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The Rivals Game: Inside the British Derby

The Rivals Game: Inside the British Derby

by Douglas Beattie (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2008

    $5.79
Synopsis

Why do football fans choose one club over another in cities where intense, deep-seated rivalries exist? What makes them choose: family ties, politics, religion, race? 'Rivals Game' author Douglas Beattie spent two years getting underneath at Britain's biggest derbies to discover the answers and encover the history of football's fiercest rivalries. Beattie takes the reader to those matches that are regularly built up by the media as passionate, divisive and vitally important for the entire cities they are played in. These are the games that have a history of violence, fueds, social unrest and bigotry. But what is the truth about the origins behind these entrenched rivalries? And how does the enmity, so often displayed by supporters and, gleefully, by the media, reveal itself in modern times?With divisions going back as far as the English Civil War and preconceptions - mostly wrong - littering the landscape, Douglas visited Sheffield, Birmingham, north London, Manchester, Liverpool, the north east, Edinburgh and Glasgow to discover the answer to question such as, why do the citizens of Sheffield call each other 'Pigs', who was Wallace Mercer, the man who divided Edinburgh, what is it like to spend a day with Birmingham City's Zulu hooligans, why do the theme tune of 'Z Cars' and a banana loom large in the history of the supposed 'friendly' Merseyside derby, and who really eats prawn sandwiches in Manchester?

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 218
 Publisher: Know the Score Books
Published: 14 Apr 2008
ISBN 10: 1905449798
ISBN 13: 9781905449798

Media Reviews
There is a big piece of brain behind the brawn in this book my friends... It is a cracking yarn... If you want to read a little bit more about football culture and a little bit about the way it really ticks and I think what probably really drives people to sort of derby madness and derby day mayhem, get hold of Douglas Beattie's book - Steve Bunce, BBC London Sports Show. --- Beattie gets a flavour for each rivalry, often accurately pinpointing the mentality of the two groups of fans. - Jon Crampin, FourFourTwo. --- I loved this book... Football fans will love it, it gets right to the heart of why people choose their clubs and what these cities are like to live in ... I doubt a finer football book has been written about the game in Britain... Cover to cover a cracking read. - www.booksunlimited.ie. --- Beattie combines excellent reportage with a great deal of deftly rendered (and appropriately acknowledged) history to reveal that some of the most prolonged rifts have their roots in the actions of historical individuals. - Andrew Baker, The Telegraph. --- 'The Rivals Game' offers a great deal for both partisan and impartial lovers of the not-always-beautiful game. - Simon Redfern, The Independent. --- What Beattie has produced is an intelligent and well written insight into the eight biggest derbies in British football - it does afford Beattie the opportunity to pack the book with information to entertain and interest the reader - there is also plenty of humour. - When Saturday Comes. --- It's a real fans' book, that's exactly what it is. Reading about the reasons why you support one team or another, or you are passionate about one team or another, it brought it all home to me and it made sense. - Dotun Adebayo, Radio 5Live.
Author Bio
Douglas Beattie is an award-winning BBC news journalist (Sony Gold radio award for coverage of the London 7/7 bombings on Radio 4 six o'clock news). He regularly works for BBC Radio 5Live and Radio 4 and has also worked with the UK Press Association, Scottish Television's political unit and has covered football for the Daily Record newspaper, the biggest selling tabloid in Scotland.He has been a passionate football fan since a wee bairn, despite the fact that his earliest memory is of Scotland's disastrous 1978 World up campaign.Asked why he wanted to write this book, Douglas said he had always been interested in derby matches and the way they divide communities. I wanted to find out what made them special, how the clubs are different and why people choose to identify with one club and hate the other in the same city.