Books

Reading matter for footie fans

Wrexham ’93 – a Yank view

Pete Davies, Twenty-Two Foreigners

In Funny Shorts  (Random House, New York)

I first became aware of the existence of the book Twenty-Two Foreigners In Funny Shorts during the half time interval at an Eddie Izzard show in San Francisco late last year.  Whilst queuing for the bar during the half time interval an American bloke in front of me turned round and upon seeing my Wrexham away shirt exclaimed "Wrexham!  Don't they have a soccer team?" When I replied that they certainly did and that they were one of the finest soccer club's in Europe, if not the world, he asked me if I'd ever read Twenty-Two Foreigners In Funny Shorts by Pete Davies.

Twenty-Two Foreigners In Funny Shorts was commissioned for the 1994 World Cup in America and as such was primarily written to explain to the American public not only the rules of the game, but also its history and the history of the World Cup competition itself.  Sandwiched between each chapter in the book are chapters chronicling the run in of Wrexham's 1993 promotion season, starting with Walsall at home on the 23rd of January.  A bizarre combination of material for a book I'm sure you'll agree.  However, it does gives the reader a great perspective of the game at grass roots level.    The book also makes refreshing reading at the moment, as we look over our collective shoulders at the relegation dog fight that's directly below us in the league.

I'll close this review with an excerpt from Twenty-Two Foreigners In Funny Shorts which describes the events of the night of April 27th, 1993.  i.e. the night that we clinched promotion away at Northampton.  That night was like thousands of proletariat storming the Winter Palace with Reds shirts on, it was brilliant!  Anyway, here's an excerpt from Chapter 20 of Twenty-Two Foreigners In Funny Shorts:

"Two games to go, two points required. So two draws would do it-but a win would be sweeter...   Northampton's one hundred and thirty miles southeast toward London, a two-hour trudge down the Midlands motorways through the dingy sprawl of Birmingham. I drove down there in a dull blare of burnt fog and heat haze, head empty, heart tight. The town's got a one-way road system designed by Jackson Pollock, and a soccer team called the Cobblers who aren't any prettier; they're nineteenth in the table, scrapping for their lives. The woman at the counter in the tourist office said, "Please don't beat us. If we go down, they'll never let us back in again. Not with a ground like ours." It's only got three sides, see - the fourth side's the boundary of the county cricket pitch.

I got a room at the Fish Inn at 4:30. There were Wrexham fans at the bar already. One said, with ominous contentment, "Town's full of Wrexham." Three hours later the attendance at the game was 7,504 -  bigger by three thousand than Northampton's previous best this season, and two thirds of them down from North Wales. They could barely fit us in; at the tatty little burger cabin, if you wanted sugar in your coffee, they had two teaspoons for all those people. If you wanted Coke, it was warm. We were packed onto half a terrace of crumbling concrete. At the far end there was the only thing you could call a proper stand, where the Town fans were; it was a shabby antique. Above the dressing rooms on one side there was "the Meccano Stand," a ratty box held together with scaffolding; it seated three hundred. Then the fourth side was a line of two-foot-high hoardings with the cricket pitch beyond. And Northamptonshire, as it happens, has a good cricket side; their pavilion beyond the pitch was all gleaming and swanky, a silent taunt to the sorry plight of the town's lesser sport. The Wrexham fans looked around with sympathetic astonishment. They know what it's like to be down at the bottom, but to be down at the bottom in this...In the bright warm evening, shadows stretched long across the grass as the terrace filled. Morris, Connolly, Owen and Jones came out to warm up, smiling at the fans, and the fans cheered back for them. Then Watkin and Paskin came out and jogged up and down, breaking into short sprints."

Gareth Collins