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The Bromley Boys
In the late 1960s, Dave Roberts, like most teenage boys his age, was football mad.
276 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 18, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
January 30, 2019
The Bromley Boys: The True Story of Supporting the Worst Football Team in Britain, published in 2008, is an enormously enjoyable and nostalgic book by Dave Roberts in which he looks back on the 1969-1970 football season for non-league Bromley Football Club. In 1969 Dave Roberts was 14 years old and probably their most passionate and fanatical supporter.
There are a number of aspects that make The Bromley Boys: The True Story of Supporting the Worst Football Team in Britain so enjoyable: Dave himself is disarmingly frank about his fanaticism and his idiosyncratic personality, Bromley FC's horrendous form which means they finish the season bottom of the lowly Isthmian League, and also Dave's own heartwarming personal journey.
The Bromley Boys: The True Story of Supporting the Worst Football Team in Britain is very amusing and full of great pop culture references. I'm slightly younger than Dave but revelled in this aspect of the book.
In short, it's a wonderful book. If you like football you should read it, if you like well written memoirs you should read it, and if you like redemptive stories you should read it.
I adored it, and am proceeding straight on with Home and Away: Round Britain in Search of Non-League Football Nirvana, his follow up book which was published in 2016.
4/5
There are a number of aspects that make The Bromley Boys: The True Story of Supporting the Worst Football Team in Britain so enjoyable: Dave himself is disarmingly frank about his fanaticism and his idiosyncratic personality, Bromley FC's horrendous form which means they finish the season bottom of the lowly Isthmian League, and also Dave's own heartwarming personal journey.
The Bromley Boys: The True Story of Supporting the Worst Football Team in Britain is very amusing and full of great pop culture references. I'm slightly younger than Dave but revelled in this aspect of the book.
In short, it's a wonderful book. If you like football you should read it, if you like well written memoirs you should read it, and if you like redemptive stories you should read it.
I adored it, and am proceeding straight on with Home and Away: Round Britain in Search of Non-League Football Nirvana, his follow up book which was published in 2016.
4/5
August 23, 2024
Ah I see that yet again GR doesn't have the edition I read, so I'll settle for the only one they have.
If you think it’s tough at the top…you should try the bottom. This describes a labour of love, a story of untiring loyalty in the face of much adversity. It may not be scaling Everest or trekking to one of the Poles, but I’m sure the same sort of agonising inner turmoil must have felt like it for the adolescent author.
Part Hovis ad, Part Ealing comedy, this seems to be another story which can be filed under “quaint parochial charm”. This sees the author going back into the distant mists of time to a time of pre-decimalization and two points for a win, when men were men and bread was bread etc following his amateur football team right to the bitter end of the season.
This is a mildly interesting account, which only rarely bobs its head above a kind of sea of mediocrity, there was nothing about it to jolt it above a plodding recollection, no profound or original insights, just a safe journey down memory lane, which is fine, but I’d say this would only really appeal to those with a true obsession with football or indeed Bromley (who now enjoy life in the comparative heady heights of the fourth tier of English football).
If you think it’s tough at the top…you should try the bottom. This describes a labour of love, a story of untiring loyalty in the face of much adversity. It may not be scaling Everest or trekking to one of the Poles, but I’m sure the same sort of agonising inner turmoil must have felt like it for the adolescent author.
Part Hovis ad, Part Ealing comedy, this seems to be another story which can be filed under “quaint parochial charm”. This sees the author going back into the distant mists of time to a time of pre-decimalization and two points for a win, when men were men and bread was bread etc following his amateur football team right to the bitter end of the season.
This is a mildly interesting account, which only rarely bobs its head above a kind of sea of mediocrity, there was nothing about it to jolt it above a plodding recollection, no profound or original insights, just a safe journey down memory lane, which is fine, but I’d say this would only really appeal to those with a true obsession with football or indeed Bromley (who now enjoy life in the comparative heady heights of the fourth tier of English football).
March 19, 2018
Like Fever Pitch where the love interest is a football team. It's a very British football story - enduring a series of sporting failures with no happy ending, just lots of genuine self-effacing laughs at a very human obsession. It's a gently amusing tale, with some touching moments, but there's not much of a story here beyond the "diary of a football nerd". Only for those who absolutely love football or who live in Bromley.
