NEIL SMITH

Morning Neil. Thanks for taking time out to answer these questions.

1. What have you been up to during lockdown? 

Lockdown seemed to last for ages so in that time I took the decision to look after the garden. For the first time in my life, I’ve grown flowers and vegetables! It just seemed to get me out of any DIY that was put to me. If you want to know what I grew, and I’m sure you do, there were tomatoes, sweetcorn, carrots and strawberries. Apart from this, I watched a lot of old repeats of football matches and also tried to keep fit.

2. Do you and players read the forums and online groups?

I like reading anything about football, so I often read other teams forums trying to find out what other clubs were doing.
I think it is hard for any manager or player not to read about things supporters put on forums about themselves or the club, but I do tell the players not to, good or bad as I’m the person they have to keep happy and that I know what I’ve asked the player to do for the best of the team.

3. What’s been your favourite game since becoming manager? And why?

The best games I’ve been involved with as manager at the club so far have been:
a) beating Orient 6-1 at home and then beating them 0-1 away as they were the club to beat in our division at the time.
b) beating Gateshead away to get to the final of The F.A Trophy. What a day that was,  and what a journey home in the coach with the players.

4. What was the best substitution you made, best defensive display and best goal in your time as manager?

The best substitution was bringing on Jake Goodman against Sutton while we were drawing. We had a corner, and then within 20 seconds and with his first touch of the ball, he scored the winner.
The best defensive display would have to be the game against Orient (away) when we won 1-0, as we were up against it all game but kept a clean sheet. We also had to do it against York City (away) when they had Jon Parkin (The Beast) and Sam Muggleton, who had the longest throw in the league.
Muggleton was throwing the ball from the half way line to Parkin, right under our crossbar. He was pushing my 'keeper into the goal while trying to touch the ball over the line to get a goal. All their players were massive so when I brought my subs on I picked them on height and not ability 🙈
The best goals would have been any from Louis Dennis. He seemed to only score great goals.

5. Who was the one who got away? A player you really wanted that didn’t quite happen for whatever reason.

 A player I wanted but missed out on (as I was told he was to good for us) was Eberechi Eze who is now playing for Crystal Palace.
Myself and Danny Mills watched him playing for QPR reserves and I was told I could have any player from the team. After watching him play I went up to Mark Bircham and asked if we could have him. I was told to leave it a week, in which time he got selected for the first team squad. After that, he played for the first team before being sold to Palace.


6. At Barrow last season,  the game was live on TV, it was a 5.20 kick off so hard to get home afterwards and we were playing the League leaders on a freezing January evening - yet around 50 Bromley fans still turned up. Does this kind of support make a difference to you and the players?

 I’ve always said the Bromley supporters are amazing. When we travel to the away games on the train and we see the supporters on board before and after the game, we know what they have been through and I know how much time, money and effort they have given us to get to the game.
We appreciate everything that have given to get to that game and we always make sure we put everything into the performance to show our appreciation. We can’t win every time but we can make sure you as supporters see that we are giving you everything we have to try and win every game.
We do love having the support from everyone who makes the effort and we love trying to make you the supporters proud of us as a team and management. We always want to show how much we care about your efforts to get to the game by giving you everything we have to get the result you deserve and that’s to try and win every game for you.

DANIEL GRAY

Hello Dan and many thanks for answering the questions.

1. I think we agree that football-wise, the past is an ideal place to live. But which era would you have most liked to have watched football and why?

The late 1920s and early 1930s. I would love to visit the grounds we later came to love taking shape, love to smell the paint on a new Archibald Leitch creation. Then to see those players who are now statues in action. And of course, Boro were good then…

2. This is a question I put to your fellow Middlesbrough fan Harry Pearson and would be interested to hear what you have to say as well. Lockdown has meant a lot of TV watching for me, and one of the most memorable things I’ve seen was Sunderland ’til I Die - a real eye-opener seeing such a famous club self-destruct. As a Middlesbrough fan, what have you made of their decline and did you watch the series?

