Denied Promotion By A Tree: The Book of Amazing Football Facts

An absolute must for any footy fan

Football trivia is these days generally the stuff of online platforms, and their thousands of followers can generate so much material and debate in a free (and free-for-all) environment that committing such material to print might seem like a brave move by a professional writer.Fortunately, when it is well written and well researched, as in this case, the advantages are clear.One plus point is that each fascinating fact documented can be allowed to lodge in the reader’s mind without sparking irrelevant ‘banter’ with rival fans trying to out-do each other or contest the veracity of what has been said.Another is that the writer can categorize the information in a neat and orderly way, rather than as a stream of consciousness from people who may not in any case have been totally conscious at the time of the incident being described. It is noticeable how often fans say “I know, I was there” whilst offering wildly different versions of what occurred.Lastly, and this is what perhaps makes the book stand out, it reflects the ability of the game to throw up randomly entertaining and memorable moments throughout its history, not merely in the favourite era of a particular raconteur.If I had a pound for every time I have read an amusing football story unnecessarily suffixed with a comment to the effect that “You don’t get characters / pitches / score lines / fans / stadium toilets etc. like that anymore” I would be rich indeed, but the scope of Les Scott’s delving into the game’s history genuinely runs from the 1850s to the 2020s and finds something surprising and interesting in every era, as well as at every level of the football pyramid. The result is 279 pages of total delight.Just a few examples. to avoid too many spoilers: the Scottish League ground that is nearer Northern Ireland than Glasgow; the last team to win the FA Cup with a team containing no internationals; and why the linesman with the red flag typically used to run the line on the Main Stand side.As someone with a good memory for football anecdotes and trivia, I was surprised and impressed at how few of these stories I had heard before. The one referred to in the book’s title was familiar, as are a few relating to my own club, and events like Boxing Day 1963 producing the most ridiculous set of results in Football League history, but for every one of those there were dozens that were unfamiliar.Moreover, it is hard to see how many of the entries could have simply come to the writer’s attention in other publications or random trawling of the internet. Instead, the reader pictures him sitting at his keyboard thinking “I wonder if …. have ever….” and then seeking out examples. As such the book is as much a feat of imagination as of recording the facts, and all the better for it.

Good fun read

So many interesting facts that make it a very enjoyable read 😊