Book Review
Left Foot Forward
Written by Gary Nelson
Garry Nelson probably played against Burnley a
few times in his career in football's lower leagues. I must, then, have seen him play at
least once. I might even have seen him score against us, and he might thus have earned my
instant and fleeting detestation. I couldn't say for sure. I've never noticed him. You
see, that's the point.
Like virtually every footballer I've ever seen,
Garry Nelson is the sort of player who doesn't get mobbed doing the shopping. His book
couldn't have been more timely, arriving in paperback as the perfect antidote to the Euro
'96 hype and its associated fall-out millionaire making of random glamorous players. His
book - a year long diary of an injury-afflicted season with an utterly mediocre Charlton
team - is never less than brutally honest, and full of insight for a fan like me who
usually has little time for the eleven temporary keepers of the Claret and Blue flame who
happen to be out there on the pitch this week. Reading his account, particularly of the
early months of that season, one emotion overpoweringly strikes the reader: fear. Each
injury brings fear, and each rumour of new signings. Fear lies not just in each
unsatisfactory performance, but also in each good one by any other striker. It's the fear
of a player in his thirties in the last year of a contract, where each injury might be the
last and where each loss of form could be fatal. It's the kind of book we needed.
Of course, what everyone wants to know is `is
there anything about Burnley in it?' Well, yes, a bit. It covers the 94/95 season, in
which we enjoyed (?) a fleeting glimpse of first division football glamorous to us, though
not for Charlton. He doesn't do justice to our 2-1 win there, a fabulous day which I rated
our finest show of the season, especially after the awful Mick Bailey denied us goals a
record three times in the first half. As if to indicate how two opposing sides appear to
watch different games, our injured author merely sees them "allowing Burnley the
freedom to waltz around the centre of the park."
Sadly for him, he has recovered in time for the
hellish coach journey to Turf Moor. I think one or two of our more persistent travellers
might have as fond memories as Nelson of that game being called off at 5.45. Perhaps it
was just as well for him. The night before, his hotel sleep had been less than restful,
due to: "Several phone calls, all suspiciously pointless but in pointed Lancashire
accents ... Just good old Burnley hospitality, I expect." One of the times he is
least upset about his season-ending injury is when he does not have to make a repeat haul
for the eventually played game. "Tonight the first team lay down at Turf Moor and
died ... It was Burnley, down among the deadmen, fighting for Division One survival who
supplied what fire and sense of purpose was to be seen at Turf Moor last night."
This is, perhaps, one of the few honest books
about football, and as such is to be recommended to anyone with a supporter's involvement
in the game. It certainly made me rethink about criticising players, although I'm not sure
how much that will count in the heat of the moment. There's always more than one way to
see the game. As supporters, for example, we want our club to sign players; players we
already have live in fear of exactly the same thing, desperate for the club's success, but
not at their expense. It's educational; to read it is to realise how little one knows
about contracts, transfers, bonuses - all the things that payers worry about most, in
fact. The style of writing is not all the literary purist might wish, but is strangely
contagious, and quickly got used to. Nelson emerges with considerable credit, as do the
"Burnley ex-pats" who live in Worthing and demand comps for the Valley
game, journeying back in "buoyant mood." Who are these people? I think we
should be told...
Firmo
August 1996
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