February 26, 2013
Loved it. In most part a book about a non-league club having a horrible 69/70 season, in part about the author's life as a staunch Bromley supporter in his teen years (including getting kicked out of school but finding friends and a happier life at a new school) and by the end it's a commentary about supporting your team no matter what. It was funny but by the end rather touching as well.
September 13, 2022
The Bromley Boys By Dave Roberts
As a local boy to Bromley this book resonates with me, a long time supporter of Bromley FC for over 40 years witnessing many ups and downs of the club but thankfully never seeing them as poor as in this book.
It's a love story with football and a team with many lol moments not for everyone but if you are a fan of the beautiful game there is a lot to like here.
Worth your money and hard earned cash.
As a local boy to Bromley this book resonates with me, a long time supporter of Bromley FC for over 40 years witnessing many ups and downs of the club but thankfully never seeing them as poor as in this book.
It's a love story with football and a team with many lol moments not for everyone but if you are a fan of the beautiful game there is a lot to like here.
Worth your money and hard earned cash.
August 30, 2024
firmly 3 stars .. did not get sucked in and was subbing in ‘Footballer’ for every name … but was admittedly it was cute to read familiar places like Southborough Lane in print
February 3, 2017
This was hands down one of the best books I've read in the last 13 months (out of ~40). I liked it so much that I emailed the author to thank him for writing it - which is something I've never done before, ever. Bromley Boys was created with the perfect recipe: high levels of nostalgia, mixed in with a lot of football, a dash of 1970s pop culture and an ounce or two of irreverent self-irony. It tells the story of young Dave Roberts and his love affair with The Bromley Boys, a hopeless non-League football team (the worst football team in Britain as they are often referred to) made up of average Joes who, in the eyes of teenage Dave, become real life heroes. During the course of events, one can't help but falling in love with Dave and his passion, dedication for the team but also his naivety, awkwardness and penchant for turning the various Alan Stonebridge, Roy Petter and Alan Soper into the Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard and Joe Hart of the day!
Hiding after hiding, Dave continues to follow Bromley FC to both home and away matches, making a number of friends in the process.
How will Bromley FC's season end? Read on and find out!
Hiding after hiding, Dave continues to follow Bromley FC to both home and away matches, making a number of friends in the process.
How will Bromley FC's season end? Read on and find out!
August 24, 2024
As a Bromley supporter of more recent convert I thought I would read Robert's account of the days when things were far different at Hayes Lane and we were one of the worst teams in the country.
Hayes Lane is now unrecognisable from the 69/70 season but there is a Dave Roberts Tea Hut in commemoration of his writing and his days managing the tea urn.
The book is a solid account of a terrible season as observed by the 14 year old Roberts and includes some context with his own experiences at three different schools in one academic year and as a terrible amateur footballer playing with a dreadful men's team. It is funny in places and nostalgic in others but largely is a telling of how the season got worse and worse as they competed for bottom place with Corinthian Casuals.
It's an interesting read but suspect for non Bromley fans it won't have too much to recommend it.
Hayes Lane is now unrecognisable from the 69/70 season but there is a Dave Roberts Tea Hut in commemoration of his writing and his days managing the tea urn.
The book is a solid account of a terrible season as observed by the 14 year old Roberts and includes some context with his own experiences at three different schools in one academic year and as a terrible amateur footballer playing with a dreadful men's team. It is funny in places and nostalgic in others but largely is a telling of how the season got worse and worse as they competed for bottom place with Corinthian Casuals.
It's an interesting read but suspect for non Bromley fans it won't have too much to recommend it.
December 5, 2019
Loved the Film Loved the book even more
I learned about this book just over a week ago when I bumped into the forward Bobby Lennox (who featured in the 1970 squad) while putting out my rubbish.
He started to tell me about this unsuccessful football team he played in and how this story of failure had been made into a book and film. Intrigued I downloaded the film and loved the fact that devotion was more important than success. The book is more focussed on football and Dave Roberts unwavering support through thick and thin and his highly amusing coming of age. Anyone who has been on the fringes, who has never fully fitted in or been traditionally successful will feel empathy with Dave.
I learned about this book just over a week ago when I bumped into the forward Bobby Lennox (who featured in the 1970 squad) while putting out my rubbish.
He started to tell me about this unsuccessful football team he played in and how this story of failure had been made into a book and film. Intrigued I downloaded the film and loved the fact that devotion was more important than success. The book is more focussed on football and Dave Roberts unwavering support through thick and thin and his highly amusing coming of age. Anyone who has been on the fringes, who has never fully fitted in or been traditionally successful will feel empathy with Dave.
