Finn McCool's Football Club: The Birth, Death, and Resurrection of a Pub Soccer Team in the City of the Dead

by Stephen Rea

In this captivating debut, Belfast native Stephen Rea crafts a story of sportsmanship and strength built around an unusual pub soccer team in the heart of New Orleans. Set against the dark backdrop of Hurricane Katrina, this luminous and infinitely inviting memoir traces the affecting stories of Rea and his hilarious and dynamic friends and teammates. Comprised primarily of ex-pats over the age of 35, Finn McCool's Football Club boasts a dynamic mix of idiosyncratic personalities. From Macca, the team's Scottish coach and a hard-drinking ex-professional player, to its outspoken South African landscape gardener/striker Benji, each character comes vibrantly to life in Rea's fresh and frank prose. Hilarious moments and poignant reflections shine with equal intensity throughout this multifarious work, which captures the individual experiences of the Finn's players in the wake of Katrina. A literary memoir, soccer story, and tale of survival and resolve, this work is an indefatigable tribute to a city and its residents who determined to play on after their lives were all but washed away.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Soccer

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 27, 2009

About the author

Stephen Rea is a freelance writer in New Orleans who has contributed to national and international newspapers, magazines, and Web sites for over twenty years. He worked for England's Daily News and Western Daily Press in the features, sports, and entertainment departments. When he was only seventeen, the Sun daily newspaper chose him as their first-ever trainee reporter, and he covered a range of news stories, from the Gulf War and terrorist attacks in London to the resignation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Rea attended Campbell College in his hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He studied journalism at the United Kingdom's National Council for the Training of Journalists before joining the Sun. After moving to New Orleans, Rea won a writing grant from the Tennessee Williams / New Orleans Literary Festival in 2006.

Rea, a soccer lover, discovered an Irish bar in the Mid-City area called Finn McCool's, an eccentric blend of locals and ex-pats. The men eventually formed a club team and joined a league - the perfect place for him to play soccer and express his love of the game. He wrote His first book Finn McCool's Football Club while he was displaced to Houston, Texas, after Hurricane Katrina, and the story follows not only Rea's struggles through that difficult period, but the rest of the team's as well. In 2018 his second book, World Cup Fever, was released.

Stephen Rea's eclectic life has led him to more than one hundred countries, all seven continents, and all fifty U.S. states. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he spent his childhood against the backdrop of bombings and shootings in that country during the seventies and eighties. At the age of sixteen, he went on tour with rock star Ozzy Osbourne and later traveled the world as his assistant road manager, contributing a chapter to Osbourne's official biography Diary of a Madman. He lives with his wife in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he writes and teaches writing.

Reviews

[Trevor Kew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Rea populates this hilarious yet poignant memoir with a cast of larger-than-life (but all too real) expats and Americans who strive to start a pub football team in New Orleans despite age, fitness levels, and remarkably high blood alcohol. In the background looms the spectre of Hurricane Katrina, which strikes the city shortly before their first competitive match.

Rea's memoir is a welcome addition to the football memoir/biography genre, especially as it focuses on amateur football rather than the absolute elite. 99.9999999...% of us play at the amateur level, but I'm willing to bet that a similar percentage of football books focus on the elite. This is for obvious reasons, of course, but for those of us for whom our Sunday leagues are just as important (or more important) than the Premier League, Champions League or World Cup, Rea's book really resonates.

It got me on several levels. I have lived outside my country (Canada) for the past 15 years, and so I really understood the way that playing (and watching) football helps one to settle in and meet both locals and expats. Rea's descriptions of playing in the Latino leagues (possibly the funniest part of the book) made me think of my own experiences as the lone white guy in a Tokyo league, though thankfully there was a bit less whingeing and kicking! On a more sombre note, his evocative description of the hurricane and its aftermath coupled with his heartfelt fears for the city itself recalled the 2011 tsunami in Japan for me, which (like Rea, I would say) was a shocking and painful experience but led to a closer connection to my adopted homeland in the end. Last but not least, I also have a wife who hates the cold and does not (in the slightest) comprehend my obsession with chasing a little ball around a muddy pitch for 90 minutes with 21 other sweaty men.

Well worth a read. And I hope to get to New Orleans one day to pay that pub a visit. Maybe I'll even bring my gloves and boots...

[Matt J · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 stars. Really a wonderful read, goes deeper than your average book about soccer.

I have the honor of knowing the author and several of the players in this memoir, and they are all represented honestly!

Finn McCool’s Football Club just celebrated its 20th anniversary and is still going strong. It is unlike any other pub football team in the world, and I’m so thankful to be even a small part of this great institution.

[John Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book might be good for avid football (soccer fans) and New Orleans residents, but I found it tedious. Often, too, the author would quote people ad nauseam instead of summarizing what they said. At first, I enjoyed it. The author is funny, but I soon tired of it. I must admit I didn't finish it. I kept hoping it would get better, but gave up.

