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Small Time: A Life in the Football Wilderness
In 1988, 23-year-old American goalkeeper Justin Bryant thought a glorious career in professional football awaited him. He had just saved two penalties for his American club - the Orlando Lions - against Scotland's Dunfermline Athletic, to help claim the first piece of silverware in their history. He was young, strong, healthy, and confident. But professional football, he found, is rarely easy. Small Time is the story of a life spent mostly in the backwaters of the game. As Justin negotiated the Non-League pitches of the Vauxhall-Opel League, and the many failed professional leagues of the U.S. in the 1980s and 90s, he struggled not only with his game, but his physical and mental health. Battling stress, social anxiety, a mysterious stomach ailment, and simple bad luck, he nonetheless experienced fleeting moments of triumph that no amount of money can buy. Football, he learned, is 95% blood, sweat, and tears; but if you love it enough, the other 5% makes up for it.
174 pages, Paperback
First published June 19, 2013
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About the author
Justin Bryant
3 books9 followersJustin Bryant was born in Melbourne, Florida, on August 24, 1966. He is a former professional soccer player and now a writer who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 3, 2017
Great book. I wolfed it down in less than two days. As a lover of both autobiographies and football, I knew I would enoy this book from the start. I personally don't think Justin Bryant experienced the football wilderness the book cover led me to believe..at least not in a modern sense. I was expecting to read an account of his many seasons playing in the lower leagues in his native USA as well as England, which didn't exactly eventuate as I imagined. However, I was mesmerised by Justin's honest and fresh narrative. I drew many parallels with my own experience of stress and expectations management as they relate to both sport and personal life. The beauty of this story is that, although a clearly gifted goalkeeper, Justin is a fairly normal young man, no different from millions of others, with the same fears, insecurities, quirks and weaknesses. He is not afraid to openly discuss the reasons behind his shortcomings, and by doing so he gives us an opportunity to see the events as they unfolded, and maybe learn from his mistakes.
"Small time" is a book about growing up, finding oneself, pursuing dreams in the backdrop of the difficulties that life can throw at us and the love (as well as hate) for the beautiful game.
"Small time" is a book about growing up, finding oneself, pursuing dreams in the backdrop of the difficulties that life can throw at us and the love (as well as hate) for the beautiful game.
June 16, 2025
Very enjoyable (and relatable) read. The story of a player's difficult relationship with the game he loves, how it affects his life and his whole outlook, from the youngest days of trying to make it as a pro to then drifting through football's peripheries, establishing what it all means to him. Enjoyably understated narrative style – and you suspect neither his own nor his teammates' reported remarks have done justice to his goalkeeping talents. Bryant's cross-section of the game feels a lot more authentic than most football books that will get published.
May 13, 2015
Unknown American goalkeeper Justin Bryant begins his memoir in the middle of a nature reserve watching alligators, describing the “sheer improbability [of] these Jurassic river dragons”. That’s the first thing that strikes you about Bryant – he doesn’t need a ghost-writer. And he’d be the first to admit that’s just as well, because his football career didn’t pay him enough to afford one.
There have been a good number of books by lower level players in recent years describing the nitty-gritty of life at the game’s hard end, and long may struggling ex-pros continue to counter the egregious banality of the mailed-in Premier League star man’s cynical tome, hacked out in a few days for a six-figure advance. ‘Small Time’ is an excellent prototype for any former player with a good story to tell. Bryant is honest, thoughtful, economic, and introspective enough to realise his own shortcomings as a player and a person.
Growing up a fan of the Tampa Bay Rowdies in the North American Soccer League, and idolising goalkeeper Winston Du Bose, Bryant becomes a decent high school goalkeeper and wins a scholarship to Radford University in Virginia. There his “sudden, terrible temper” during games wins him few friends, and his scholarship is rescinded because of low grades. He returns to Florida, “a college flameout with no job”, and starts to play for the Orlando Lions, a team of college and ex-pro players, including Du Bose. And from here on it’s a fragmented, frustrated career that takes him to places like Brentford, Borehamwood and Dunfermline Athletic, punctuated by spells back in Florida, all the time on low wages (if he gets paid at all), working supplementary menial jobs, and indulging in sporadic bouts of heavy drinking to drown his self-doubt.
