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Two Posts and a Field: Cultural Impact, Social Change and Liverpool Football Club's Collected Artefacts
Two Posts and a Field is a unique look at Liverpool FC through the eyes of Neville Gabie (artist and lifelong fan) and Stephen Done (writer and curator at the LFC Museum). Richly illustrated, it is part travelogue, part exploration of the LFC Museum's hidden treasures and part personal story, as Neville takes us from his childhood listening to games on the radio in South Africa to watching his first match at Anfield in 1973. The book tells the story of Neville and Stephen's roadtrip to find the home and birthplace of Mo Salah in Egypt's Nile Delta and of Avi Cohen, a player who broke the cultural mould when he signed from Maccabi Tel Aviv in the 1980s. It shines a spotlight on the struggles of Liverpool's home-grown talent for racial equality, contrasting Trent Alexander Arnold with Howard Gayle, the first black player to be signed by Liverpool, with the backdrop of the Toxteth riots. The stories are brought to life by Gabie's beautiful goalpost photos, which stretch back 20 years.
176 pages, Paperback
Published April 25, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 9, 2023
One of the things I find perplexing about sport (and after over 30 years studying its cultures, histories, and sociologies there remain many things I find perplexing) is the intense personal association many people feel with some its globalised, corporate entities. That is to say, I remain puzzled by fan identification with clubs. It is ubiquitous: my eight year old grandson talks of his local English Premier League team in the first person plural, when ‘we’ won (or lost). It’s quite probably a hang-over from the days when teams were made up of local players, but it has become so embedded in the banality of sports discourse that globalised fans who have never been to Manchester, Chicago, or Shropshire still talk of the teams the support from afar as ‘we’….
In this attractive and engaging book, Neville Gabie and Stephen Done set out to explore an aspect of that relationship – not that they frame their quest in those terms, but they are looking at how it is the Liverpool Football Club matters. The quest is partly personal, partly professional, and very reflective. South African born Gabie is a British-based photographer, while Done is founding and continuing curator of the Club’s museum. The text, lavishly illustrated with Gabie’s photos and museum artefacts, traces their relationships with the club, in part, but concentrates on how it is embedded in Liverpool’s self-perception and seen through the eyes of those associated with international players.
Three of the four substantive chapters tell stories shaped by individuals: Gabie’s awareness of and engagement with LFC growing up in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s – mainly the ‘70s, a time when the club had a very high international profile – and then on his shift to the UK as a student in the late 1970s. He frames that discussion with a shorter exploration of the club’s cultural associations with (South) Africa, such as through that section of the stadium and fan base known as The Kop.
The other two individually framed chapters explore the associations between Avi Cohen, who played for Liverpool for a couple of seasons in the 1970s, in the light of his continuing cultural significance in Israel. Cohen is notable not only because he was one the clubs first international signings as English football was relaxing its rules, but also because he was one of the first Israeli layers to sign for a foreign club, especially one with such global significance. The other is more contemporary focusing on a visit by Done and Gabie to Egypt to explore associations with the club through Mo Salah that includes visits to his home town: interesting as that is, I can’t help the feeling that the chapter is both slightly voyeuristic, and little Orientalist in its ambiguous depiction of a sense of exoticism.
The final substantive chapter looks at the club’s associations with the city of Liverpool, principally but not exclusively through the experiences of Black players. Here Gabie and Done feel on slightly more comfortable turf (they are, after all, both Liverpool residents) and their sense of place becomes a little more assured. This discussion is off-set by their discussion of two fan experience of specific games, and a brief exploration of the Makana Football League, set up by inmates on Robben Island in its days as apartheid South Africa’s primary political prison.
Woven through the book are photos of players and fans, of artefacts associated with the players, of the places Done and Gabie visit on their travels. It is elegantly designed, worthy of a ‘coffee table’ although this is not one of those – all credit to Pitch Publishers. The most striking images, however, are Gabie’s photos of goal posts, which he has been photographing for over 25 years (based on his 1999 publication Posts) emphasising the spread an ubiquity of the game.
This then, is an intriguing exploration of how and why one football club matters. It doesn’t quite get the problem of ‘we’, and in the discussions of Cohen and Salah doesn’t pick up on the issue of those who stay behind recognising ‘one of us’ on a global stage, but even so it adds dimensions to the globalised/globalising sport question in a way that many are likely to find resonates.
In this attractive and engaging book, Neville Gabie and Stephen Done set out to explore an aspect of that relationship – not that they frame their quest in those terms, but they are looking at how it is the Liverpool Football Club matters. The quest is partly personal, partly professional, and very reflective. South African born Gabie is a British-based photographer, while Done is founding and continuing curator of the Club’s museum. The text, lavishly illustrated with Gabie’s photos and museum artefacts, traces their relationships with the club, in part, but concentrates on how it is embedded in Liverpool’s self-perception and seen through the eyes of those associated with international players.
Three of the four substantive chapters tell stories shaped by individuals: Gabie’s awareness of and engagement with LFC growing up in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s – mainly the ‘70s, a time when the club had a very high international profile – and then on his shift to the UK as a student in the late 1970s. He frames that discussion with a shorter exploration of the club’s cultural associations with (South) Africa, such as through that section of the stadium and fan base known as The Kop.
The other two individually framed chapters explore the associations between Avi Cohen, who played for Liverpool for a couple of seasons in the 1970s, in the light of his continuing cultural significance in Israel. Cohen is notable not only because he was one the clubs first international signings as English football was relaxing its rules, but also because he was one of the first Israeli layers to sign for a foreign club, especially one with such global significance. The other is more contemporary focusing on a visit by Done and Gabie to Egypt to explore associations with the club through Mo Salah that includes visits to his home town: interesting as that is, I can’t help the feeling that the chapter is both slightly voyeuristic, and little Orientalist in its ambiguous depiction of a sense of exoticism.
The final substantive chapter looks at the club’s associations with the city of Liverpool, principally but not exclusively through the experiences of Black players. Here Gabie and Done feel on slightly more comfortable turf (they are, after all, both Liverpool residents) and their sense of place becomes a little more assured. This discussion is off-set by their discussion of two fan experience of specific games, and a brief exploration of the Makana Football League, set up by inmates on Robben Island in its days as apartheid South Africa’s primary political prison.
Woven through the book are photos of players and fans, of artefacts associated with the players, of the places Done and Gabie visit on their travels. It is elegantly designed, worthy of a ‘coffee table’ although this is not one of those – all credit to Pitch Publishers. The most striking images, however, are Gabie’s photos of goal posts, which he has been photographing for over 25 years (based on his 1999 publication Posts) emphasising the spread an ubiquity of the game.
This then, is an intriguing exploration of how and why one football club matters. It doesn’t quite get the problem of ‘we’, and in the discussions of Cohen and Salah doesn’t pick up on the issue of those who stay behind recognising ‘one of us’ on a global stage, but even so it adds dimensions to the globalised/globalising sport question in a way that many are likely to find resonates.
October 15, 2022
A really fascinating look at various aspects connected to the club
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews