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Snapshot: Scenes and stories from the heartlands of Scottish football
From the lonely pitches of Eriskay to the great stadiums of our cities, Snapshot! captures the gritty, alluring essence of Scotland’s national game.
Alan McCredie’s photographs combine with Daniel Gray’s words to accompany the reader on a charismatic tour of Scottish football from Selkirk to Stornoway. Here is a rarely seen version of the country and its football culture, rich in detail, charm and eccentricity. It is a prolonged love letter to floodlights in Ayr, ghost stadiums in Glasgow, pitch-invading oystercatchers in Grantown and all the rest.
From Border to island, Premiership to Highland, here are the people and places that make Scottish football – old pal fans in the rain, park players kicking and dreaming, fathers and daughters trudging dejectedly from the match, proud club shop proprietors, scraggy but loveable grounds with one grandstand and bustling stadiums of noble vintage.
Snapshot! is a celebration of football and a portal into a different kind of Scotland.
Alan McCredie’s photographs combine with Daniel Gray’s words to accompany the reader on a charismatic tour of Scottish football from Selkirk to Stornoway. Here is a rarely seen version of the country and its football culture, rich in detail, charm and eccentricity. It is a prolonged love letter to floodlights in Ayr, ghost stadiums in Glasgow, pitch-invading oystercatchers in Grantown and all the rest.
From Border to island, Premiership to Highland, here are the people and places that make Scottish football – old pal fans in the rain, park players kicking and dreaming, fathers and daughters trudging dejectedly from the match, proud club shop proprietors, scraggy but loveable grounds with one grandstand and bustling stadiums of noble vintage.
Snapshot! is a celebration of football and a portal into a different kind of Scotland.
- GenresFootball
200 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2020
18 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 14, 2021
The introduction claims this book to be “a love letter to the charms of football …. a portal into a different kind of Scotland.” Well, maybe; but it’s a portal through which many people have travelled.
As an aside I notice on the cover photo (of a pitch on Eriskay) there are flags marking the halfway line. I thought those had been done away with years ago.
For each “chapter” we have a page or three of narrative. These describe in turn the unsung background people, the beating heart of every club, “ensuring our Saturdays have purpose, comfort and melancholy;” the return to normality and focus of a new season’s start; the contrasting fortunes of the two “wee” Rangers, of Berwick and of Cove; the bright promise of a ground you’ve never been to before; the “gentle pleasures” of football in the Borders (notwithstanding the brutalist concrete splendour of Gala Fairydean’s main stand;) the rigours and dangers of blaes pitches; the magic of a floodlit game, forever enchanting; the glory and misery of away trips; the local team as the heart of a community, embodied in its social club especially in Junior football; the joys of park football; the content the writer senses in the Highland League.
The match day experience of attending a midweek floodlit game in a minor league is highlighted by a photograph of a neglected bottle of orange juice and a mug with the word “Twat” printed on it sitting on top of a dugout.
Football’s past is given its due with photos of an iron fence and gate before where the main stand stood at The Gymnasium; trees striding down the terraces of Cathkin Park; a single Art Deco style wall still bearing the name Shawfield; the sole survivor of Brockville, a turnstile acting as a memorial in the car park of the town’s Morrisons; the overgrown terraces of Tinto Park, Benburb; Meadowbank’s “oddly alluring air of otherness …. a little pocket of Leningrad tucked behind Arthur’s Seat.”
An even more melancholy note is struck by the mention of two Hibs supporters, one photographed on an away trip, who succumbed to Covid-19, with the final paragraphs devoted to the loss the average fan has experienced as a result of the pandemic’s suspension of the Saturday ritual.
As an aside I notice on the cover photo (of a pitch on Eriskay) there are flags marking the halfway line. I thought those had been done away with years ago.
For each “chapter” we have a page or three of narrative. These describe in turn the unsung background people, the beating heart of every club, “ensuring our Saturdays have purpose, comfort and melancholy;” the return to normality and focus of a new season’s start; the contrasting fortunes of the two “wee” Rangers, of Berwick and of Cove; the bright promise of a ground you’ve never been to before; the “gentle pleasures” of football in the Borders (notwithstanding the brutalist concrete splendour of Gala Fairydean’s main stand;) the rigours and dangers of blaes pitches; the magic of a floodlit game, forever enchanting; the glory and misery of away trips; the local team as the heart of a community, embodied in its social club especially in Junior football; the joys of park football; the content the writer senses in the Highland League.
The match day experience of attending a midweek floodlit game in a minor league is highlighted by a photograph of a neglected bottle of orange juice and a mug with the word “Twat” printed on it sitting on top of a dugout.
Football’s past is given its due with photos of an iron fence and gate before where the main stand stood at The Gymnasium; trees striding down the terraces of Cathkin Park; a single Art Deco style wall still bearing the name Shawfield; the sole survivor of Brockville, a turnstile acting as a memorial in the car park of the town’s Morrisons; the overgrown terraces of Tinto Park, Benburb; Meadowbank’s “oddly alluring air of otherness …. a little pocket of Leningrad tucked behind Arthur’s Seat.”
An even more melancholy note is struck by the mention of two Hibs supporters, one photographed on an away trip, who succumbed to Covid-19, with the final paragraphs devoted to the loss the average fan has experienced as a result of the pandemic’s suspension of the Saturday ritual.
March 7, 2021
This is a joy, albeit a bittersweet one in pandemic lockdown times, with fun and frivolity and football all but outlawed. It almost seems like another world seeing heaving crowds huddled into terraces, "from border to island, from Junior to Highland...the club historian ready to share the obscure, the every-game-fan with his nod from the players and the lotto seller jangling and cajoling. They are the home front stoics that make every club." The pictures are great and the prose engaging. Let's hope we can all get back to the Saturday routine sooner rather than later, with the pies and the patter and the club bar where "wins are predicted and sorrows drowned, old pals sit together and beckon over the new. The game matters, but not so much as these segments of the day - nothing staves off lonely winters like laughter and shared jeers as the scores from elsewhere come in."
October 16, 2020
This is an excellent book of stories and photos from the whole of Scottish Football. If you know about Nutmeg then you know they cover the WHOLE range from the top of the game to grounds that no longer hosts games.
I admit that my favourite part is the Ghost grounds section.
If you love football and everything synonymous with going to football then you should get it. You can practically smell a matchday.
I admit that my favourite part is the Ghost grounds section.
If you love football and everything synonymous with going to football then you should get it. You can practically smell a matchday.
August 26, 2024
No apologies for the 5 stars. This is a truly beautiful book about ‘scenes and stories from the heartlands of Scottish football’ The written word is nostalgic and poetic but the photographs tells as much of the story as the words. A must for any football fan but particularly Scottish football fans.👏👏
January 5, 2021
A love letter, in words and pictures, on the simple beauty of Scottish football
March 5, 2023
Enjoyable read
August 6, 2023
A collection of photo essays from the excellent Nutmeg Scottish Football Quarterly. Superb photography but at times I found the text a bit too cloyingly sentimental and overly romantic about the game
January 17, 2021
Truly great read. If you don’t know nutmeg periodical this should entice you in. The words and photos in this draw you in to the real game - what we see each Saturday and beyond. Fans inside or not be ready to get drawn in.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews