The Glory Game

Title: The Glory Game

Author: Hunter Davies

Published: 1972

Publisher: Mainstream

Reading The Glory Game in 2012 is a revelation. Initially you can’t quite believe Davies has acquired the access he has: from the boardroom down to the fanatical supporters and the casuals. What is more remarkable is the access he has to the players: he travels on trains and planes, attends the functions and parties and most surprising, has full access to the changing room, before, during and after matches. Forty years on, in the rarefied elite of the Premiership, Davies achieved access with Tottenham Hotspur that writers of today could only dream of. This is a point that Davies acknowledges in his introduction and explains why it may not ever happen again. Although it’s hard to see why, as no one in The Glory Game is treated particularly badly and everyone comes out of the book looking good. However, it is clear that The Glory Game caused problems at Tottenham as Alan Gilzean, in his first interview in decades wanted to declare that he wasn’t the harden drinker as depicted in The Glory Game.

The Glory Game is very much of its era, football is changing (there is debate in the boardroom about whether to allow advertising boardings within White Hart Lane) and Tottenham Hotspur are run like a small family business with manager Bill Nicholson looming large in every neuk and cranny of White Hart Lane. In fact, Nicholson’s wife comes across well as a massive supporter who lives within metres of White Hart Lane but is banned from attending matches by her husband in case she brings bad luck.

Davies manages to create a sympathetic portrayal of footballers of the era and recognises that while they may be cash rich and doing something millions of others would love to do, they are socially limited and find it difficult to have anything meaningful outside the game.

The Glory Game is a magnificently enjoyable story of an entire club during a relatively successful season. Davies created what is called by Four Four Two magazine as “the definitive football text”, it’s very hard to argue against that proclamation.

Buy The Glory Game from Mainstream Publishing

The Ghost of White Hart Lane

Title: The Ghost of White Hart Lane

Authors: Rob White and Julie Welch

Publisher: Yellow Jersey

Published: 2011

One cannot conceive how difficult it would be to lose your father at a young age.. Yet that is what happened to Rob White, co-author of The Ghost of White Hart Lane, a book about his father, John White, the Scottish internationalist. White died after being struck by lightning on a golf course at the age of 27. The Ghost of White Hart is more than a biography of White’s life but also a personal tale of a child growing up without his father.

The Ghost of White Hart is a fantastically riveting book, the story of White’s life is brought together by Julie Welsh and Rob White - about a boy growing up in Musselburgh who was always told he was too slight to make it as a professional. Yet White defied the odds, first at Alloa Athletic and then Falkirk before being snapped up by Bill Nicholson, the final piece in a Tottenham Hotspur jigsaw that would see the club become the first English team to complete the double and also the first to win a piece of European silverware, the European Cup Winners Cup in 1963. It was during the time played for Spurs that White attracted the nickname The Ghost of White Hart Lane for his ability to be in places on the field that wasn’t expected, as if he almost glided through games. It was a nickname that would be prophetic too.

As a book, The Ghost of White Hart Lane is a wonderful piece of work - one that encapsulates the mood of the time and explaining the key personalities at play in John White’s life. The biography is also interspersed with reflections from Rob White. These chapters are powerful and illuminating without being mawkish or unsettling.

The ending of White’s life remains a tragedy and one that if this was a work of fiction would be deemed too far fetched. Welsh helps White pay a real tribute to his father in what is without doubt one of the finest football biographies I have read.

Buy The Ghost of White Hart Lane here.