The Forgotten Footballer

I'd had a spectacular career. I'd won three league titles with Arsenal and played nearly fifty games for my country, over half of them as captain, but I had never been involved with a team of no-hopers before. Let me explain. After serving seven years of a ten year prison sentence I tried to get a job in football when I was released, any job. But no one would have me. I spent six months applying for every football position that came up. Most clubs didn't bother to call me back. I couldn't even get an interview for the job of tea boy. That's when I thought I should go back to my roots and start off at the bottom again. My first team had been Sheppey United and when I was sixteen I had played for them in the Southern League, so I rang up the Chairman and was surprised to be given the chance to become their new Manager. I didn't even know there wasn't already a manager there, I just thought I could help out with training, maybe with the youth team or the reserves. I didn't know that Sheppey United were in as bad a way as I was. The previous season they had been relegated from the Kent League Premier Division without winning a single game. Now they were in the Kent League Division One (East), they had no ground and a large outstanding debt. If the truth be told we probably needed each other or maybe even deserved each other. So I moved back to Sittingbourne where I had spent my childhood and tried to set about rebuilding my life after over twenty years away. It wasn't going to be easy, I knew that. And then I bumped into Christine who had been my first love, my only love, and things started to get really complicated. This book also includes two other football stories: Approaching Silence and Blue-Skinned Gods.