Hanging over Anfield that Friday evening was the dark shadow of the Hillsborough tragedy which had happened just a few weeks earlier. Ninety-six Liverpool supporters had died when too many were allowed into one of the terrace pens and were crushed against the high fences. It was a disaster that deeply affected every football fan. Indeed Cowley’s father told him, ‘I am finished with football for ever’. The changes that would take place in the environment of football stadiums as a direct result of Hillsborough, and then the Taylor report, would bring about a new era in football and the gradual decline in hooliganism and racism at matches. Whilst welcoming this, Cowley also shows how the game is no longer a ‘people’s game in any meaningful sense’ and is now defined by ‘egoism, rapacity and greed’, and by a ‘grotesque mercantile, neo-liberal winner-takes-all ethos’.

It is particularly timely to read this book, with all the media coverage of the recent 20th anniversary commemorations of the Hillsborough tragedy. Those who only vaguely recall this terrible event will learn a great deal more from this book. They may also understand the hold football can have on an individual’s life and relationships within a family.

I found it very moving, but then I too have the 26 May 1989 indelibly printed on my memory.

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