Black Boots and Football Pinks: 50 Lost Wonders of the Beautiful Game

by Daniel Gray

A collection of lyrical sweet-nothings whispered to old-fashioned wingers, ramshackle dugouts, multiple cup replays and 47 other wonders that made us love football.Goalkeepers in trousers, proper division names, turf patterns, pixelated scoreboards and, of course, Saturday evening pink newspapers... They were the gritty stardust that made football sparkle.Here, 50 such wonders are drawn together with evocative charm before they slip from memory forever. Dedicating a chapter to each wonder, Daniel Gray's pieces read more like love letters than essays. Here is a sentimental meander beneath main-stand clocks and through streets where children still play football. Written in the same wistful and whimsical style as Gray's much-admired previous book, Saturday, 3pm, the unashamedly nostalgic Black Boots and Football Pinks will warm the heart and prompt fond sighs of recognition. Gray's words preserve on paper the relics and minutiae of a shared obsession and identity. They make yesterday's football feel within touching distance, and offer cosy refuge from a boisterous game and world.

Genres: Football, Sports, Nonfiction, History

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 4, 2018

Reviews

[Joe O'Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short compendium of essays on the football world of yesteryear, but an utterly delightful one.

In “Black Boots & Football Pinks”, Daniel Gray has composed 50 short pieces on items, events, accoutrements and paraphernalia that represented the experience of being a British
football fan during the 20th century. These vignettes describe the oddities and idiosyncrasies that made football so compelling and unpredictable but which, if they haven’t already disappeared already, are sadly fading from view. Gray conjures a world of matches being abandoned in Dickensian-fogs, goalkeepers wearing long johns and caps, ‘one-club-men’, grounds with ramshackle dugouts and huts on stand roofs, and the titular ‘pink’ football evening papers.

Daniel Gray can inject majesty and wonder into what might at first appear to be the most mundane of objects. An archetypal example is Gray’s elegy for old-style turnstiles at football grounds, with the turnstile operator “shrouded ... as if he or she were a priest about to take confession” above the melodious “rat-a-tat-tat and clack” turnstile sounds (Gray laments their passing, remarking “the buzz of an automatic barcode entrance is like replacing birdsong with a fire alarm”).

“Black Boots & Football Pinks” is full of beautifully-written passages like this, Gray being an immensely lyrical writer even when discussing topics as seemingly humdrum as the football sections on Ceefax and Teletext, the smell of cigarette smoke on matchdays, or the private lives of provincial referees. These mini-essays are a throwback to what was a grittier, less-sanitised, yet “more characterful and less homogenous version of football”. While Daniel Gray is wistful about what football fans have lost now that “much spontaneous charm (has been) managed, restructured or financed out of existence”, he does so without ever once being bitter or reactionary.

Wonderfully-crafted and often hilariously funny, “Black Boots and Football Pinks” is a hugely evocative book about what it was like to be a football fan before the game was corporatized, containing an undertow of sadness for these lost worlds.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fifty more poetic gems from Daniel Gray, waxing lyrical on "lost wonders" of football. These are wonders of the everyday type, familiar to anyone who can remember football before the corporate takeover. His epistles are not rose-tinted, nor sugary but finding pleasure in the grime and smallness of the ordinary. He writes like a man who's glass is (mostly) half-full, a useful antidote to the negativity and hotheadedness that most football coverage is obliged to take at present.

I am also glad that some of the things he misses can still be found on a Saturday at 3pm for those of us that follow our teams in the lower leagues. Ramshackle dugouts, matches played in fog, player brawls and one-club players are on the endangered list, but are still out there to be enjoyed. Lets appreciate these rare pleasures before they vanish completely.

Like Daniel's other books, a perfect stocking-filler.

[Rage · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Daniel Gray; I love the way he writes and thinks about football, and I've read every book on football he's written. I know that there's a disclaimer in the front about how this is going to be a Rose Tinted Look at old football, and we modern readers should take it with a pinch of salt - but unnecessarily salty is how a lot of it comes across as. As if there isn't anything to like about the modern game and that it has been summarily ruined when, really, it's just changed. We are all inevitably nostalgic for the kind of football we grew up with (already I miss the 2000s) but all the same the needless bitterness at present-day football put me off a little. That being said, excellently written book and at the points where it really is what it proclaims to be - a celebration of football - it is a joyous read.

