Book Review: Birdsong on Holbeck Moor by Billy Morris

This is the third book from Billy Morris, with his debut novel Bournemouth 90 and its follow-up LS92 both reviewed on FBR. The first two are a mix of fact and fiction surrounding the events of Leeds United’s promotion clinching win down at Bournemouth in May 1990 and then picking up with both the club and some of the characters two years later.

For Birdsong on Holbeck Moor readers are taken back to the period in and around the First World War. As the author detailed in his interview with FBR the backdrop to the story is, “a time of upheaval in Leeds…the war is coming to an end, the Leeds Pals were virtually wiped out on the first day of the Somme and families are struggling to cope with the aftermath of that. There is rationing and food shortages and Spanish flu is ravaging the city; At Elland Road Leeds City are struggling to explain how they funded an influx of ‘guest’ players who enabled them to win the 1917/18 League Championship, at a time when match fixing was rife.”

Whereas in his first two books Morris was able to call on his own experiences to provide an authenticity to the writing, in this third book, the author has had to rely more on research about the period to provide the same effect, and once again he succeeds creating a realistic feeling of setting for Leeds in the late 1910’s for his crime fiction.

As ever the writing is tight within this book and Morris manages to juggle the various plotlines effectively. The football content is not as prominent within Birdsong on Holbeck but is an interesting take on events at Elland Road and the brief existence of Leeds City.

They were founded in 1904 and were elected to the Football League a year later and during the First World War became Midland League Champions. However, they were expelled from the Football League during the 1919/20 campaign for illegal payments to players. The Leeds named continued though when Leeds United were founded in 1919 and taking up residence at Elland Road.

The other plotlines centre on a some of the surviving Leeds Pals, back in the city after the war with both facing very different struggles. For Arthur Rowley he returns to Yorkshire traumatised and suffering from shell shock after his experiences in the trenches and struggling to deal with life. Whilst Frank Holleran, feted as a war hero, returns to his ‘businesses’ and finds himself and his family embroiled in a serious issue as a consequence.

Morris captures what must have been a difficult time for Leeds, those returning to it after the war, their families and indeed the city’s football team. The book maybe small in size but delivers a punch.

(Publisher: Independently published. October 2022. Paperback: 175 pages)

 

Buy the book here: Birdsong on Holbeck Moor

 

 

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BIRDSONG ON HOLBECK MOOR by Billy Morris

Autumn 1918. The Great War is drawing to an end and the troops are coming home. The Leeds Pals who survived the carnage of the Somme are returning to a city in the grip of a deadly pandemic, food rationing and unemployment.

In Armley, a war hero needs one more big score to settle a crippling underworld debt, but his illicit wartime schemes are over, and time is running out for Frank Holleran and his family.

Wartime champions Leeds City FC find themselves in the eye of a financial storm and struggle to remain a footballing force as the full league resumes.

Sports reporter Edgar Rowley is diverted from Elland Road to track an occult animal killer, while helping his brother to overcome his battlefield demons.

1919 is set to be a momentous year, but for some in Leeds, the consequences of their past actions will mean that it’s never going to be peaceful.

Dark, World War 1 crime fiction from the year that the City became United.

(Independent Publisher. October 2022. Paperback: 175 pages)

 

Buy the book here: Birdsong on Holbeck Moor

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Programme Review: 2022/23 Yorkshire Amateur AFC

Fixture: Toolstation Northern Counties East League (NCEL) Premier Division

Date: Tuesday 28 September 2022

Venue: Roxholme Road

Result: Yorkshire Amateur 0 (0) – (1) 3 Hemsworth Miners Welfare

Programme cost: £2.00

Pages: 20

Front cover

Leeds may have only one professional football club but has a host of clubs playing in the non-league system. Among them, is Yorkshire Amateur, a club based in the north east part of the city and less than three miles out of the centre.

The Ammers as they are nicknamed, were founded in 1918, but didn’t start playing matches until the following season. The club played at Elland Road after Leeds City FC were dissolved in 1919 due to financial irregularities. However, Yorkshire Amateur’s decided in 1920 to sell the lease to the newly formed Leeds United for just £250. The clubs have since has driven down very different paths, with Leeds United one of the best clubs in the country in the 1960s and ‘70s and now back in the Premier League. The Ammers meanwhile were founders of the Yorkshire League in 1920 playing in it until 1981/82 when it was merged with the Midland League to form the Northern Counties East League (NCEL).

Following the disrupted seasons in 2019/20 and 2020/21 due to the global pandemic, The Ammers were promoted to the Northern Premier League, East Division (Step 4 of the National League System), their highest ever playing level. Despite a respectable mid-table finish, the club was relegated back to the NCEL due to failing ground grading. This led to major changes to the club both on and off the pitch.

With so much upheaval it has not been an easy start to the 2022/23 campaign for the Roxholme Road team. Coming into this fixture they were bottom of the league after nine games, having won just one game, drawn one, with seven losses and suffered early exits in both the FA Cup and FA Vase. Despite all this and with crowds averaging just 77 from their five home games, it was great to see that The Ammers produce a physical programme (and it should be noted provided a link on their website to a free pdf version).

