Day of the Match - A History of Football in 365 Days - Scott Murray & Rowan Walker

...event or incident for every day of the year - 366 stories for 366 days (29th February included of course). Murray and Walker have trawled the archives of football globally to deliver the quirky, celebrated, infamous or just plain daft incidents that mark the history of the beautiful game.

All of footballs famous historical events are included - from the game played in no-man's-land on Christmas day, 1914, between British and German ...
...it was a beautiful sunny day in Scotland. Originally he sent runners down to the pitch so he could garner some sort of idea what was actually happening in the match, but because nobody could see he decided to simply make up the game as he went along. The overseas soldiers had little idea that the commentary was made up, thinking the game was the action packed spectacle being described to them. As a footnote, even Bob Kinsey's commentary seemed tame ... more

Football books have tended to follow the same rather boring and predictable path; Biographies by twenty year old hotshots who haven't lived a life worth reading about, or washed up ex players looking for the cash a book deal will bring having just gone through messy divorce number four. And if it's not biographies there are stat books aplenty; and while a detailed breakdown of the number of free kicks Hull City enjoyed in the 1968 season is probably very interesting to those who follow the tigers, they hold a very limited appeal to the rest of us. Step forward Scott Murray and Rowan Walker - a couple of writers who I happened to catch talking about their newly written book on Sky News. It seemed that, like me, they felt the football book genre had grown humdrum and tired, so set about producing a book just that little bit different. They succeeded; that book is 'Day of the Match: A History of Football in 365 Days'; a cleverly written and immensely well researched tome telling tale of a footballing match, event or incident for every day of the year - 366 stories for 366 days (29th February included of course). Murray and Walker have trawled the archives of football globally to deliver the quirky, celebrated, infamous or just plain daft incidents that mark the history of the beautiful game.

All of footballs famous historical events are included - from the game played in no-man's-land on Christmas day, 1914, between British and German troops, to England's World Cup win against Germany at Wembley in 1966. As befits the book though the latter is described in an interesting and alternative way - instead of concentrating on the match itself the book tells of the television commentary of the game. And no, not the legendary "they think it's all over..." delivered by Kenneth Wolstenholme for the BBC, but rather the forgotten words uttered by Hugh Johns for ITV. Johns himself mused that he wished he'd been able to find a line, but that he was feeling tired! Of course the game of football has had its share of disaster and despair; these events too are detailed in the book. The tragedies of Hillsborough, Bradford, Ibrox and Heysel are all relayed in heartbreaking detail, as is the Munich air disaster and the murder of Andrés Escobar by disgruntled Columbian drug lords who decided to have him shot having lost them a lot of money when he scored an own goal in the 1994 World Cup.

The book is neatly divided into monthly sections, with each day's event taking up one page. This style means that it is the kind of book that can be picked up and read in tiny snippets. And yet I found that such was the interesting and informative way the stories are written I ended up reading large chunks at a time. I feel the strength of the book is that it includes incidents of hilarity as well as the sad and serious tales we know so well. The transition from serious to frivolous could have seemed a little cold, but because each day's event is cocooned in its own section the book manages to juxtapose light-hearted and serious perfectly. The amount of research Murray and Walker must have undertaken is breathtaking; along with majorly reported football events there are incidents so obscure that you have to wonder where on earth they started when compiling all of the data. I guess the fact that they work for the Guardian and the Observer respectively means they had at their disposal a huge archive in which to immerse themselves.

It would not feel right wrapping up this review if I did not share my own favourite tale from the book. As fate would have it, it is the very first story. On January 1st 1940 a match between Hibernian and Hearts was due to kick off in Scotland. Unfortunately the ground was shrouded in the thickest of pea-soupers - meaning the crowd, players and officials could not see much further than ten feet in front of them. Usually in such circumstances the match would be postponed, but because commentary was due to be broadcast on the radio for overseas soldiers, it was feared the postponement would alert the Germans to the weather conditions in Scotland and make a bombing raid a distinct possibility. So it was the commentator that day, a Mr Bob Kinsey, was instructed to relay the match as if it was a beautiful sunny day in Scotland. Originally he sent runners down to the pitch so he could garner some sort of idea what was actually happening in the match, but because nobody could see he decided to simply make up the game as he went along. The overseas soldiers had little idea that the commentary was made up, thinking the game was the action packed spectacle being described to them. As a footnote, even Bob Kinsey's commentary seemed tame compared to the actual match, which finished 5-5. It's just a shame that nobody actually got to see it, indeed some of the crowd only realised the match had finished some ten minutes after the final whistle had blown!

Day of the Match: A History of Football in 365 Days is brilliant in its simplicity, and a must read for football fans the world over. Three hundred and eighty pages of unmitigated pleasure - it is immersive, interesting, educational and witty; a rare achievement in a book nowadays, and as such I can award nothing other than the full five stars. 

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