Schuster, €19.99)
AMERICAN sport prides itself on its egalitarianism. From salary caps ps to the draft system, everything is engineered to ensure that no team m dominates. That’s the theory, but ut occasionally teams come along to make a nonsense of that – Michael el Jordan and the Chicago Bulls being ng a prime example. But no team has as had such a sustained period of succcess as the New England Patriots.
For almost two decades, the he coaching genius of Bill Belichick, k, and Tom Brady’s extraordinary y drive to keep improving as a quarterback combined to create the he greatest dynasty American sport rt has ever known. Belichick’s ’s abrasive nature, Brady’s ruthless ss ambition and their tendency to bend nd the rules – such as spygate and d deflategate – also meant the Patriiots became the team that everyone outside of Boston loved to hate.
However, their astonishing ability to stay at the top must be admired. As Benedict writes: ‘In a league hardwired to facilitate parity, the Patriots had figured out a way to separate themselves from the pack.’ That led to ill-feeling, jealously and suspicion.
Benedict is developing a reputation as someone who digs into American sport’s most unreachable places – he was co-author of the acclaimed Tiger Woods biography.
And the real hero of this work is Robert Kraft, the Patriots’ savvy owner who treated Brady like a fifth son, and used his diplomatic skills to ensure that the working relationship between his genius head coach and his quarterback was maintained over almost two decades.
It’s how an unassuming businessman followed his dream to buy his boyhood team and turn them into the most successful franchise in US Sports and is the stuff of fairytales.
When the World Stops Watching
by Damian Lawlor (Black & White, €18.99)
THIS is a wonderful idea for a book, to take a look at 16 different sportspeople and see how their lives fundamentally t ll changed h d with ith retireti ment. Each of the subjects in has a distinctive story to tell and it is all handled wonderfully by Lawlor.
From professional golfer Gary Murphy dealing with his fall off the European tour – he wouldn’t even wear golfing gear in public out of embarrassment – to Hockey Hall of Famer Nikki Symmons who suffered panic attacks following her retirement, there’s plenty to engage here.
Lawlor interviews a slew of newlyretired rugby players, the first generation to step away from the game during its professional era, but the story that stays with the reader most is that of former Wimbledon
player Paul McGee. On the verge of establishing himself in the Premier League, McGee got injured and his career didn’t recover. He ended up struggling with depression that culminated in a suicide attempt.
Keane: Origins by Eoin O’Callaghan (Mercier Press, €14.99)
GIVEN his omnipresence in our sporting psyche and the fact that forests have been pulped in an effort to understand what drives him, it is difficult to find anything fresh to say about Roy Keane. But O’Callaghan manages it, looking at the early part of his professional career, how he was shaped by the rejections at a young age and what he saw as preferential treatment for players from Dublin.
O’Callaghan focuses on the first five years of his professional career, from the time with Cobh to the Roy of the Rovers-like debut he made against Liverpool in the old English First Division. It is a worthy addition to the canon of literature building up about Ireland’s most compelling sportsperson.
The Hill by Bernard Brogan (Reach €22.99)
AS dominant as Dublin have been over the past decade, the veil has rarely been pulled back to reveal what lies underneath.
We did have Philly McMahon’s excellent autobiography, The Choice, a few years ago but that was little about the nuts and bolts of what went into building the greatest GAA team of all time.
Brogan has been the most prominent media personality on the all-conquering Dublin team and has always been comfortable in the spotlight. But it hasn’t been plain sailing for the second-generation star and he had a number of hills to climb to get to where he was, and that makes his story so engaging.
The Russian Affair by David Walsh (Simon & Schuster, €14.99)
THIS is a love story with a difference. Vitaly Stepanov and Yuliya Rusanova were the ultimate odd couple. He was charged with collecting vials of urine to catch cheats, she was a promising young 800m runner who also happened to be doping, as she admitted on their first date. Despite the revelation, the couple were married within a couple of months.
