The Glory Game (Mainstream Sport)

Product Information

Half a century since Hunter Davies’ seminal book, The Glory Game, was first published, it remains one of football’s most revered tombs.

The Glory Game by Hunter Davies | Waterstones

In the 1971/72 season, Davies was granted unprecedented access to Tottenham boss Bill Nicholson and his 19-man first-team pool. With no official contract behind him, he admits to “worming my way in” at White Hart Lane, and convincing all those concerned that an “inside story” book charting Spurs’ season would be a worthwhile project. Football in the 1970s was a completely different beast, and that shows not only in the game and the style of play but the players and coaches themselves. As other people have pointed out, there is racism, there is homophobia, there is a lot of misogyny (Bill Nicholson doesn't let his wife go to games, for example). I hate to use the phrase 'a product of its time' and these things can't and shouldn't be excused. But I suppose they also have to be read in their context, which is contemporary attitudes and also Hunter Davies meticulously transcribing and noting down every single thing that happens. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.The lament for football’s lost golden age and the belief that commercial interests have sullied the game are nothing new – Willy Meisl’s 1960 book Soccer Revolution argues that the liberalisation of the offside law in 1925, which played to the popular demand for more goals, was the beginning of the end. However, Conn’s 2004 book is a heartfelt account of the increasingly rapid changes of the previous couple of decades. “It is deeply frustrating,” he writes, “seeing the national game revel in a boom, which could take it so far, yet drive itself so needlessly into dysfunction and failure.” The format. A season makes for a good story. The opportunity to explore different aspects of the club and the characters therein. You get to know people and care a little about them in human terms. I've enjoyed a few books that have taken this approach and this challenges my favourite which up until now has been I Lost My Heart to the Belles by Pete Davies where Davies once again showed himself to be a generation ahead of his time. When the first edition of The Glory Game was published in 1972, it was instantly hailed as the most insightful book about the life of a football club ever published. Hunter Davies was, and still is, the only author ever to be allowed into the inner sanctum of a top-level football team (Tottenham Hotspur) and his pen spared nothing and no one. 'His accuracy is sufficiently uncanny to be embarrassing,' wrote Bob Wilson in the New Statesman. 'Brilliant, vicious, unmerciful,' wrote The Sun.

The Glory Game by Hunter Davies | Goodreads

I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic is different. The Manchester United striker revels in his role as pantomime anti-hero, but goes deeper than mere Marmite pastiche. The searing honesty of how his relationship with Pep Guardiola disintegrated at Barcelona– which notably details how fragile that seemingly unshakable ego can actually be – is refreshing, as is how an unforgiving upbringing spending time between an overworked cleaner mother and indifferent alcoholic father shaped everything that followed. Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win. (Gary Lineker)a b c Davies, Hunter (28 June 2007). The Beatles, Football and Me. Headline Book Publishing. ISBN 978-0755314034.

Glory Game – My Eyes Have Seen The Glory The Glory Game – My Eyes Have Seen The Glory

I bought ‘ A Life in the Day' on a whim when it came up as an Audible deal of the day. The only other book I have read by Hunter Davies is ' The Glory Game', a brilliant study of a season embedded with Tottenham Hotspur FC in the early 1970s. Football is at the heart of every chapter here, but witnessed through the prism of the Sunday Telegraph football reporter’s experiences and life journey along the way. From a childhood spent face-down in the dirt at a rugby school –“I stared at the grass below and, as a heel lashed into my nose, I dreamt of the fruits of the outside world, Association Football”– to watching Pele and Garrincha light up the 1958 World Cup Final over a lovelorn female companion’s shoulder in a Paris café, Moynihan’s focus on events and fandom make this come alive. When the first edition of The Glory Game was published in 1972, it was instantly hailed as the most insightful book about the life of a football club ever published. Hunter Davies was, and still is, the only author ever to be allowed into the inner sanctum of a top-level football team (Tottenham Hotspur) and his pen spared nothing and no one. 'His accuracy is sufficiently uncanny to be embarrassing, ' wrote Bob Wilson in the New Statesman. 'Brilliant, vicious, unmerciful, ' wrote The Sun.His family moved to Carlisle in northern England when Davies was 11 and he attended the Creighton School in the city. Davies lived in Carlisle until he moved to study at university. During this time his father, who was a former Royal Air Force pay clerk, developed multiple sclerosis and had to retire on medical grounds from a civil service career. Something unexpectedly nice about the book is that there are no photographs. At the time it was written, most readers, especially Spurs fans, would have known what the players looked like. Now you realize them on a different and deeper level, as humans rather than an image. Through Hunter Davies’ descriptions, for example of Martin Chivers popping the plate with his front teeth out before games, you draw the characters in your own mind. When I talk about the soul, I mean the part of football that is more than business,” he continues. “The soul is the passion and the loyalty of fans, but it is also the joy to be found in playing the game. As other collective institutions disappear, football clubs are becoming an increasingly central part of people’s identity, and that’s why we see these heroic struggles to save clubs when they are threatened.” And to celebrate the 50th anniversary since The Glory Game came out, Well Offside photographer Mark Leech delves into the Offside Sports Photography Archive to dig out the pictures taken for the book. Much of the talk of great teams from Dynamo Moscow to Dynamo Kiev and Steaua Bucharest is repeated in Inverting the Pyramid, but it’s the people to whom Wilson speaks for this book that implore the reader to care about teams they may otherwise ignore. Each country, each club, is dealt with great tact.