Back cover

The 20 page offering is as most non-league programmes tend to be A5 size and printed on glossy paper and in colour throughout. The cover is of a thicker material to the inner pages and has the club nickname splashed large across the front with the usual match details – opposition, club badges, date, league logo and additionally the FA club accreditation badge. It also has the image of one of the Ammers players.

Inside, page 2 provides a “Welcome to Ammers” with a brief mention of the recent defeat to Barton Town and the standard greeting to the visiting players, fans and officials. It is unfortunate that it contains a couple of typos including opening with “Good afternoon” despite this being an evening fixture. Page 3 is taken up with the league sponsor’s advert, leading into a double page spread (pages 4 & 5) dedicated to the “Club History”. It is in the main an interesting read for those unfamiliar with the Ammers story, but once again contains typos and provides no real update of the Club since 2007/08 which is a real shame. Pages 6 & 7 contain headshots of the current squad, with the manager allocated pages 8 & 9. Page 8 is completely taken up with a picture of Mark Maspero, with page 9 “Ammers Challenge” notes from the manager with an honest appraisal of the teams current plight acknowledging, “we have a very young side with an abundance of technical ability, but very little league experience.” The centrespread (pages 10 & 11) are given over to the fixture list and results, with the next two given over to a history of the visitors Hemsworth Miners Welfare. This material is provided by the opposition and suffers from a lack of proofreading as a number of typos are evident. Pages 14 & 15 are given over to the NCEL Premier Division table, with page 16 advertising the next home game and page 17 providing brief details about the club set-up. Page 18 is a simple “Thank You for Your Support” and the penultimate page is given over to an advert for the Football Foundation. The back cover is dominated by the club badge, with additional details including the ground address, club twitter details and logos for league sponsor Toolstation and FA club accreditation.

The club is to be praised for producing a physical copy, which is well designed, has some cracking graphics and is in full colour. However, where it falls down is that it suffers from a number of easily avoided typos and a lack of content with too many pages just large graphics simply describing the facing page (i.e. fixtures and league table). Eradicating these typos will help improve the read as well as the addition of more content, which can be provided by for instance the Non-League Paper (and can be requested by contacting sam.emery@greenwaypublishing.com) who will produce a free weekly column, as well as sites like ourselves who are happy to provide free content.

The Ammers are going through a tough transition after the trauma of relegation and the impact on the club, but one can only hope that there are better times around the corner in this part of Leeds.

Website: https://ammers.co.uk/

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Book Review: Leeds United – A History by Dave Tomlinson

The press release with this book declares, “Leeds United: A History…relates the complete and definitive history of the club from foundation to the present day”. It is quite a bold statement from the publisher and is therefore worth scrutiny.

The book does indeed detail the history of Leeds City, from 1904 until its expulsion from the Football League during the 1919/20 season and then picks up the story of the birth of Leeds United from 1919 to the present day, including the glory years under Don Revie to the chaos of the Cellino reign. However, given that the book extends to just 159 pages, it means that it would be more fair to consider the book a concise history of the club, since some seasons are detailed in a couple of paragraphs, indeed 1993/94 is covered in just five lines.

The book is essentially a season-by-season review of the on and off field goings-on at Elland Road, but then changes format for sections of Chapter 11 – Wilderness Years 1982 – 90 and Chapter 14 – Chasing the Dream 1996-2002, where events are looked at under the reigns of various managers. Why the change? For consistency it would have made sense to either continue season-by-season or have classification by manager from the beginning.

Undoubtedly there is a great deal of research that has gone into the book from author Dave Tomlinson, emanating from his excellent website Mighty Whites (www.mightyleeds.co.uk). Nonetheless, the restraint on the book size means that often the details of a season are kept to a minimum with facts such as, transfers in and out, leading scorers, average attendances and key games the common topics. Overall, this gives the feeling that there are not enough ‘nuggets’, such as the proposed amalgamation of Huddersfield Town with Leeds in November 1919, within its pages.

Despite this, Tomlinson is able to get across the idea that the life of a Leeds supporter then and now has always been, “dogged by a cycle of brave new dawns that inevitably give way in a resigned shudder to a disaster even grimmer than the last.” Indeed the last chapter, Take Over My A***! 2012-15 is perfectly pitched as the focus is about all the shenanigans behind the scenes and not those on the pitch.

At the time the book was published in August 2015, Uwe Rosler was in the managerial seat. Now just three months on, Rosler has gone, Steve Evans has come in and Chairman Massimo Cellino first agrees to sell his shares to the Leeds Fans United, before doing a U-turn and reneging on his word.

As Tomlinson prophetically says in the closing lines of the book, “only time would tell whether Rosler would be given longer to prove his managerial worth than the four men that had already been victims of Cellino’s whimsical moods. A period of stability was an absolute necessity for Leeds United as it once more set course on a voyage into the unknown.”

 

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