[Hashim Alsughayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically, if you've read Daniel Gray's Saturday, 3pm, you don't need to read this one. I think, and I'm just guessing of course but this book contents were all of the ideas that didn't make the cut in the Saturday book but Gray wanted to publish them. Now that's fine if these ideas were worth publishing or even reading, but when you talk about the concept of bald football players, you would think that you are just running out of things to write about.

Having said that, I gave this book three stars because it did actually contain some funny and somewhat good ideas regarding the world of football. But I would always recommend reading Gray's Saturday, 3pm book first.

[Mari C.L. Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the celebration of the nostalgic elements, including those before my time, but could have done without some of the curmudgeonly elements (are youse really that bothered by colorful boots or do you just want to complain?). I also at times felt it was a bit disrespectful to non league: loads of these purportedly lost elements exist in earnest still.

[Ally Boyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those nostalgic for pre-millenium football with reverent nods to the love of the game and all its sights, sounds and memorabilia this is a must read. Written by a genuine fan who clearly revears the game and yearns for a meaningful time before State owned clubs, original ground names and a genuine connection to time and place.

[John Gannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of essays about 50 things that have almost vanished from football over the last 30 years, from black boots to one-club men.
I read it in one sitting, but it’s the kind of book you could keep dipping into.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has been reviewed by me for The Two Unfortunates website here.

[Peter D Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

A romantic review of times gone in the beautiful game. Aspects which I don't necessarily recall eventhough it was my era.

[Ipswichblade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok book about football history

[Alan Clements]

Bitesize nostalgia

Very brief chapters on each topic . If you want football nostalgia there's better books than this. Try one of Dave Roberts books instead

[Graeme Whitton · Rating 1 out of 5]

As someone who's watched football over several decades I'd guess this book is aimed firmly at me and people like me. I hated it. Over blown prose describing some mythical game that never existed.

[Samantha Keenan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting to get a glimpse into how soccer used to be, but mainly filled with complaints from a man unwilling to accept change.

[Paul Devall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbly funny. Definitely an artwork. Got it as a "stocking filler" from my Aunt who has only just stopped sending me birthday cards with a footballer on the front!

[Gary Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed several chapters in this book, but the author's lyrical waxing often drifts into fantasy. Is this Daniel Gray or Terry Pratchett via C.S. Lewis? It's no coincidence that one chapter references the mythical land of Narnia. In reality, some of the 50 lost wonders have never left us. Mobile phones replacing radios to facilitate 'Sharing The Scores From Elsewhere' is not a lost wonder. It's the same old song.

If Daniel believes calamitous own goals caused by intended back passes and 18-yard box scrambles culminating in glaring misses are things of the past, he's never watched a League One or League Two football match. Yes, most supporters (delusional or not) think they could do better. After all, it's not as if professional players practice football all week, year after year.

Another issue with the book is the lack of clarity about the era(s) the lost wonders of 'old' football belong to. Are they relics from the 1987/88 campaign, or were they also gazed upon by 'moustachioed Edwardians', 'nifty 60s schemers' and their 70s and 80s counterparts? Maybe black boots were the only option in 1988. If so, it's because brighter-coloured boots had temporarily fallen out of favour. In the 1970s, even defensive hard men like Liverpool's Tommy Smith laced up all-white or all-red boots. The notion that multi-coloured boots were unavailable before 1988 is a myth. Although, 'Mostly Black Boots and Football Pinks' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Nevertheless, some of the lost wonders struck a chord. Chapter three, 'Proper Division Names', deserves special praise. Having to tell one of the unbelievers that your team plays in League Two – when they clearly play in division four – still feels like an outright lie.

In a desire to record 'what is gone', Daniel has ignored what has arrived and often overlooked what hasn't changed at all. In 2018, a flying volley into the corner of the net was just as spectacular as in 1958 or 1988. No more heroes? Tell it to the Riverside.

[Dave McKee · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a collection of short eassys, Daniel Gray looks at 50 things that have gone from modern football.

This is the second of Gray's books I have read and while he writes very evocatively and conjours some wonderful memories, this doesn't quite hit the hights that Saturday, 3pm did.

I think my main issue with it is that I was expecting a real nostalgia trip, only to find a lot of what he talks about still very familiar to me at the level I watch football.

Enjoyable, if slightly underwhelming.