I did, I watched it just about in one-sitting and felt annoyed I’d kept nothing back to watch later. I absolutely loved the programme; it is full of what makes the north-east of England so appealing – the landscape, the people, the sea. In recent years I’ve found what has happened to Sunderland saddening. Those fantastic fans we see on the programme feel how we feel about our teams, so we know their pain. I hope when Boro and Sunderland meet again, it is not because Boro have gone down.

3. If you could permanently delete just one thing from the modern game, what would it be? Coloured boots? Fourth officials? Sunday lunchtime kick offs? Or something else entirely?

It’s obvious, it’s a boring answer, it doesn’t yet affect football at the levels I watch, but VAR must be abolished and the technology which enables it put into a large lead tank and cast into the sea without ceremony. To sow doubt into the highest pleasure a match-attending fan has – celebrating the scoring of a goal – is sinful. Off with its head.

4. Your book Saturday 3 PM resonated with me because you took everything I love about football, and reminded me why it was so important - such as putting a generous amount of time aside to study the football results page on a Sunday morning. Were there any further subjects you thought about after the book was publish and wish you’d included?

It’s funny you should mention that – there were so many I’d missed out (goalkeepers going up for corners, referees falling over, the roar after a minute’s silence…), and which have since occurred to me, that I’ve written a follow-up book. It’s called Extra Time and is published in late October.

5. You famously once marked Gordon Strachan’s youngest son (not the one who became a footballer) out of a game. Which footballer did you consider yourself to be similar to? I was heavily influenced by Stan Bowles, right down to trying to emulate his straggly hair.

Ha! I was always a left-back or centre-half, and so my heroes were Boro defenders. It really was a world of icons and glamour: Tony Mowbray, Alan Kernaghan, Jimmy Phillips. I was captain of our village team and wore a bandage as my armband to be like Kernaghan.

6. Do you plan your books out? For example, when you’re writing about fifty delights of modern football, are you settled on what each chapter will be about?

I really do a lot of planning. Some might call it procrastinating, and writing notes in multi-coloured pens really can help avoid any painful typing, but it is very important for me. With those books, I compile a list of 50 and some reserves. I write the subject in hand at the top of a page, list everything I feel about it, put it in order, and then spend two hours writing the first line. If, when I write those feelings down they don’t come to much, I bring a reserve topic in, sometimes proclaiming the substitution in the style of a Tannoy announcer.

CHARLIE CONNELLY

HELLO CHARLIE AND THANKS FOR AGREEING TO THIS CHAT.

1. How have you been occupying yourself during lockdown? 

I’d always believed I lived a life of relentless hedonism and adventure. Then lockdown happened and, well, nothing really changed. Other than socially-distanced queuing at Sainsbury’s and the pubs being shut OH MY GOD DAVE THE PUBS ARE SHUT my everyday existence isn’t much different: I’ve worked from home for donkey’s years now anyway, and am an antisocial curmudgeon at the best of times, so I was already well prepared to keep clear of the yawning chasm of housebound ennui that’s opened up beneath the nation. 

Having said that, there are days only a 21-disc Looney Tunes boxed set can salvage. 

I am missing football, though. Not even the actual game so much as the routine. I’m a season ticket holder at Deal Town these days, but no matter the team or the level I miss the walk to the ground, the cheery exchanges with turnstile operator, programme seller and tea bar proprietor, the nodding at familiar faces whose names you don’t know, the scrutiny of the programme notes, some before the game but saving some for half-time and the pub afterwards. God, I miss that.  

2. A little known, but hugely impressive, fact about you is that you were Bromley FC’s youngest ever programme editor. Any particularly fond (or otherwise) memories of the time?

Blimey, yes, I think was 17. I’d been going to Bromley since Charlton upped sticks for Selhurst Park in 1985 and have some extraordinarily fond memories of that time. I was a bit of a lonely kid who was going nowhere really, and the friends I made at Bromley, people like Nick Evans, Mike Head, Ben Salmon, Colin Head, Roy Oliver of course, genuinely helped bring me out of myself.

I can’t remember how I came to edit the programme. A guy called Gus Johnson did it before me and his notes were these wonderful florid things, tossing bouquets of clauses at the reader that included snatches of Latin, terrible puns and some pretty gloves-off criticism of under-par team performances that wasn’t afraid to name names. 

He packed it in and I think John Self might have taken over briefly, but I was doing a few match reports on away games for the Bromley Times and banging out a fanzine called Down The Lane at the time and that must have led to me taking over the programme. As a lifelong programme nerd this was like being asked to headline Glastonbury. Gus was a tough act to follow but I was keen to give readers value for money so crammed in as much text as possible only to have the more, ah, mature section of the support complain that it was now too small to read. Important lesson learned. 

I tried to carry on when I left for university in Colchester – John Fiorini lent me an old typewriter - but it didn’t really work out so I gave it up. I couldn’t afford to get back for games either so started watching Colchester United instead and the habit was lost, never to be regained, and when Charlton went back to The Valley I went back with them. I’ve always looked out for Bromley’s results and when your splendid books started appearing I was transported again to the tin enclosures behind the goals (which I spent one summer helping to repaint with some iffy tins of bitumen stuff someone found in the long grass behind the old stand).

3. Your book on Liechtenstein’s attempt to qualify for the 2002 World Cup is a superb read. Are you still in touch with any of the players and did being a supporter of Charlton and Bromley help you relate to a team that viewed a narrow defeat as a victory?

I am still in touch a few of them, yes. In fact, the team back then was so young some of them haven’t long hung up their boots. I think I was trying to find in Liechtenstein the kind of thing that had drawn me to Charlton and Bromley – some ill-defined spirit of the game. Charlton were in the Premier League then and while everyone loves seeing their team do well the naked commercialism of it all was leaving me a bit cold. 

I followed Liechtenstein through their World Cup qualifying campaign for the 2002 World Cup in the hope of finding that indefinable something that made me fall in love with the game in the first place, something more than winning and having the best players, something to do with community and making the best of what you have. 

Back then Liechtenstein only had one professional, so this bunch of postmen and bank workers – the captain had his own vineyard and missed international games when the grapes needed picking – from a country with a population the size of Dunstable would turn out against some of the best players in the world and play absolutely out of their skins. When losing 0-2 at home to Spain feels like winning the World Cup itself, you know you’ve found something special, the very soul of the game. Some party, that night, too.

4. Your most recent book, Last Train to Hilversum: A Journey in Search of The Magic of Radio is amongst my favourites of yours. Radio had been thriving during lockdown - what do you put this down to?

I’ve been a massive fan of and advocate for radio since I was a kid hanging a coathanger in my bedroom window at night connected by a lead to an old radio and spending evenings turning the dial and hearing mysterious voices and music arriving from across Europe. When you grew up in an anonymous south-east London suburb like I did – so anonymous that when people ask me where I grew up I don’t really have a specific answer – that was important reassurance there was a world out there beyond the cracked pavements and vandalised bus shelter outside our front gate. 

For me radio has a kind of shared intimacy, if that’s not an oxymoron. The voices are speaking to everyone, yet they’re speaking to you directly, and in a way that television doesn’t. Also, radio makes you do some of the work. As the hoary old cliché has it, the pictures are better on the radio and that’s because you create them yourself. You’re always interacting with radio even though you don’t realise it, because the images are yours, whereas television spoons it all into you like a kid in a high chair and there’s not the same engagement. And now, more than ever, we need engagement. 

5. Earlier this year you launched a series of podcasts, Coastal Stories, in which you tell true stories of the sea and those who find themselves in it. One of the highlights is The Curious Afterlife of Ambrose Gwinnett, which I’d love to think really happened. Do you have a favourite episode and how can people find these podcasts?

I live right by the sea and these days and even throw myself into it every morning. It’s always fascinated me. I’ve written a couple of books about it and, bless my soul, do you know what? I’ve a new book called The Channel out this month too. *cleans spectacles* *looks out of window*. Well I never, a new book called The Channel, eh? I mean to say. Good gracious.

Anyway, yes, during my research over the years I’ve collected quite a few maritime tales, some I couldn’t fit into the books or could only mention in passing, and I thought because there aren’t enough podcasts in the world - there are hardly any, nobody’s doing them - I’ll fill the void by telling some of these stories. 

I think my favourite one is the elegy to the foghorn. Partly because it’s the first time I’d put a noise into a podcast that wasn’t my nasal, honking voice or the waves I record to use as a background, but mostly because I think it gives a good account of what the sea means, especially to us as an island nation. There’s a kind of romantic sadness in the tone of a foghorn, it’s a bit forlorn, but it’s altruistic, there to keep people safe. 

The podcast is called Coastal Stories and it’s on all your favourite podcast platforms. Also some you’re probably ambivalent to and a few you probably couldn’t give a toss about.

6. Who are your all time favourite Charlton and Bromley players and why?

He was only at The Valley for a few months and his wages almost literally bankrupted the club but… Allan Simonsen. Picture Charlton in 1982. Skint, moping about in the lower fathoms of the old Second Division in front crowds of 4,000 in this vast, disintegrating concrete bowl ostensibly capable of housing 66,000, going nowhere except possibly Division Three and a tour of some local loan sharks. Then we sign a former European Footballer of the Year, from Barcelona (and his first game? They put him in the reserves. The reserves).

It was madness, it couldn’t last, it didn’t last, but goodness me, he was magical. This wisp of a thing, swamped by his shorts alone, dancing across the mud past the industrial threshing machines masquerading as opposition defenders, putting the ball on a sixpence to where no Charlton player in a million years would anticipate or just caressing it into the net himself. I interviewed him once, in the Faroe Islands. He was lovely. And tiny.  

For Bromley Paul Edwards is a contender, an elegant beanpole of a defender who could read the game miles ahead of the lumps he was marking. Very spitty, covered the pitch in flob hacked up with a noise like a thousand football rattles, but a great player and a very funny man. 

It’s got to be Alen Scotting, though. He had no shoulders, his kit hung off him like a (shoulderless) coathanger, shirt out, socks down. There was something faintly nefarious about him, he sometimes slouched around the field like he was only there because he needed an alibi, but put the ball at his feet and magic happened. He had this awkward, crouching run, almost bent double (I think he was a postman so maybe it was the legacy of carting a heavy bag around on endless freezing mornings), meaning defenders couldn’t get near the ball without the top of his head thumping them in the midriff. And he was a genius. A proper genius. He should have been a pro, had spells at Gillingham and Northampton Town I think, but I imagine he put clubs off with his, ah, abrasive attitude. Opponents hated him because he was gobby and brilliant. Other clubs’ fans hated him because he was gobby and brilliant. I think even referees hated him too, probably just because he was gobby. But I’ve not seen many players send such a charge through supporters the way he did when the ball arrived at his feet. 

I remember a game at Hayes Lane in the late 80s, we went a goal down early on and it was one of those days where Bromley had done everything but score. Might have been against Hayes, or possibly Harrow Borough, they were filthy anyway, horrible side. ‘Cods’, as Scotting was inexplicably nicknamed, had been winding up defenders all afternoon and been kicked black and blue when deep into injury time, facing the car park end, he won a free kick about 25 yards out. It had to be the last kick of the game. He picked the ball up, plonked it on the mud, waited for the whistle, took three steps forward and hit it. It went like a rocket, never rising more than a couple of inches above the turf, flew past the wall and whump, there it was in the bottom corner of the net. Keeper never saw it, it was one of the hardest shots I’ve ever seen. All of us behind the goal went bananas; I was jumping out of my skin and screaming. Cods kept running, up to the erstwhile defensive wall and laughed right in the face of the defender who’d been beating him up all afternoon, then was buried under a pile of teammates.

It was the first time I can remember thinking that there were football gods after all, and sometimes justice was done. Not all the time, rarely even, but on that cold, dank Saturday afternoon Alen Scotting’s particular brand of genius had brought down the gavel, just for once, on the side of right.  

NIGE TASSELL

HELLO NIGE AND THANKS VERY MUCH FOR ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS.

1. First of all, how are you coping with lockdown, especially the home schooling part? 

Hi Dave. The home-schooling hasn't been too bad at all, actually. The school has set plenty of work and the kids are keeping to the same timetable of lessons. I'm only getting asked the odd tricky maths conundrum. As I work from my kitchen table normally anyway, the lockdown doesn't feel too different from normal – a couple of hours' work snatched here and there during the day and a good session typing away in the evening. Plus dog walks to throw into the mix.

With the kids' various after-school activities having been put on hold, I haven't had to ferry them here, there and everywhere, so I've found more time for reading. I'm currently revisiting HG Bissinger's Friday Night Lights. Such a great book. 

2. As someone who perfectly captured the world of non-league football in The Bottom Corner, what’s your opinion of the suggested merger between League 2 and the National League, to form two regional leagues, and do you worry about the future of some of the smaller clubs? 

Thank you, that's very kind. I'm glad – as a non-league nut yourself – that you think that. That was certainly the intention of The Bottom Corner: to capture all its brilliance and all its wonkiness right across that world. I think it's very difficult to remotely predict the future. The crystal ball is very murky. But I can certainly see some sense in reorganising things on a more regional basis. I think it's inevitable that some National League clubs will go back to being part-time, a status that in itself is difficult to sustain playing in a national division, what with the cost of travel across the country/possible overnight stays/players getting additional time off from their other jobs etc. Maybe a return to regionalism, as in the days of the old Third Division South and the such like, is the sensible route to survival. But who, standing in the eye of this extraordinary storm, can currently sketch out what the landscape of everyday life, let alone football, will be?

3. It’s now 30 years since World in Motion came out. Where do you think it stands amongst songs with a sporting link?

It's undeniably in the top three – and certainly the best song adorned by footballers' voices. The other occupants of that top three would be Kraftwerk's Tour de France and Half Man Half Biscuit's Swerving The Checkertrade. The couplet in the latter – 'Oh let me gaze upon your curves / Instead of Ipswich Town's reserves' – proves that my pal Nigel Blackwell is better than Betjeman.

4. Your books cover a wide variety of subjects, including cycling, live music and sport on TV. Your most recent takes a look at the transfer window - can you tell us what gave you the idea and a bit about what the book covers (apart from the obvious)?

This was the only book of mine that wasn't my idea, actually! I was bouncing off ideas with Fran, my then editor at Yellow Jersey Press – many of which were batted back with all the force of a Roscoe Tanner serve –  before she hit upon the window as a subject. So I went off and came up with the treatment. I knew I didn't want the book to delve deep into the murky waters of transactions, for me to be chasing a labyrinthine paper trail. I don't have the tools of an investigative journalist, so would have been ill-prepared for that. I'm a feature writer by trade – hearing, and then retelling, peoples' stories. So I settled on travelling around the country to find out what the window itself means to people, to those deeply engaged in it – managers, players, chairmen, agents, scouts, journalists, broadcasters, bookmakers and, of course, fans. Getting access to those at the top of the food chain was pull-your-hair-out tricky, especially as I wanted to talk to people about transfer policy and procedure, arguably the most secretive aspect of a football club's operations. The book was certainly way, way harder to put together than The Bottom Corner, when people across the non-league pyramid welcomed me with wide-open arms. But I eventually got there with Boot Sale, successfully talking to the more invisible characters involved, as well as getting in the room with Premier League managers like Maurizio Sarri and Sean Dyche, or spending time with much-transferred Premier League players like Glenn Murray and Benik Afobe. Driving to Burnley's training ground on Deadline Day at the same time as Peter Crouch was making his way there was a highpoint. (He has a nicer car than me.)

5. As a young journalist, you often did ‘Word of Mouth’ pieces, where you had to ask celebs for their favourite books, films and music - but what are your favourite books, films and music and why? And do you have a favourite of your books?

Book-wise, my favourites have to be:Sport – Gary Imlach's My Father And Other Working-Class Football Heroes. So poignant and so beautifully written. Every word is immaculate.Music – Amanda Petrusich's It Still Moves. It's a trawl around the southern states to uncover and explain the roots of American music. As well as her sharply perceptive words on music, Amanda is a master of travelogue. You feel like you're in the hire car next to her, eating the same truck-stop snacks.Travel – Simon Armitage's Walking Home. A companionable stomp along the Pennine Way with the future Poet Laureate. A real comfort read. Memoir – Bill Drummond's 45. He's a mad old sort who's certainly led a life less ordinary.I can't say I have a favourite among my own books. The Bottom Corner is my most successful, and continues to sell steadily several seasons after it was published. But I was proud that Three Weeks, Eight Seconds – about the astonishing 1989 Tour de France – was shortlisted at the Sports Book Awards as it was the first time I'd chosen to write about cycling, one of my teenage obsessions. Being free of interviews, I appreciated the speed at which I was able to write Butch Wilkins and the Sundance Kid. And then there was the enormous sigh of relief I expelled when Boot Sale finally took the shape that Fran and I had envisaged for it.

6. What I enjoyed most about Butch Wilkins and the Sundance Kid was the sheer amount of different sports we used to watch on TV. Like you, I would happily sit through things like wrestling, bowls, squash and snooker. Do you think Sky has been a good or bad thing for sport in general and would the teenage you have watched so much sport if you had the viewing options currently available?

I don't think I would have been so obsessed with watching it, no. Having just four TV channels during the Eighties (three for the first couple of years) meant you made the best of what was on offer. And, to be fair, I think there's some value in having limited choice. It means you can be obsessive about the limited bill of fare. Nowadays the viewing options are open-ended. The proliferation of sport channels – coupled with sport's disappearance from terrestrial channels – has meant that those 'appointment to view' experiences, where you know a large proportion of the population are tuning in, have disappeared. Only the Olympics and the World Cup could be described as such. Back then, how exciting was it that the latest episode of Dallas or Dynasty could be interrupted in order for us to go live to Zürich where Sebastian Coe was making his latest world-record attempt? We had our priorities right in those days..

HARRY PEARSON

WELL, HELLO HARRY AND THANKS FOR AGREEING TO THIS CHAT.

My pleasure. It seems a long time ago since we were chatting in The Back Page bookshop. I certainly wouldn’t mind a trip to watch Gateshead v Bromley these days – especially since The Heed’s stadium would be ideal for social distancing.

1. First of all, how are you dealing with life in lockdown?

Self-isolation is more or less the natural state of the writer, but I miss going to football every Saturday to eat KitKat and listen to the coaching staff bellow. “Get up early at the corners!” and other incomprehensible advice. There was a point where my hair was going full Motley Crue, but I bought some electric clippers, so now I look like the Foreign Legion’s crappest ever recruit instead.

2. Lockdown has meant a lot of TV watching for me, and one of the most memorable things I’ve seen was Sunderland ’til I Die - a real eye-opener seeing such a famous club self-destruct. As a Middlesbrough fan, what have you made of their decline and did you watch the series?

Yes I did watch it. It was very cleverly done. It made me think of William Golding’s comment about movie making: “In this business nobody knows anything”. Only in the case of some of those in charge of Sunderland you could add “and sometimes not even that much”. As fans we’re constantly assured that ‘football is a business’, but you really can’t imagine many of the people running football would actually find employment anywhere else, certainly not on the massive salaries they pull in – the hapless Martin Bain was reputedly on £1.2 million a year at the SoL, which beggars belief when they losing millions every months. I have a lot of friends who support Sunderland, in fact going to Roker Park with my next door neighbour John Ferguson was partly what inspired me to write The Far Corner, so I don’t take much pleasure in the mess they are in. Like most Boro fans I realise how lucky we are to have a decent, sensible owner in Steve Gibson, who supports the club. Before Gibson came along we had gone into receivership, the squad were training in Albert Park and we were playing home games at Hartlepool. Because of the haphazard governance for the game in England every club is just one bad owner away from total collapse.

3. Middlesbrough (in Ayresome Park days) feature in The Far Corner, one of the great football books (I’ve been checking North Shields results ever since reading it). You’ve now written an eagerly awaited sequel, which was due to come out last week, but the launch has been delayed. Do you have a definite date for its release and can you tell us a bit about the book? Have you been thinking about doing a sequel for a while?

The Farther Corner (as it’s imaginatively titled) should come out on August 6 th now, though all these things are kind of flexible in the current situation (why do those last two words always mean ‘you will get paid less/late’?). With luck it will be out before then, but that depends on the return of football and the re-opening of book shops. I’d thought about a sequel for a while, but this was pretty much the 25 th anniversary of The Far Corner so it made sense. I hadn’t realised when I wrote The Far Corner that football in England was on the verge of a massive upheaval – all-seater stadiums, huge TV deals, foreign owners, players and coaches – that would change it for ever. In 1994 the experience of watching football at Ayrsome Park was much the same as it had been for my Grandad when he first went in the years just before the Great War. He’d certainly have recognised the urinals in the Holgate End. So the book looks at that a bit and also the increase in support for non-League. But mainly it’s just me wandering around on buses and wittering on about Mick Harford and Arthur Horsfield.

4. What’s your favourite of your books and why?

The Far Corner made my career and brought lots of people into my life who became good friends, so I’d have to choose that. I also have a soft spot for Hound Dog Days which is my Mum’s favourite, though sadly nobody bought it, even though it had a cute picture of my dog Manny on the front.

5. This is a two part question. What, in your opinion, is the best football board game ever invented? I hear you have an impressive collection of games from all over the World. I had a few but none took up as much of my time as Waddington’s Test Match (“A fascinating cricket game”). Does your collection include non-football games?

I think the best is the two-player Spanish game, Soccer City in which you move the ball around the field using cards (I’m talking about board games here, not dexterity games like Subbuteo or Striker…). It’s very clever, not too complex and there’s barely any luck. There’s also a good Dutch game called Street Soccer (and a variant, Champions 2020) that, as you’d imagine from the Dutch, rewards passing and movement and has a slight chess-like feel to it. Oddly enough, somebody has just re-issued Wembley, which lots of us played as kids, though that has more in common with Monopoly with lots of dice rolling. Erm, I could go on and on (and on), but if you want to know more you can go on the BoardgameGeek website and look them up. As you may guess from this, my collection is quite large and includes games covering everything from chariot racing to South American drug running. I prefer toys to reality, generally.

6. How much planning goes into your books? Are you someone who carefully plans your chapters or do you favour a more spontaneous approach?

I used to be more spontaneous, but nowadays publishers won’t just accept a one page pitch like they used to. You have to give them chapter plans and the like, which is actually a good thing for me as it makes me focus earlier. Still, I feel books evolve as you are writing them. If you are actually going out and about watching things – as I normally do – you can’t plan too much as you have no idea what will happen, who you will talk to and what they will say. When I started writing The Far Corner it was going to be mainly about the North-East’s professional clubs. Then, early in the season, I went to Hillheads to see Whitley Bay and the bloke in front of me got fed up with the opposition goalie shouting at his defenders and bellowed “Will you shut up, keeper? Some of us are trying to sleep”. And that lead me to focus more on Northern League, which I think made the book much better. Though I do wonder if I’d told the publisher, “It’s going to mainly feature clubs with average home attendances in double figures’ he’d have been quite so keen to commission it.