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.