February 8, 2019
More about the trials of growing up than about football. Paints a good picture of just how crap it can be to be fixated on something that your hormones won't allow you to see for what it really is. Although I enjoyed it I have to be honest and say it took a little bit of time to get into - the first 40 pages or so are not particularly well-written nor interesting but as the football season progresses and Dave faces more and more adolescent hills and mountains the book gathers momentum and gets the pages turning. A gentle, wistful memoir of a different era: I mean, what parents today would let their young son get lifts from adult men they had met at the football?
January 7, 2019
Granted my team, Dunfermline Athletic, were nowhere near as low down the pyramid as Bromley but I feel the pain and occasional, well less than often, joy. I have seen my club go through bad spells, including over three months without a win and when they broke that barren spell, I celebrated like we had won the world cup. This will appeal to older fans who lived for 3pm on a Saturday or 7.30pm on a Tuesday or Wednesday. The result on Saturday would set the mood for the remainder of the weekend. Great book.
Ray Smillie
Ray Smillie
June 2, 2020
Being brought up in Bromley and having followed the team in the mid to late 70's this book was a little before my time there but it meant I was always going to read this. Adolescent obsessions though cross enough boundaries to make this an accessible read for anyone willing to admit to the same in their/our past. Great fun.
July 18, 2021
Brilliant
Funny and refreshing !memoir of supporting a non league team as a teenager the obsessive compulsion to watch every game and how those results affected his life great read
Funny and refreshing !memoir of supporting a non league team as a teenager the obsessive compulsion to watch every game and how those results affected his life great read
November 24, 2021
A very British story of passion, underdogs and blind optimism. Now a movie.
February 22, 2022
Full of nostalgia, passion and pure love for a terrible team. This was a wonderful entertaining read
August 15, 2024
Nice and easy
This is such a good Story .. Grass roots Football at its Finnest. True Support for Your Local club no matter how bad it gets . Great read
This is such a good Story .. Grass roots Football at its Finnest. True Support for Your Local club no matter how bad it gets . Great read
November 26, 2025
A book which was far better than the movie. As with all of his books, it's well written and really funny. A great book
December 28, 2011
Most football fans (except my brother, who refuses to have anything to do with anything that has anything to do with the Arsenal) will have read Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. It's the definitive book on what it's like to be a bloke who also supports a football team. It's also quite funny. It influenced every subsequent book about what it's like to be a football supporter. It also gave birth to a genre of writing that was subsequently termed 'lad lit'. Despite its imitators, nothing has been as good as Fever Pitch. Until now.
Okay, Dave Roberts may not be in the same literary class as Nick Hornby. But The Bromley Boys (billed as 'the true story of supporting the worst team in Britain') is well written enough, and it captures absolutely to a T what it is like to be a pre-pubescent football-mad boy. It is also laugh-out-loud funny.
The book takes us back to the 1969–70 season. Dave Roberts was 14 years old, a slightly tubby child with unflattering collar-length hair and a voice that hadn't yet broken. Dave took up supporting Bromley because they played a short walk from his house and his parents wouldn't let him go to watch West Ham on his own. As the new season loomed, 14-year-old Dave was feeling confident about Bromley's prospects. The previous season had been a 'pretty good one' (they had finished 17th out of 20 in the Isthmian League) and, on the strength of the team having actually taken a 1–0 lead in a pre-season friendly against a West Ham reserve team (they eventually lost 1–3) Dave was predicting a top-five finish.
We know better. The book is a catalogue of the weekly humiliation suffered at the feet of such teams as Wealdstone, Kingstonian and the mighty Barking. None of these defeats dents young Dave's enthusiasm or dogged support for his team (although he does call for the resignation of the team's manager, sporting an 'Ellis Must Go' t-shirt to a match in one of the book's early hilarious episodes).
Just as I did (did every kid do this?) Dave takes his football boots to matches, just in case one of the players doesn't turn up and an urgent appeal goes out for a replacement from among the supporters. He longs for the day when he will be allowed to watch a match from the Supporters Club hut.
As a sub-plot to the football, Dave also recounts with equal humour his problems at school and the start of his journey to adulthood. But throughout the book, it is the football that takes pride of place. And although the team I supported in the 1960s were then and still are one of the top teams in the country, my experiences of being a football supporter at the time are almost identical to Dave's. It's a universal condition, it seems. Dave Roberts' memoir will strike a chord with every football supporter, whichever team they follow.
The Bromley Boys is a real treat. The fact that it is not a book about a top-class football team is a plus point, too. Because Bromley Football Club aren't big enough to be disliked by supporters of other football clubs the book will even appeal to the most partisan of supporters (like my brother). And, best of all, The Bromley Boys is a hilariously funny read.
Okay, Dave Roberts may not be in the same literary class as Nick Hornby. But The Bromley Boys (billed as 'the true story of supporting the worst team in Britain') is well written enough, and it captures absolutely to a T what it is like to be a pre-pubescent football-mad boy. It is also laugh-out-loud funny.
The book takes us back to the 1969–70 season. Dave Roberts was 14 years old, a slightly tubby child with unflattering collar-length hair and a voice that hadn't yet broken. Dave took up supporting Bromley because they played a short walk from his house and his parents wouldn't let him go to watch West Ham on his own. As the new season loomed, 14-year-old Dave was feeling confident about Bromley's prospects. The previous season had been a 'pretty good one' (they had finished 17th out of 20 in the Isthmian League) and, on the strength of the team having actually taken a 1–0 lead in a pre-season friendly against a West Ham reserve team (they eventually lost 1–3) Dave was predicting a top-five finish.
We know better. The book is a catalogue of the weekly humiliation suffered at the feet of such teams as Wealdstone, Kingstonian and the mighty Barking. None of these defeats dents young Dave's enthusiasm or dogged support for his team (although he does call for the resignation of the team's manager, sporting an 'Ellis Must Go' t-shirt to a match in one of the book's early hilarious episodes).
Just as I did (did every kid do this?) Dave takes his football boots to matches, just in case one of the players doesn't turn up and an urgent appeal goes out for a replacement from among the supporters. He longs for the day when he will be allowed to watch a match from the Supporters Club hut.
As a sub-plot to the football, Dave also recounts with equal humour his problems at school and the start of his journey to adulthood. But throughout the book, it is the football that takes pride of place. And although the team I supported in the 1960s were then and still are one of the top teams in the country, my experiences of being a football supporter at the time are almost identical to Dave's. It's a universal condition, it seems. Dave Roberts' memoir will strike a chord with every football supporter, whichever team they follow.
The Bromley Boys is a real treat. The fact that it is not a book about a top-class football team is a plus point, too. Because Bromley Football Club aren't big enough to be disliked by supporters of other football clubs the book will even appeal to the most partisan of supporters (like my brother). And, best of all, The Bromley Boys is a hilariously funny read.
January 13, 2016
Have dipped in and out of this when it really deserved my full attention. Probably the funniest and best written football books out. Written from a personal recollection of being a teenager in the 70's and supporting Bromley FC during their worst season ever in the Isthmian league in 1969/70. On a par with Nick Hornby's "Fever Pitch" - if not funnier for the fact that most games ended in defeat and for the dogged belief in winning the next game! Loved it so much I might go down and watch the current Bromley FC - altogether a completely different animal.....
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 12, 2016
Childhood Memories
A well written memoirs about the love and relationship between an adolescent boy and his football club. Being a Non-League team, the commitment and camaraderie knows no bounds as he recalls life as one of the "inner circle". Provoking many personal memories for me, this is a very good read. My only reason for only giving 4 stars is because I'd never give 5 !!
A well written memoirs about the love and relationship between an adolescent boy and his football club. Being a Non-League team, the commitment and camaraderie knows no bounds as he recalls life as one of the "inner circle". Provoking many personal memories for me, this is a very good read. My only reason for only giving 4 stars is because I'd never give 5 !!
June 25, 2012
The story of One boys obsession with his local non league Football team in their worsed ever season 1969/70.
The author provides a nice account of an obsessive 14 year old, following Bromley home and away, as well as school, Subbuteo,TV,girls, and anything else that entertained in 1969.
The author provides a nice account of an obsessive 14 year old, following Bromley home and away, as well as school, Subbuteo,TV,girls, and anything else that entertained in 1969.
January 24, 2019
Entertaining
A book many football supporters of the lower and non league clubs can relate to! Entertaining and makes you realise there are others out there that share the pain!
A book many football supporters of the lower and non league clubs can relate to! Entertaining and makes you realise there are others out there that share the pain!
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews