BOURNEMOUTH 90 by Billy Morris
It’s April 1990 and the world is changing. Margaret Thatcher clings to power in the face of poll tax protests, prison riots and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. The Berlin wall has fallen, South Africa’s Apartheid government is crumbling and in the Middle East Saddam Hussein is flexing his muscles, while Iran is still trying to behead Salman Rushdie.
In Leeds, United are closing in on a long-awaited return to the first division. Neil Yardsley is heading home after three years away and hoping to go straight.
That’s the plan, but Neil finds himself being drawn back into a world of football violence and finds a brother up to his neck in the drug culture of the rave scene. Dark family secrets bubble to the surface as Neil tries to help his brother dodge a gangland death sentence, while struggling to keep his own head above water in a city that no longer feels like home.
The pressure is building with all roads leading to the south coast, and a final reckoning on a red-hot Bank Holiday weekend in Bournemouth that no one will ever forget.
Dark, uncompromising crime fiction from a time when it was still grim up north.
Read our review here: Book Review: B (footballbookreviews.com)
(Publisher: Independently published. August 2021. Paperback: 191 pages)
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The fourth novel from author Texi Smith tells the story of Anna Black, a product of suburban Sydney’s large grassroots soccer clubs who blossoms into being a local star turning out for Australia’s biggest W-League clubs, and a regular starter with the Matildas. Anna Black – This girl can play charts Anna’s football journey culminating in the Matildas reaching the final of the 2023 World Cup on home soil and a move to the USA, as well as her life journey as she discovers that falling head-over-heels – something she thought was not for her – can and does happen.
In the third instalment of the Jarrod Black series of ‘unashamed football novels’, the Australian journeyman footballer, Jarrod Black, finds himself on national team duty, running out on to his field of dreams, and caught up in a situation not of his making.
Australian midfielder Jarrod Black is a Football League player in England, plying his trade in a team gunning for promotion.
Aussie midfielder Jarrod Black is a successful player in the English Football League.
Football changed in the 1990s. For better, for worse – but mainly for better. The shirts and shorts got baggier and brighter. Exotic-named players were enticed from overseas. New stadiums were built in the wake of the Taylor Report. The Premier League emerged, and England hosted its first international tournament since 1966. The era of ‘New Labour’ and ‘Cool Britannia’. It was the decade English football went mainstream.
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Robin Friday dreams of being a professional footballer: rejection, drugs, borstal, and a near-fatal industrial accident won’t stop him.
Robin Friday was an exceptional footballer who should have played for England. He never did.