[Patrick Tarbox · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 rounded down to 4. It was a great emotional read and tells the story of the places well for people regardless if they are locals or people who have visited, that part was accessible to anyone who read it. It was a bit chummy and ‘you gotta know the boys’ at some points, but overall I enjoyed it!

[Mahlon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Stephen Rea can write, there’s no doubt about that. However, I feel like the character flaws of the people he wrote about got in the way of the story a little bit. I found Frank the Tank's lackadaisical attitude hard to take... but readers will be awestruck by the resiliency of these people and their fight for survival in the face of extreme adversity.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book about a pub soccer team in New Orleans and the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the lives of the players.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I'm not a big football fan, I love most anything about New Orleans. The personal account of survival during Katrina was moving. Beautifully written and reads like a conversation over a pint.

[Kasey Cañas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some aspects of this book were so interesting to read about like the detailed accounts of Katrina and the city. However, a majority of this book focused on football and players in such an obsessive way it was so boring. I don’t really need to know where you were sitting for each and every game over a 5 year period. Maybe a more avid football fan would be interested but for me it dragged the story down. Also at first I really enjoyed sarcastic tone but it got old and repetitive pretty quickly.

[Alan]

Wonderful book about friendship and soccer in an unlikely place at a difficult time. When Stephen Rea arrived in New Orleans as a stranger in a strange land, he spent a long time looking for mates to play soccer with. The south is not a soccer friendly place. My wife, from New Orleans, says that it is viewed as a communist plot, right up there with fluoridation of water. Finding some like minded guys in Finn McCool's Pub, they form an over-35 soccer team and are just about to play when Hurricaine Katrina comes to town. The team is scattered across the country, some having lost everything they owned. This is the story of the origins, dissolution and regathering of the Pub soccer team and the the bar that forms the hub around which their lives revolve. Reading it during the World Cup adds an additional pleasure to savoring this very funny and well written book.

[Kelly]

I am a huge fan of any sports story. The sport itself does not matter as much as what someone learned, gained or lost from the moment. Everyone know that sports stories aren't really about sports, they are about the human experience. What touched me most about this book was the human connections that were built through the love of a game that were tested by a tragedy that affected all involved in one way or another. If I am ever in New Orleans I want to not just go and have a drink at Finn McCool's but I want to go and watch an actual game because win or lose the team from Finn McCool's FC make me want to just have that experience.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being someone who lives in NOLA and arrived here long after Katrina, I found it fascinating to read about the neighborhoods that I frequent that one point were completely underwater. I was impressed that a foreigner had so much devotion to this city after watching it be wiped away. It really shows the allure of the city and how people are fiercely devoted to it. The book was well written and even as an average non-soccer watching American I loved how he described the makeup of the team and the obstacles he overcame to get a club together in the deep south. Great read for anyone wanting to get an honest, personal depiction of life before, during, and after Katrina.

[jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

a very good book about an expat from northern ireland (and a fellow fan of my favorite football/soccer team) who moves to new orleans, connects with several other expats and forms their own pub football team, only to be interrupted before their first competitive match by the devastation of hurricane katrina. the humor of the formation of the team and the bond he and his friends form is lovely, and it is equally as devastating to hear the stories of what he and his friends went through when katrina tore its way through their adopted city. a very engaging read.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I purchased Finn McCool's Football Club to read a book about soccer, and I read a wonderful story of the human side of the Katrina tragedy. The author and his pub soccer team are dispersed around the country in the aftermath of Katrina. It is a compelling story of how their bond (and love for soccer) draws them back to New Orleans. Some of the individual stories of those trying to escape the city during the hurricane are chilling. You will not be able to put this down.

[Kevin]

If you play soccer, drink at any certain pub, experienced a natural disaster, remember hurricane Katrina, or just want to read a great book, this is for you. Buy Stephen Rae a pint if you ever have the chance to meet him.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A different way of looking at the horrors of Katrina from a ex-pat's point of view. If you are a footie fan, you'll appreciate this book.

[Julie Smyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic story. Suitable for anyone, soccer fan or not, but particularly enjoyable for me as I experienced Hurricane Katrina. The best book I've read this year, highly recommended.

[Kevin Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top notch read. Sped through it in a day. Would certainly tell anyone no matter their interests to read this. Thoroughly enjoyable.

[Stephen Rea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote it, so of course I have to give it five stars! Admit I may be a bit biased!

[Hardeep · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you only read one book about a northern irish loving, NOLA based, hurricane ravaged pub football team, then this would have to be it....

[Anayansi · Rating 5 out of 5]

All kinds of ex-pats living in Nola will love this book...best recount of pre&post Katrina experience I've read, not only accurate but told with a great sense of humor to balance the unthinkanble