[Extension 'scheme-4' (56367) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable strScheme

[Extension 'outputScheme' (56370) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 50: ReferenceError: strScheme is not defined

[Extension 'Hide Slot 1' (8801) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable showSlot1

[Extension 'Show Slot 2' (8802) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable showSlot2

[Extension 'Hide Slot 3' (9108) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable showSlot3

[Extension 'Hide Nav' (8930) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable showNav

[Extension 'Show 1 Slot' (8876) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable noOfSlots

[Extension 'Show 6 Links' (8871) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable noOfLinks

[Extension 'Hide Slot 4' (42266) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable showSlot4

[Extension 'white' (8824) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable bgColor

[Extension 'Show Flag' (526947) on page 'arts-literature-literaturematters-nov05-willbuckley.htm'] Line 1: TypeError: assignment to undeclared variable showFlags

WRITING SPORT

Sports journalism in the UK is in a great state. The broadsheets are producing their own supplements, the tabloids have some fantastic writers and even the fanzines are going strong. Kevin Mitchell looks at exactly where it's at. Meanwhile Hunter Davies offers an overview of footballing biographies and how they have changed over the years.

SPORTING CULTURE

Although some may argue that sport and politics aren’t a comfortable mix, in the end it’s hard to keep the two separate. Simon Kuper examines the ties that bind literature, politics and sport while Liz Crolley explores issues around women in sports writing.

POETRY AND SPORT

Poet Ian McMillan had an inspired idea and talked Barnsley Football Club into helping him to achieve his goal. Here he talks about being the first poet-in-residence at a British football club.

READING THE GAME

Jim Sells from the Literacy Trust is manager of the Reading the Game project that aims to get young people into books through their love of football. Further details of that initiative can be found here.

THE MEANING OF SPORT

Tim Parks has written on sport in both his fiction and non-fiction. Here he explores the dramatic impact of sporting thrills and spills in literature.

FOOTBALLING BERLIN

The British Council in Germany recently ran a project profiling football and literature. Here, British Council organiser Marijke Brouwer talks about the impact of this stunning event while writer Chris Dolan explains what it all meant to him.

British Obsession with Football

by Will Buckley

Will Buckley explores the great British obsession with football. He talks about how it is reflected in our literature.

It is Monday October 10th and The Times, once the paper of record, has a banner headline trumpeting that it includes 50 pages of sport. , meanwhile, launches a new 32-page sport section. and lag only slightly behind, knocking out 20 or so pages apiece.

That the four main newspapers should devote so much space to games is remarkable (c.f. pagination afforded to the earthquake in Kashmir) but that the majority of those pages should be given over to one game is beyond reason. The football match in question was England versus Austria. It was by all accounts, all 30 something of them, a very grim game with no redeeming interest. Yet the space had to be filled, so it was filled. Substitute Guy Ritchie’s for 'England 1, Austria 0' and you have some idea of the inanity of the process. Imagine four different reviewers giving their verdict from different angles, two actors giving their ghosted views on the part they played, a retired actor giving his ghosted views on the part he might have played, endless analysis of Ritchie’s post-film press conference, further analysis of that analysis, marks out of 10 for each actor ...

It is beyond imagining, yet that is what happened. A game that used to afford a means of escapism has become inescapable. And it is harder and harder to find a refuge from it.

There are two reasons why this might have come about. The cynical one is that the newspaper editors, in thrall to focus groups, advertising executives, and the notion of celebrity, have embarked on a pointless and deranged ‘my sports-section is bigger than yours’ contest. The credulous one is that hundreds of thousands of people enjoy reading all this stuff.

Clearly, I subscribe to the former but, suspending belief for a moment, suppose the latter is correct. Suppose there is this huge market. Suppose that there exists as many members of the public prepared to digest novel-length coverage of 'England 1, Austria 0' as there are prepared to consume a doorstopper by Dan Brown.

If this is true then there’s money to be made. It would be a moment’s work to knock out 'England 1, Austria 0' – a novelisation of Sven-Göran Eriksson’s latest production starring Daivd Beckham in a cameo role. Furthermore, with a bit of graft, one might even produce an original work.

And yet football fiction has never made much impact. After the First World War there were a number of footballing novels published with Goal by Sydney Horler being typical of the genre. Set in an age when the F. A. Cup really meant something it is subtitled . Part 1 is entitled 'Travail', Part 2 'Triumph'. The chapter headings - 'Stopford Moves', 'Girnsley-Away', 'In Their Stride!', 'Big Bill Keeps His Word' - give a good indication of the arc of the plot. Does Dick Marr score for Hollywood in dying seconds of the Final against Kensington? That would be telling.

After the Second World War, football fiction perhaps found its natural home in the comics and from to it has flourished there. A cartoon setting seemingly marking the limits of the format.

There were, inevitably, misguided attempts in the 1960s to revive the form by means of celebrity endorsement as Denis Law, Graham Hill and Gary Sobers allowed their names to be attached to works of fiction. However, when I showed Sobers a copy of the book he supposedly wrote he couldn't have been more alarmed if it had been entitled 'I am a Paedophile' rather than and the .

There were, also, collaborative efforts with by Terry Venables and Gordon Williams being the most successful. Although the extent of Venables’ contribution remains in doubt. Legend having it that the sum of his contribution to a Hazel novel written with/by Gordon Williams being as follows: 'There's a naked blonde on the bed. Dead. And underneath the bed a suitcase stuffed with a million nicker. All yours, Gordon.'

Aside and apart from the above there is Brian Glanville. His first football novel, The Rise of Gerry Logan, was praised by J. B. Priestly as being ‘highly original’ and Michael Ratcliffe wrote in ‘Brian Glanville produces what has long been expected of him – the full-length soccer novel’. Glanville produced a couple more but, and certainly not through lack of talent, they did not become bestsellers.

This seems odd. If the public will happily plough through pages and pages of football guff and falsehood in the newspapers, surely they might be expected to enjoy a football novel? Apparently not.

Perhaps, it is because men - and most football readers are men - really don’t buy fiction. They will have a stab at reading but give the swerve to a novel about a hard-drinking central defender who is transformed by a charismatic manager into … the endings are full of possibility.

Perhaps what they want is more of the same. Many of these ‘My Autobiographies’ are, after all, written to very short order by hard-pressed hacks and often amount to little more than cut ‘n’ paste jobs on their own cuttings. They are, if you will, collected journalisms published under someone else’s name.

Perhaps the book that might tap into this lucrative market has yet to be written. Perhaps the techniques of the ‘new journalism’, rather than the ‘PR journalism’ which currently holds sway, might be used to write the Great Football Novel. Certainly, if Tom Wolfe were writing in Britain today it would be a footballer not a bond-dealer who would most readily embody a Master of the Universe.

What’s more, given the acres and acres of coverage given to football, you might not have to embark on Wolfian amounts of research. Sitting at home reading the newspapers should be sufficient.

Will Buckley is a sports writer for . His most recent book .