Together, the Stepanovs decided to go to great lengths to expose the Russian programme of systemic doping, to much great personal cost as they have had to go into hiding in the United States. But what they did uncover led to the world finding out the truth about Russia – and the country being banned from world sport. An absorbing read about a couple who did so much to expose the widespread cheating in sport.
Best of the rest…
Believe Us by Melissa Reddy (Harper Collins €16.99) is the perfect present if you have a Liverpool fan in your life. Reddy goes behind the scenes to draw a picture of how Jurgen Klopp has transformed the club, bringing the league title back to Anfield after 30 years.
The German claimed that one of his first jobs was to turn the team from doubters into believers and he did this mostly through the dint of his magnetic personality.
Beginning with the final days of Brendan Rodgers at Anfield, Reddy skilfully presents the vision of the Fenway Sport Group at the time and how, as far back as 2010, their eyes were set on Klopp.
The author is able to construct a definitive record of how Klopp has changed the mood around Liverpool from the moment he walked through Shankly Gates.
Jamie Jackson must have been worried during his time working on The Red Apprentice (Simon & Schuster €20.99) that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer would get the bullet at Old Trafford. But the Norwegian is still at the helm, so Jackson’s book is an interesting insight into a manager that is termed Manchester United’s great hope, although one wonders how many United fans still believe that.
If you want to raise the spirits of any United fan you know, perhaps it would be better to get them Wayne Barton’s Que Que Sera: Manchester United under Dave Sexton and Ron Atkinson (Pitch €12.99). For all Red Devils of my vintage, it was under Big Ron – when Bryan Robson regularly donned the cape and played Superman – that we fell for the club. And this is a nice trip down memory lane to forgot all the issues that currently exist at the club.
Larry Tompkins’ Believe (Hero Books: €20) was one of the more interesting GAA autobiographies on the market, especially when it focused on his time in New York. And for any Cork football people out there, it is a reminder of better times. Also released by Hero Books, there are two lovely hurling stories. Len Gaynor’s Chiselled From Ash conveys the Tipperary man’s passion for the game and is sprinkled with quotes from those that played alongside and under Gaynor, while Everything by Denis Coughlan is a lyrical ode to a life immersed in Cork GAA, from playing alongside Christy Ring to using his diplomatic skills as a mediator in the strikes that threatened to rip the county apart in the 2000s.
Kevin Walsh’s The Invisible Game (Hero €20) takes a different tack, as the two-time All-Ireland winner and former Galway manager takes a view of his career through the prism of how it informed his coaching outlook in a pretty interesting way.
Staying with the coaching theme, Paul Kilgallon’s The Best You Can Be in Sport (Bookhub, €20) hit upon an excellent idea, when he interviewed 50 well-known coaches and players around the country to get their ideas on high performance.
Three big rugby autobiographies are on the Christmas market, but in keeping with the way the international side are playing, they are fairly safe. Rob Kearney’s No Hiding (Reach Sport €22.50) and Rory Best’s My Autobiography (Hodder & Stoughton €28) are the latest books to come from Ireland’s 2009 Grand Slam-winning side.
Seán O’Brien’s Fuel (Penguin, €15.99) is probably the pick of the bunch, simply because O’Brien didn’t come from the traditional background for a rugby player. He delves into what it felt like to be growing up in a small town, when his parents were breaking up.
On the racing front, True Colours by Barry Geraghty (Gill, €22.99) is a fine ride through one of the most successful careers in recent times with Niall Kelly, as the ghost-writer, doing a good job of getting below the surface of the Meath man.
For younger readers, Gaelic Spirit by Ger Siggins (O’Brien, €8.99) gets to grips with the history of Bloody Sunday through the eyes of Eoin Madden (star of the acclaimed Rugby Spirit series), who has an eventful experience with Gaelic Games, including a visit by the ghost of Michael Hogan, in this fast-paced, informative and entertaining read.
‘THE HILLS BROGAN HAD TO CLIMB MAKE HIS STORY VERY ENGAGING’