Tales From the Boot Camps by Steve Claridge

by Steve; Ridley Ian Claridge

The biography of Steve Claridge, as much a story of a Midlands cult hero as a vivid portrait of life in the lower divisions of English football..Away from the glamour and wall-to-wall coverage of the Premiership lies the reality, for the majority of fans and players, of British football. From Claridge's early days with non-league Weymouth, to the Premiership with Leicester, and back to First-Division Portsmouth, TALES FROM THE BOOT CAMPS spans the lows of irregular salary payments and training sessions on dog-fouled carparks at Aldershot, and the highs of the last-minute win in a First Division play-off at Wembley, and on to the Premiership. Controversial, itinerant, but popular wherever he has played, Claridge also talks frankly about his addiction to gambling. Part biography, part autobiography, it is full of insight and dry wit, a unique portrait of British football.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published March 20, 1997

Reviews

[Stan Barker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Purchased this in 1998 knowing Steve was to be speaking at the monthly football referee society meet (of which I was briefly a member). Called in last minute for a pre-event meal with him I dashed straight from uni and forgot the book so never got it signed. Don't remember much about the meal or the meeting and to be honest this book might start off interesting with the YTS years, it's about as insightful or entertaining as paint drying.

[Jonny Brick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eccentic striker tells it how it was and how it is. It reads like a history lesson in how football used to be. Expertly ghosted by Ian Ridley.

[Garrie Fletcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a great book by any stretch of the imagination and if you're not into football you'd probably struggle to give it two stars, so why did I give it three? Well, I was cursed, in my early twenties by visiting St Andrews football ground in the mid nineties where I saw Steve Claridge play for Birmingham City. This had a profound impact upon my life changing me from someone who would occasionally watch the England football team into someone who actually followed a team in the football league, I became a Birmingham City supporter (which I still am) and a huge fan of Steve Claridge our maverick striker. Steve has lead a very interesting life from being taken on, and then let go, as an apprentice at Portsmouth to scoring the winning goal in the cup for Leicester City. He has scored in every division of the English game, gone through periods of despair and joy in equal measure but has remained an affable character that no one will say a bad word about. The book is co-written with Ian Ridley and this is where I think the book fails. Ridley is a sports writer, not someone I'm familiar with but he writes in a succinct, matter of fact way akin to what you'd find in the sports pages of any of the UK's broadsheets. Steve has lead an incredibly interesting life and has enough peculiarities to keep a psychiatry conference going for months and yet Ridley makes it sound dull. The book alternates between Ridley explaining a part of Claridge's life and then in the following chapter Claridge telling you about it in his own words. For me this just doesn't work. I found myself constantly having flashes of deja vu. It could have been a much better book if it was delivered as a whole rather than two halves. Ridley should have taken Claridges story and woven a compelling narrative from it because there's tons of great stuff in there, rotten turkeys for Christmas bonuses, punching mangers, blowing £5000 at the bookies in an afternoon and arguing with Barry Fry. Still, pushing this to one side for a moment I think this book gives you a great insight into the life of a typical footballer, not the million pound plus stars of the Premier league, although Claridge did play there with Leicester but the majority of guys that struggle to make ends meet in the lower leagues and maybe, like Steve, flog fruit and veg from the back of their cars to make ends meet. I would strongly suggest that any young man thinking of embarking upon a career in football read this book, it just might change their mind but I doubt it.

[Gary K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stories from a journeyman’s career