Published by the Book Guild Ltd, price: £9.99
Anyone who has been involved in kids’ football will know that it can become highly competitive. You have managers who think they are the next Jose Mourinho dishing out complex instructions to the under-sevens. And you have parents who think their child is the next Lionel Messi and get the hump when he is left on the bench.
What should be fun can quickly turn into something serious and it’s usually the children who are the ones to lose out.
It’s a topic that would lend itself to a novel and Steve Couch is the one who has grasped the nettle. A former team manager and club chairman of West Moors Youth Football Club, he has seen and heard it all.
In Foul and Fair, James Hogan is one of the central characters. With his career as an English teacher in tatters, all he has left is the boys’ football team he coaches, but rival manager Kieran Butcher – from the same club! – threatens to take that away too.
Kieran is the manager of the Hawks, Stoneleigh Youth Football Club’s U12 ‘first team’, while James runs the ‘second string’ Swifts.
Kieran is a ‘win-at-all-costs’ merchant who thinks he has the right to take James’ best players if he’s short.
With the Hawks relegated to the same division as the Swifts – partly because Kieran had fielded a player whose registration hadn’t come through and for his poor conduct which led to a points deduction – it means they will lock horns.
James, riled by Kieran, then somewhat unwisely agrees to a bet about which team will finish higher in the table. The agreement is that the loser’s team will fold, leaving all the player for the winner to pick from.
James almost immediately regrets making the bet, but it’s too late – and he gradually gets sucked into taking risks that could even get him in trouble with the law in his attempts to win the bet.
In a separate strand of the book that gradually weaves its way into James’ battle with Kieran, single mother and police officer Hayley Birnham is worried about her career, her son and the string of unusual crimes connected to the local football community.
As Couch explains in his acknowledgments, the original story was purely about James and Kieran – and that is stronger – but the Hayley part does add another layer and give the book a more rounded feel.
At approaching 350 pages, it is perhaps a little longer than it needed to be, but nonetheless it is an entertaining read with plenty of plot changes. It will hopefully provide food for thought too for coaches and parents on the touchlines who tend to get too carried away.
RATING OUT OF 10: 8