While there are just enough glimpses of success and professional satisfaction to keep him motivated, Bryant’s career suffers because of his unwillingness to put in the extra training he knows is necessary to improve and impress, and because of his chronic pre-game nerves. His crippling fear of making an error and costing his team the game – a full-time burden that only a goalkeeper has to carry – leads to a debilitating, and undiagnosed, stomach condition that he carries with him for years, and which only subsides when he steps back from football. Making a comeback for the Lions in his 30s after being lured by the prospect of $50 a game just for sitting on the bench, Bryant suddenly finds he is the first choice keeper and writes: “My gut rippled with excitement and dread, a feeling I hadn’t had in years. Nothing about it was pleasant.” When he plays well, he’s above all else “relieved that I hadn’t made an idiot of myself”.
However, there’s far more to this book than the author’s insecurities. This is a finely written chronicle of butt-end semi-pro football, its moronic dressing-room culture, the tedium of travel, the philosophy of goalkeeping, the political perils of ever-changing coaches and team-mates, and the constant, pressing need to prove yourself, game after game, only to realise after several years that “being part of a team… apparently didn’t suit my personality”. Being a writer, though, clearly does.
(review first published in When Saturday Comes magazine)
There have been a good number of books by lower level players in recent years describing the nitty-gritty of life at the game’s hard end, and long may struggling ex-pros continue to counter the egregious banality of the mailed-in Premier League star man’s cynical tome, hacked out in a few days for a six-figure advance. ‘Small Time’ is an excellent prototype for any former player with a good story to tell. Bryant is honest, thoughtful, economic, and introspective enough to realise his own shortcomings as a player and a person.
Growing up a fan of the Tampa Bay Rowdies in the North American Soccer League, and idolising goalkeeper Winston Du Bose, Bryant becomes a decent high school goalkeeper and wins a scholarship to Radford University in Virginia. There his “sudden, terrible temper” during games wins him few friends, and his scholarship is rescinded because of low grades. He returns to Florida, “a college flameout with no job”, and starts to play for the Orlando Lions, a team of college and ex-pro players, including Du Bose. And from here on it’s a fragmented, frustrated career that takes him to places like Brentford, Borehamwood and Dunfermline Athletic, punctuated by spells back in Florida, all the time on low wages (if he gets paid at all), working supplementary menial jobs, and indulging in sporadic bouts of heavy drinking to drown his self-doubt.
While there are just enough glimpses of success and professional satisfaction to keep him motivated, Bryant’s career suffers because of his unwillingness to put in the extra training he knows is necessary to improve and impress, and because of his chronic pre-game nerves. His crippling fear of making an error and costing his team the game – a full-time burden that only a goalkeeper has to carry – leads to a debilitating, and undiagnosed, stomach condition that he carries with him for years, and which only subsides when he steps back from football. Making a comeback for the Lions in his 30s after being lured by the prospect of $50 a game just for sitting on the bench, Bryant suddenly finds he is the first choice keeper and writes: “My gut rippled with excitement and dread, a feeling I hadn’t had in years. Nothing about it was pleasant.” When he plays well, he’s above all else “relieved that I hadn’t made an idiot of myself”.
However, there’s far more to this book than the author’s insecurities. This is a finely written chronicle of butt-end semi-pro football, its moronic dressing-room culture, the tedium of travel, the philosophy of goalkeeping, the political perils of ever-changing coaches and team-mates, and the constant, pressing need to prove yourself, game after game, only to realise after several years that “being part of a team… apparently didn’t suit my personality”. Being a writer, though, clearly does.
(review first published in When Saturday Comes magazine)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews