The Bottom Corner: A Season with the Dreamers of Non-League Football

New
Paperback
2016
$14.86

Everyone loves an FA Cup upset: a smug Premier League team being knocked out by plucky underdogs. In these days of oligarch owners, superstar managers and players on sky-high wages, the tide is turning against the big teams as fans search for football with a soul. Enter non-league football - the heartland of the beautiful game. Nige Tassell spends a season among the characters who inhabit this world. The raffle-ticket seller who wants her ashes scattered in the centre-circle. The envelope salesman who discovered a future England international. The ex-pros still playing with undiluted passion on Sunday mornings. One thing unites them: they are all dreamers. Tassell ventures all over the footballing map, from the giantkillers of Salford City to hungover cloggers on Hackney Marshes, interviewing obsessive groundhoppers, record-smashing goalscorers, dictatorial managers, ukulele-strumming fans and the captain of the Filipino national team. He makes extended stopovers at both new boys Tranmere Rovers looking for a speedy return to the Football League and the inhabitants of the `bottom corner' Bishop Sutton, who are just trying to get eleven men on a pitch. Hope and ambition. Triumph and tragedy. Faith and despair. All human life is here in the win-or-sink drama of non-league football.

Synopsis

Everyone loves an FA Cup upset: a smug Premier League team being knocked out by plucky underdogs. In these days of oligarch owners, superstar managers and players on sky-high wages, the tide is turning against the big teams as fans search for football with a soul. Enter non-league football - the heartland of the beautiful game. Nige Tassell spends a season among the characters who inhabit this world. The raffle-ticket seller who wants her ashes scattered in the centre-circle. The envelope salesman who discovered a future England international. The ex-pros still playing with undiluted passion on Sunday mornings. One thing unites them: they are all dreamers. Tassell ventures all over the footballing map, from the giantkillers of Salford City to hungover cloggers on Hackney Marshes, interviewing obsessive groundhoppers, record-smashing goalscorers, dictatorial managers, ukulele-strumming fans and the captain of the Filipino national team. He makes extended stopovers at both new boys Tranmere Rovers looking for a speedy return to the Football League and the inhabitants of the `bottom corner' Bishop Sutton, who are just trying to get eleven men on a pitch. Hope and ambition. Triumph and tragedy. Faith and despair. All human life is here in the win-or-sink drama of non-league football.

$14.86

Save:$2.75 (16%)

Quantity

Temporarily out of stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Edition: UK ed.
Publisher: Yellow Jersey
Published: 06 Oct 2016
ISBN 10: 0224100599
ISBN 13: 9780224100595
Book Overview: This is the bottom corner - the forlorn but never unloved non-league teams who represent the heartland of football. Nige Tassell explores the people and the stories that are the real soul of football

Media Reviews

Warm and celebratory but also sharp and insightful, The Bottom Corner is a love letter to non-league football that is also a vivid snapshot of its place in our national life -- Stuart Maconie
Not since The Football Man has a book so captured the passion of the game. The Bottom Corner is a wonderful journey through life in the lower reaches of the football pyramid. A fascinating tale of a very different world of football from that of the overpaid stars of the television age. -- Barry Davies
Extraordinary -- Danny Baker
Excellent -- Andrew Collins (Classic FM, UKTV, Radio Times)
An entertaining exploration of the quirks, commitment and romance of football away from the pumped-up bluster of the top flight. -- Ed Wilson * When Saturday Comes *

Author Bio

Nige Tassell writes about sport and music, and his work has appeared in the pages of FourFourTwo, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Esquire, New Statesman, Q and The Word. He is also the author of Mr Gig: One Man's Search For The Soul Of Live Music. He lives in the hill country of Somerset with his wife and two prospective future non-league players.