(A Five of Five Star read.)
*****

I’ve always felt a bit of an affinity with Pat Nevin. He may be five years my younger, but he attended Glasgow Tech College at the same time I did (we were on distinctly different courses) and I’d often see him around the campus.

At that time, he was a young, up and coming ‘star,’ of Scottish football. Already, great success was being predicted for him, despite him only just breaking into the Clyde FC first team.

Like Pat, I am (or certainly was) a very small and slightly built football player – I must stress, though, nowhere even remotely close to his level! I too had (thankfully, still have) a nose that would frequently be caught by opposition defenders, and I too was also a middle distance runner.

My choice in music, like Pat’s, didn’t conform to the norm, and if asked about my personal ‘heroes’ I too would have listed radio DJ, John Peel.

So it was great interest that I followed his career, and marveled at how he could take the punishment he did from the opposition and still bounce back up to torment his assailants.

This autobiography is a great read. It’s engaging and charming, but through it all runs a steely, single-mindedness.

Although Pat’s career spanned a time before the present day mega-money deals and ‘entitled’ stereo-typical football players, it was during a period when a culture of bullying, hard drinking, racial and homophobic traits were commonplace, on and off the pitch.

It was also a time when many football teams eschewed entertaining, ball-playing, attacking players in favour of the ‘long-ball’ game.

Pat rose above all that.

He never set out to be a football player, but sometimes fate will just not allow such talent to go unappreciated’. It’s to the eternal gratitude of Clyde, Chelsea, Everton, Tranmere Rovers and Scotland football teams that there were no bushels large enough to conceal Pat’s talents.

This is one of those ‘must read’ books for fans of any football team.

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